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must not be, and the cabinet is agreed on this, at the risk of dropping any environmental standards whatsoever,” he said.
Meanwhile, a House of Lords committee has warned that the greatest threat to farm animal welfare standards after Brexit would come from UK farmers competing against cheap imported food from countries with lower standards than the UK.
In a new report, the subcommittee on energy and the environment, said the government’s wish for the UK to become a global leader in free trade is “not necessarily compatible with its desire to maintain high animal welfare standards”.
Lord Teverson, the subcommittee chairman, said that the inquiry heard evidence of “undeniable concern that opening up the UK market to free global trade poses a number of issues”.
“As we said in our last report, Brexit: agriculture, the government may find it hard to reconcile its free trade ambitions with its commendable desire for preserving high farm animal welfare standards,” he said.
“We heard overwhelming support for farm animal welfare standards to be maintained or improved. To help achieve that, we urge the government to secure the inclusion of high farm animal welfare standards in any free trade agreements it negotiates after Brexit.”by Carl V Phillips
Most of what gets published in newspapers about tobacco products is complete garbage, written by someone whose research and critical thinking abilities seem to be at about the level of a middle-school report. Thus, this article about e-cigarettes in the New York Times by Sabrina Tavernise was extremely refreshing. By virtue of that, it is a great opportunity to explore some of the common misconceptions, oversimplifications, and narrow thinking that appear in the intelligent discussion of the topic. Dissecting the usual drivel gets pretty useless after a while, but this is different.
After introducing Stanton Glantz and his protegé and reluctant antagonist, Michael Siegel, the Tavernise continues:
These experts represent the two camps now at war over the public health implications of e-cigarettes. The devices, intended to feed nicotine addiction without the toxic tar of conventional cigarettes, have divided a normally sedate public health community that had long been united in the fight against smoking and Big Tobacco.
Reporters like to turn slow-moving, complicated, and broad political fights into movie scripts. Perhaps this paragraph is just an example of that. But there does seem to be a genuine misconception that the fight about THR is new, and that there is something unique here. In reality, that fight has been going on a long time, and the “public health” political movement has jumped the shark on this and numerous other issues (“Big Food”, 20 ounce sodas, smoking in cars, helmet laws, you name it) and has lost the support of many who are genuine public health advocates and researchers. This is important context for understanding this fight. There is, in fact, nothing unique going on here.
Also, it is not entirely fair to the anti-THR faction to claim they are represented by their court jester, Glantz. Many of them are just as dishonest and evil as he is, but are not cartoon villains who spout easily verifiable lies. It probably is reasonable to use Siegel as a representative voice in the narrow fights about e-cigarettes, but he is not a supporter of harm reduction more generally, or of individual freedom. This may make him the “public health” faction’s pro-ecig guy, but missing from this entire movie script are the many voices from outside that faction.
The essence of their disagreement comes down to a simple question: Will e-cigarettes cause more or fewer people to smoke? The answer matters. Cigarette smoking is still the single largest cause of preventable death in the United States, killing about 480,000 people a year. Dr. Siegel, whose graduate school manuscripts Dr. Glantz used to read, says e-cigarette pessimists are stuck on the idea that anything that looks like smoking is bad. “They are so blinded by this ideology that they are not able to see e-cigarettes objectively,” he said. Dr. Glantz disagrees. “E-cigarettes seem like a good idea,” he said, “but they aren’t.”
The exaggerated toll from smoking and the “preventable” trope, in this context, matter little, so I will not dwell on them. The notion that anti-ecig activism is motivated by vaping looking like smoking is far too narrow, and falls into the movie script simplification: That seems to be what Glantz is motivated by, but it does not generalize. The main motivation seems to be that THR stands in the way of “tobacco-free world” goals, as I have discussed at length, and is bad for business (it hurts the revenues of institutions and individuals who depend on concerns about smoking, and to a lesser extent those who sell anti-smoking products).
Science that might resolve questions about e-cigarettes is still developing, and many experts agree that the evidence so far is too skimpy to draw definitive conclusions about the long-term effects of the devices on the broader population. “The popularity is outpacing the knowledge,” said Dr. Michael B. Steinberg, associate professor of medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University. “We’ll have a better idea in another year or two of how safe these products are, but the question is, will the horse be out of the barn by then?”
The first bit of that seems like a simple statement of fact, but it is not. Following on the issue of whether e-cigarettes reduce smoking, the incorrect implication is that research on current behavior could tell us much about that. But then notice the unacknowledged switching from the question of smoking cessation to the question of exactly how hazardous e-cigarettes are in themselves (which, incidentally, we also will know very little more about “in another year or two”). This conflation and changing of topic is a common tactic by anti-THR activists and a common error by non-activist commentators. These are very different questions.
Equally interesting is the “horse out of the barn” metaphor, which seems to represent a common view. First, it illustrates the ruling class attitude of “public health”, suggesting that their job is to control dumb animals, rather than to advise free and rational people. Second, is patently wrong. THR products can and will be improved upon over time. And have been: worry about nitrosamines in smokeless tobacco (probably overblown, but leave that aside) has resulted in a huge reduction in their concentration over the last few decades. E-cigarettes will be improved and the current technology will probably be mostly displaced by others. In the extremely unlikely event that something very hazardous is found, many people will rationally choose to switch products, as happens all the time with other goods. There is nothing irreversible here other than the embrace of THR and the rejection of the abstinence-only orthodoxy. That, of course, is the main motivation of anti-THR.
After a couple of paragraphs about FDA regulation:
And many scientists say e-cigarettes will be truly effective in reducing the death toll from smoking only with the right kind of federal regulation — for example, rules that make ordinary cigarettes more expensive than e-cigarettes, or that reduce the amount of nicotine in ordinary cigarettes so smokers turn to e-cigarettes for their nicotine.
Activists who trust only themselves and believe they should control people do say that (though I would not suggest they should be described as either many or scientists). But is it even a little bit plausible? THR will replace smoking because it lowers the risk and keeps a lot of the benefits. It is certainly true that high taxes on cigarettes (having nothing to do with “the right kind of federal regulation”) make e-cigarettes more appealing (just as high taxes on smokeless tobacco make that approach to THR less appealing). But in most jurisdictions, the starter e-cigarette products are not cheaper than smoking, but people are still making a rational choice to switch.
What is more interesting to people who look beyond rich countries, is the issue of offering affordable THR products to the rest of the world. Even if there were not cigarette taxes that made them price competitive, e-cigarettes would be affordable to Westerners. But their real resource cost is so much higher than cigarettes that they are prohibitively expensive for most of the world’s population. Since the article is exclusively focused on the USA, it is understandable that this is not mentioned, but it is still bothersome to make such general statements about tactics when they are only relevant to a small fraction of the world’s tobacco product users.
As for reducing the nicotine in cigarettes, this madness has been a pet fantasy of a few dozen people who now have a lot of influence. But unless the goal is to actualize Glantz’s fantasy world where e-cigarettes are used primarily as a supplement to smoking rather than a substitute, it is insane. Smokers who just want nicotine will switch products anyway. With less nicotine in cigarettes, some people who want to smoke will smoke more, while others will supplement (and that does not require e-cigarettes, by the way: enroll in a stop-smoking program and get free nicotine patches, slap one on, keep smoking). And, of course, the black market will benefit nicely from being able to offer not just a cheaper product than is available legally, but one that is higher quality — that is, assuming there is not an easy DIY recipe (“I have a bottle of inexpensive e-cigarette liquid in this hand and a cigarette without enough nicotine in my other hand. Hmm….”; possible added bonus: flavored cigarettes!).
“E-cigarettes are not a miracle cure,” said David B. Abrams, executive director of the Schroeder National Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the Legacy Foundation, an antismoking research group. “They need a little help to eclipse cigarettes, which are still the most satisfying and deadly product ever made.”
Despite being a card-carrying tobacco controller, Abrams has emerged as one of the most cogent voices on the topic. It is not entirely clear whether he is responsible for the unfortunate preceding paragraph, about trying to lower the quality of cigarettes. The quote seems to endorse it, so perhaps. But maybe he is just pointing out that these particular products are not for everyone. Somehow lost in the fanaticism on both sides is the simple fact that like the THR products that predated them, e-cigarettes appeal to some people but not everyone. As noted above, we are missing a lot of useful data, but we do know that most smokers who have tried e-cigarettes are still smokers. People who find them appealing — and those who breathlessly call them a miracle or the greatest health technology breakthrough since penicillin — seem to overlook this.
I will skip over the standard background paragraph on e-cigarettes and uncritical reporting of the breathless predictions about the market from the usual stock flogger (who seems to exemplify the unawareness cited in the previous paragraph). In the interests of length, I will also break here and resume this in my next post, picking up with:
Pessimists like Dr. Glantz say that while e-cigarettes might be good in theory, they are bad in practice. The vast majority of people who smoke them now also smoke conventional cigarettes, he said, and there is little evidence that much switching is happening. E-cigarettes may even prolong the habit, he said, by offering a dose of nicotine at times when getting one from a traditional cigarette is inconvenient or illegal.CLOSE USA TODAY Sports' Brant James looks ahead to some of the top story lines fans should keep an eye on at the Overton’s 400 in the Poconos this Sunday. USA TODAY Sports
Two crewmen from Martin Truex Jr.’s Cup Series team were suspended for an incident with Kyle Busch crew chief Adam Stevens. (Photo: Brian Fluharty, USA TODAY Sports)
Joe Gibbs Racing on Wednesday suspended two crewmen from Martin Truex Jr.’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series team who were involved in an incident with Kyle Busch crew chief Adam Stevens.
Rear tire changer Lee Cunningham and front tire changer Chris Taylor were each sanctioned for three races, JGR spokesman Chris Helein confirmed to USA TODAY Sports. The incident stemmed from a crash with 50 laps left in the Brickyard 400 on Sunday in which points leader Truex made contact with race-leader Busch on a restart, wrecking both. Busch had led 87 laps hunting a first victory of the season.
Kyle Busch's crew chief Adam Stevens was involved in a heated verbal exchange with the No. 78 team Sunday at @IMS. https://t.co/OgZNUEPr1M — FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) July 25, 2017
Fox Sports 1 replays showed Cunningham clapping and shouting “Tell Kyle ‘way to go’,” as Stevens walked past Truex’s Furniture Row Racing pit box afterward. Stevens approached and began an aggressive verbal exchange before Taylor entered and pushed the crew chief away, saying, “I don't care who you are. I don't give a [expletive] who you are. Get out of my box."
MORE NASCAR:
This situation was more complicated than the usual racing disagreement in that FRR is an affiliate of JGR and leases pit crews from its fellow Toyota team.
FRR owner Barney Visser said in a release: "Our No. 78 pit crew is hired, trained and managed by Joe Gibbs Racing. They are one of the best pit crews on the circuit and have kept us up front all season. … We admire the talent and dedication of our pit crew and support all of the decisions and actions taken by Joe Gibbs Racing."
Kip Wolfmeier and John Royer will replace the suspended crewmen.Cartilage Free Captain is again reviewing the Tottenham Hotspur first team players after the conclusion of the 2016-17 season. Up next: left back, Danny Rose.
Danny Rose
Appearances: 21 (18 EPL, 3 UCL)
Goals: 2
Assists: 3 (2 EPL, 1 UCL)
Cards: 8Y, 0R
What went right?
In last year’s season review, I wondered openly if Danny Rose was the best left back in the Premier League. Southampton fans responded by saying it was Ryan Bertrand. Arsenal fans insisted it was actually Nacho Monreal. And Liverpool fans, bless their hearts, hilariously suggested that it was James Milner.
This year it’s not even a question. When he’s healthy, Danny Rose is the best left back in the Premier League.
Rose started this season right as he had ended 2015/16; completely owning the left side of the pitch from one end-line to another. Wing-backs are nothing new in European football, but Rose’s ability to be so defensively sound, while still posing a significant attacking threat, is rare in the current game. Other teams have fullbacks who contribute to attacks, but the way Danny violently throws himself up-and-down the pitch is amazing to watch.
Sometimes it’s tough for a left back to get noticed, but his two-way consistency this year meant that he was an early shout to be Tottenham’s Player of the Season.
His statistical returns this season were very impressive, especially considering he only played in 21 games. He was Spurs’ MOTM in a crucial early season draw with Liverpool, scoring the equalizer in the 72nd minute. He popped up with an assist in our final CL game against CSKA Moscow, and then did so again a week later on our first goal against Hull City.
On December 18th, he made a key contribution against Burnley.
This goal is notable because it features Moussa Sissoko actually doing something good, but also because it features Danny Rose looking more like a skillful forward than a defender. Rose’s intelligent dummy in the build-up is vital to the move as a whole. Then he simply finds space on the break, stays onside, and hits the ball as hard as he can.
Rose has had a knack for scoring big goals in his time at Spurs. Add this one to his goals against Chelsea, Swansea, and “OHHHH WHAT A GOAL!! IT’S DANNY ROSE ON HIS PREMIER LEAGUE DEBUT, WITH A MEMORABLE STRIKE!”
What went wrong?
Part of the reason Danny Rose is so good is because of his willingness to work hard and sacrifice himself for the team. But this means his body takes a pounding.
Here’s a clip of the injury against Sunderland in January that would keep him out for the rest of the season.
Your browser does not support HTML5 video.
I love Danny’s effort on every play, but sometimes he’s better off preserving his body. He needed to make a tackle, but the way he kicked into this one was risky for fouling and injury purposes.
It’s nit-picky, but this play is the only reason why we didn’t get to see Rose for much of the second half of the season. A few less risky tackles/collisions per game could make a big difference to his durability.
Also he dives sometimes. But so does your favorite player!
What now?
It seems like ancient history, but Danny Rose was once a liability for Spurs. Many fans wanted him gone after the 2013-14 season. But the introductions of a competent manager and Ben Davies as positional competition have worked wonders for Rose’s development.
He’s now England’s clear first-choice left back. Again, the qualifier here is that he stays healthy. But if he does, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better left back in all of Europe.
Rating: 4 ChirpiesBill Simmons's departure from ESPN creates a peculiar story line this summer: Where will one of the biggest names in sports journalism end up? The Post's Matt Bonesteel has a few ideas. (Tom LeGro/The Washington Post)
Bill Simmons, who rose from AOL blogger to one of the more influential members of the sports media industry at ESPN, is leaving the network when his contract expires at the end of September.
BIll SImmons to leave ESPN, according to ESPN president John Skipper. "We weren't going to get to the terms," said Skipper. — Richard Sandomir (@RichSandomir) May 8, 2015
“I decided today that we are not going to renew Bill Simmons’ contract. We have been in negotiations and it was clear it was time to move on. ESPN’s relationship with Bill has been mutually beneficial — he has produced great content for us for many years and ESPN has provided him many new opportunities to spread his wings. We wish Bill continued success as he plans his next chapter. ESPN remains committed to Grantland and we have a strong team in place,” Skipper said in a statement.
[ESPN vs. Bill Simmons: An insider’s account of their sudden breakup]
In his just-posted story, the New York Times’ Richard Sandomir said contract-renewal talks had been underway between Simmons and ESPN “for months.” Skipper told Sandomir that the differences between the two were “about more than money.”
“We’ve had an excellent run with Bill, almost 15 years. It’s been good for us and good for him. It was a decision I had to make and he had to make to move forward,” Skipper told Sandomir.
Over at the Big Lead, Jason McIntyre writes that ESPN felt Simmons’s asking price — $6 million per year — was too much considering the revenue he was bringing in with Grantland and his other endeavors.
At ESPN, Simmons was the driving force behind a number of ventures, including the pop-culture site Grantland and the “30 for 30” documentary series.
It was not immediately clear where Simmons’s next destination would be. He has often clashed with ESPN management, conflict that came to head in October when the network suspended him for three weeks after he called NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a “liar” in a podcast.
“Skipper said that the incident had no bearing on his decision to end ESPN’s relationship with Simmons,” Sandomir writes.
Around the time that Simmons’s suspension ended, Sandomir wrote that “people close to Simmons say he is furious and has been talking a lot about whether ESPN is still the right place for him,” and that he had threatened to leave the network in the past. The network also had suspended Simmons from Twitter twice previously, in 2009 for bashing ESPN radio affiliate WEEI in Boston and in 2013 after calling a “First Take” segment between Richard Sherman and Skip Bayless “awful and embarrassing.”
Sports Business Daily’s John Ourand, meanwhile, wrote that “ESPN clearly wants to renew the deal.” Nevertheless, ESPN’s leaders have long had the reputation of viewing the network as bigger than any one of its stars.
"You get to the point there where ESPN is the star." Dan Patrick on being a personality at ESPN. — Joe Flint (@JBFlint) May 8, 2015
Simmons could follow the path taken by Patrick, who left the network in 2007 to essentially become a free agent (he now has a syndicated radio show and hosts the “Football Night in America” studio show for NBC). Simmons, who wrote a best-selling book about professional basketball and is an unabashed fan, also has stated that he would leave ESPN if the network ever lost the right to televise NBA games. Turner Sports is the only other company that has the NBA.
One former ESPN executive was blindsided by the news, according to Deadspin’s Dave McKenna. John Walsh, the former executive editor at ESPN until his retirement earlier this year, told McKenna that he hadn’t heard the news before ESPN’s announcement Friday morning.
“I talked to John Skipper last night at 9 and this didn’t certainly didn’t come up in our talk,” Walsh told McKenna.
“He’s done some things at ESPN that have offended people in some way, or perturbed people, or, I don’t know what the right word is, but things that made some people less than happy about what said he’s said about the company,” Walsh continued. “But overall, he’s been fantastic. I think he’s talented, he’s hard working, he’s independent, a great thinker about sports, a tremendous sports fan, keeps up with pop culture, and he developed one of the most literate sites on the Internet with Grantland. I love the guy.”Long-serving former LNP MP Vaughan Johnson on Sunday said even though he supported the LNP merger in 2008, he now believed it was a mistake. "This isn't just recently,” Mr Johnson said. “I've been talking to my former and current colleagues for a long while. This has got to change." This graph below shows the declining vote of both major parties - the ALP and the LNP - and, before the LNP merger, the separate Liberal and National parties.
Dr Williams said the figures showed the issue of again separating the Liberals and the Nationals needs to be debated. “It is inevitable that is comes back on the agenda,” he said. “There is nothing like defeat to raise old tensions and finger-pointing." Dr Williams said the merger of the Liberals and the National was always an uncomfortable marriage. “They come from completely different classes. One is an agrarian class, one is a city class. One is a party of merchants, one is a party of farmers,” he said.
“With the Nationals there were both working farmers and middle class. With the Liberals they were always middle class. On almost every level, they are different.” The LNP’s current leadership team includes Tim Nicholls, the city-based MP from the Liberal heartland of Clayfield and Deb Frecklington, Nanango’s MP near Kingaroy, former Nationals territory. Queensland Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls with deputy leader Deb Frecklington (left) after speaking at the LNP's election night function. Credit:AAP/Tracey Nearmy At the 2015 election, the LNP’s leadership team was Campbell Newman from Ashgrove and Callide MP Jeff Seeney, from Monto. In 2017, both Ms Frecklington and Mr Seeney’s successor Colin Boyce, held their seat for the LNP, however One Nation polled 27 per cent in both these electorates.
“And it was the same in 1998,” Dr Williams said. “This time around Labor has lost far fewer votes to One Nation, far fewer than I thought." Dr Williams said he was surprised Labor had a chance of winning Pumicestone and the seats around Townsville. “So Labor voters have not been as enamoured of One Nation as old National Party voters have been.” Dr Williams said a major party could forge an identity that appealed to both rural and city voters - similar to the federal Coalition - but he said it was hard.
“So many of the ‘south-east versus the bush’ policy positions are diametrically opposed,” he said. “Cross River Rail is a classic example. If there is only $6 million to spend on infrastructure for example, why are you going to spend it all in Brisbane?” “And the LNP are stuck between a rock and a hard place, trying to appeal to both the city and the bush.” Dr Williams said it was worth debating “dividing” the Liberals and the Nationals once again so they could speak to their “constituency”. “It could be the same cabinet, but they would be saying two different things to two different constituencies.
“That’s what Sir Joh did; that’s what Frank Nicklin did. That’s what you do in Queensland politics.” A number of high-profile conservative MPs were sought for comment, but were unavailable on Sunday. Campbell Newman chats with LNP colleague Vaughan Johnson at Emerald airport. Credit:Renee Melides On Sunday, Mr Johnson said there was anger in the Nationals camp about the failings of south-east Queensland Liberals at Saturday's state election, and about what the 2008 merger had done in heartland Nationals territory. "There's been a lot of bullshit for a long time about what's going on, not only in Queensland, but in the federal sphere and the way the regions have been treated by the hierarchy of the party," he said.Minions is a 2015 American 3D computer-animated comedy film,[7] serving as a spin-off prequel to the Despicable Me franchise. Produced by Illumination Entertainment for Universal Pictures, it was directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, written by Brian Lynch, and produced by Chris Meledandri and Janet Healy.[8] The film stars the voices of Coffin (as the Minions, including: Kevin, Stuart, and Bob), Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Allison Janney, Steve Coogan, and Jennifer Saunders, with the narration provided by Geoffrey Rush. It was first foreshadowed in the end credits of Despicable Me 2 (2013), where Kevin, Stuart, and Bob, three of the Minions and the film's main characters, are seen auditioning for the film.[9]
Minions had its premiere on June 11, 2015, in Leicester Square, London, and went into general release in the United States on July 10, 2015.[10] Critical response was mixed: some critics praised the comedic aspects of the film and the vocal performances of Bullock and Hamm,[11] while also saying they felt that the title characters were not able to carry the film on their own, and that the villains were flatly characterized. The film has grossed over $1.1 billion worldwide (outgrossing each of the Despicable Me films), making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2015, the seventeenth-highest-grossing film of all time, the third-highest-grossing animated film (behind Incredibles 2 and Frozen) and the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film.[12] A sequel is scheduled to be released on July 3, 2020.[13]
Plot [ edit ]
Minions are small, yellow creatures who have existed since the beginning of time, evolving from yellow single-celled organisms into beings which exist only to serve history's most despicable masters.[14] After rolling a Tyrannosaurus into a volcano, getting their caveman leader eaten by a cave bear, crushing a Pharaoh under the pyramids for incorrect construction, burning Count Dracula on his birthday party, and accidentally firing a cannon at Napoleon, the Minions are driven into isolation and start a new life in a massive cave. After many years, the Minions become depressed, restless, and unmotivated without a master to serve. To regain their dignity and sense of purpose, Kevin, one fearless Minion, decides to set out to find a new master and asks for help. Stuart, a musically inclined, one-eyed Minion, and Bob, a young and inexperienced but enthusiastic Minion, are recruited.
The trio journey to New York, when the year is 1968. After spending the day attempting to blend in, the Minions end up in a department store for the night, where they discover a hidden commercial broadcast for villains advertising Villain-Con; a convention for villains and supervillains in Orlando. The trio hitchhikes a ride with the Nelson family and impress them with their accidental villainy. At the convention, they see Scarlet Overkill, the first female supervillain, who unexpectedly hires them and takes them to her home in England. They phone the rest of the Minions to get them to join.
Scarlet explains the plan to steal the Imperial State Crown from the Queen of England and promises to reward the Minions if they steal it but kill them if they do not. Her husband, Herb, supplies them with inventions to aid in the heist, but they are nearly caught when they break into the Tower of London, which leads to a chase that ends with Bob accidentally crashing into the Sword in the Stone and pulling it free, removing the Queen from the throne and becoming King Bob. Enraged that somebody else accomplishes her dream of stealing the throne, Scarlet confronts the Minions, so Bob abdicates the throne in her favor. Undeterred because she feels betrayed, Scarlet imprisons the three in a dungeon to be tortured by Herb before her coronation, but they escape with the intention to apologize to Scarlet.
After making their way to Westminster Abbey, Stuart and Bob interrupt the coronation by inadvertently dropping a chandelier on Scarlet, who orders their execution. Dozens of villains chase the three of them during a thunderstorm; Stuart and Bob are caught, while Kevin finds his way into a pub. He sees Scarlet on a television, promising that she will kill Stuart and Bob if Kevin does not show up by dawn. With the villains still searching for him, Kevin sneaks into Scarlet's castle to steal weapons. But right before the villains catch him, Kevin accidentally triggers a machine Herb was building and grows until he is thirty stories tall, destroying the castle. He tramples through London, rescuing his friends and battling Scarlet just as the other Minions turn up in London. Scarlet tries to eradicate them, but Kevin swallows a massive missile she fires at them. Scarlet and Herb attempt to escape with her rocket-dress, but Kevin holds onto it. The missile detonates, causing it to explode. The other Minions stare at the explosion in sadness but Kevin turns out to have survived and shrunk back to his normal size.
Queen Elizabeth II gets her throne and crown back and rewards Bob with a tiny crown for his teddy bear, Stuart with an electric guitar and Kevin with a knighthood. Scarlet and Herb, who turn out to have also survived the explosion, steal the crown once more only to be frozen in place by a young Gru, who flees with the crown on a rocket-powered motorbike. The Minions stare in awe and run after him, having decided he is the boss they had been looking for.
Cast [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
Universal Studios and Illumination Entertainment first announced in July 2012, that the Minions from Despicable Me would get their own spin-off film, then planned for a 2014 release.[26] Brian Lynch, previously known for co-writing another Illumination film, Hop (2011), as well as DreamWorks Animation's Puss in Boots (2011), was asked to write the film's screenplay, due to his prior work writing for the theme park ride Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem.[27]
On August 21, 2012, it was announced that the film would be released on December 19, 2014.[28] In February 2013, Sandra Bullock joined the cast to voice Scarlet Overkill,[16] with Jon Hamm joining two months later as her husband Herb Overkill.[17] On September 20, 2013, the film's release date was pushed back from December 19, 2014, to July 10, 2015,[29] due to Universal's satisfaction with the successful July 2013 release of Despicable Me 2[30] and desire to exploit fully the merchandising potential of a summer film.[29]
Soundtrack [ edit ]
The official soundtrack for the film was released on July 10, 2015, by Back Lot Music. The soundtrack also features the film's original music, composed by Heitor Pereira.[31] The only minion not to receive a character music is Stuart, though individual soundtracks focusing on him appears on all songs.
All music composed by Heitor Pereira, except where noted.
Release [ edit ]
The film had its premiere on June 11, 2015, at Odeon Leicester Square in London, United Kingdom.[1] On June 17, 2015, it was released theatrically in Indonesia and Australia.[32] The next day, June 18, saw releases in Malaysia and Singapore,[32] and a screening at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, in France.[33] It was released theatrically in the United Kingdom on June 26, 2015. In the United States, the film premiered on June 27, 2015, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles,[34] and went into general release theatrically on July 10, 2015.[2] It was released in China on September 13, 2015.[35]
Marketing [ edit ]
Some Minion peluches at the Romics 2015, Italy
The first trailer for Minions was released by Illumination on November 3, 2014, through YouTube.[36] McDonald's released Minions-related Happy Meals on July 3, 2015.[37][38] A series of comics and graphic novels based on the film is being published by Titan Comics.[39] The series includes four comic book issues, two digest collections, two hardcover editions and a paperback collection.[39] Drawn by Didier Ah-koon and Renaud Collin, the series launched on June 17, 2015, with the release of the first issue of the Minions comic book and the first digest collection.[39][40] In April 2015, Pantone announced the creation of a new official Pantone color, 'Minion Yellow' (displayed at right), in partnership with Illumination Entertainment.[41]
Universal's parent company, Comcast, and its partners spent $593 million in advertisements and promotion across all media and platforms.[42] Universal spent a total of $26.1 million on TV advertisement for the film.[43] Universal described the promotional campaign as the "largest and most comprehensive" in its history.[44] However, due to the sheer size of the film's marketing campaign, a backlash towards the Minions started hitting social media with hate blogs towards the characters appearing on sites like Reddit and Tumblr.
Home media [ edit ]
Minions was released on Blu-ray, Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD and Digital HD on November 16, 2015, in Europe and on December 8, 2015, in North America. The film is accompanied by three short films titled Cro Minion, Competition, and Binky Nelson Unpacified. Extras include Making Of and Minion Jingle Bells.[45]
Upon its first week of release on home media in the U.S., the film topped the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert chart, which tracks overall disc sales, as well as the dedicated Blu-ray sales chart with 63% of unit sales coming from Blu-ray.[46]
Reception [ edit ]
Box office [ edit ]
Minions grossed $336 million in North America and $823.4 million in other territories for a worldwide total of over $1.159 billion.[47] Worldwide, it is the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2015,[48] the highest-grossing animated film of 2015, the third-highest-grossing animated film, the 13th-highest-grossing film, and the third-highest-grossing film released by Universal Pictures. It topped the worldwide box office for three consecutive weekends.[49]
By breaking $1 billion worldwide, Minions became the first non-Disney animated film, third animated film after Toy Story 3 and Frozen, and the 23rd film in cinematic history to do so.[50] Needing 49 days, it became the fastest animated film to reach $1 billion, surpassing Toy Story 3 (75 days). This made Universal Pictures the first studio ever to have three films earn more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office in a single year following Furious 7 and Jurassic World.[12] Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $502.34 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film, making it the most profitable animated film of 2015, the most profitable Universal Pictures film of all time and the second-most profitable picture of that year overall, behind only Star Wars: The Force Awakens.[51]
United States and Canada [ edit ]
In the United States and Canada, Minions received the widest release for Universal Pictures, the widest of 2015, and the second-widest for an animated film behind Shrek Forever After (4,386 theaters).[52] It opened simultaneously with the horror film The Gallows and the sci-fi drama Self/less, across 4,301 theaters, with box office pundits noting that the film did not face serious competition with them. Initial projections had the film open around $100–$121 million. However, Universal Pictures decided not to report box office figures for the movie.[4][5][53][54] It made $6.2 million from its Thursday night showings from 2,985 theaters, which began at 6 p.m., a record for an animated film (now held by Finding Dory),[55][56][57][58] and $46.2 million in its opening day (including Thursday previews), marking the biggest opening day for an animated film and the second-biggest single-day (behind the $47.1 million Saturday gross of Shrek the Third) at that time.[59] It holds the second-biggest opening-day and third-biggest single-day gross.[60] Through its opening weekend, it earned a total of $115.7 million, which fell in line with the projections and marked the second-highest-grossing animated-movie opening of all time, at the time, only behind Shrek the Third ($121.6 million). Albeit in terms of 3D, it is the highest. It also became the fourth film of 2015 to open more than $100 million (the third by Universal) and only one of four animated films ever to achieve this milestone, the other two being Toy |
it’s so cold…ㅠㅠ I don’t know how to turn on the heater so I’m shivering while being a cashierㅠㅠ
Sunny: Hurry, grab and hug the hot buns!!!!!
@130059174: If not me, look at this kid!!!! Unnieㅠㅠ (Photo of cat with eyes closed)
Sunny: Baby must be sleeping??
@aydtprp01: ㅇㅅㄱㄴㅇㅈ Acknowledged?! If I can’t have you, take me, I nominate me
Sunny: Lee Soonkyu-nim aja! Yes, I will have strength, aja!
@monstasx: Unnie… Respond……… To…….. Me…… Once………….. Please……………………. (Screencaps of sloth from Zootopia)
Sunny: Aigoo, I was imitating the captures and I’m out of breath
@ferrarii13: Isn’t Korea too cold?!~ If you’re too cold, it’s warmer to be inside of my heart. Come here, come here
Sunny: ………No response
@SUN_DB: Eating tangerine after brushing teeth vs. giving me a sweet mention
Sunny: Tangerine
@GG_Sunny0822: Noona, do you have any thoughts on being a radio DJ again next year? I miss SoonDㅠㅠㅠ So I listen to FM Date again time to time ㅠㅠ I like 10-12 pm time slot
Sunny: When memories remain as memories is when they’re most beautiful
@G1rlsGeneration: Heok, is this where angel fairy idol Sunny-nim is having a mention party?
Sunny: Description is burdensome, so running away.
@architaang: Today is very cold, so don’t catch a cold..
Sunny: Okay
@oz_n2: Be careful of cold, unnie. Thankfully I only have a sore throat (Missed school today, nice…) but be careful, unnie!!
Sunny: I will
@God_Sejeong28: When will you know me? :(
Sunny: Now?
@SOUL_ggty: Unnie, tell me that it’s okay to be short…I’m only 156 cm ㅠㅠㅠㅠ
Sunny: Ah…………. Don’t lose heart.
@hicorn_0805: Unnie, I’m 147… I’m not growing any more, am I ruined?
Sunny: You’re not ruined, cutie
@dandyuring: On my timeline, everyone got a reply except me… Life.. Hah..
Sunny: Doubt it……
@chris31351: Unnie, who won’t respond, too much, too much
Sunny: TT~~ TT~~ (Both made reference to lyrics of TWICE’s song “TT”)
@zayouro: Reading all of the responses, and what is this sudden feeling of being wealthy, keke. Unchanging Lee Soongkyu, I am unchangingly cheering you on! I shout this and run away ogeul togeul (meaning, cringing from cheesiness).
Sunny: I caught you! You ogeul togeul culprit!!!!
@SUN_DB: I’m angry, so I changed my nickname, hmph (Fan’s new nickname: “DB who is less than a tangerine eaten after brushing teeth”)
Sunny: Hey~~~~ Change your nickname back, oooh jjoo jjoo (words said to comfort a baby)….. Not gyul, but ggyul, keke. (Gyul is tangerine in Korean, ggyul is an aegyo way of saying it.)
@Withseo_85: Unnie, what does it feel like to turn 29 years old?!?!?!
Sunny: When you feel it, you’ll know too
@130059174: Make me friends with Sogeumie!! (Photo of a cat)
Sunny: Oh!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ginger colour!!!!!!!!!!!!
@220centimeters: When can I receive a reply…
Sunny: Right now
@MDXYZPTLK: You fell from the sky just now, are you okay? Are you an angel?
Sunny: No!!!!!!
@jongtae06: It hasn’t been long since the first digit of my age changed but I’m another year older so I’m sad. Although my western age is in the 20s… Want to take some of my age??
Sunny: Whoa whoa…. I have enough
@fannyny1: Unnie, I’m turning 23 now, is this early or mid? Haha
Sunny: You’re a chick
@pink_panda419: Unnie, Chorong or Sejeong? Kekeke
Sunny: Don’t do this……… It’s a question that’s too difficult
@Springday_07805: Unnie, I’m starting vacation tomorrow and I hope there are many days in my vacation where I can see you, I really miss you. Unnie, do you know my heart?
Sunny: I knew it just now
@gg2785: Unnie, take me. If said that, you could reject me so take this kid instead…? (Photo of Squirtle doll)
Sunny: Squirtle?
@wmh0624: So… When will I get a response… Even if you don’t, that’s okay… As long as you know that I love you
Sunny: Know my heart too
@spoan_999: Unnie, did you leave?… Did I miss my timing.. ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ My life is over
Sunny: No, it’s not over!!!!
@mpaudwls: I want to receive a response too, first mention on SNS… Lee Soonkyu…
Sunny: Congrats! Post!!
@taedeul_ss: All of the SONE on my timeline are receiving reply mentions and only I haven’t gotten one… At least say hello ㅠㅠㅠ
Sunny: No~~ I’m here~~~~
@sonengg: Knock knock~ Is this the right door to Lee Sunny’s heart??
Sunny: I’m not buying anything
@oz_n2: I love you, exactly like this feeling
Sunny: Heart flutter I’ve been waiting for, I want to eat it (This reference lyrics to “Into the New World”, with Sunny’s interesting addition at the end, haha)
@taenggu_39: Phewㅠ It has been almost 1.5 years since the last promotion, I really miss you.. Does unnie miss SONE too..?
Sunny: Of course
@Springday_07805: Kyu, be careful of colds ㅠㅠㅠ This winter is even colder so be careful and dress even more warmly!!
Sunny: Okay, I got it :D
@ferrarii13: If I’m lonely, it gets better just by looking at Sun’s face. Whew, let’s get married.
Sunny: Is it okay to marry just anyone like this??
See you soon~~
Wow~ Giving an award made me as nervous as receiving one!!!! Regardless, I met a lot of faces that I missed and I was so happy I could give an award with our family Jonghyunnie to Kangta oppa, huge sunbaenim who I respect, our unnie, Shinyoung unnie and Bae Chulsoo ajussi who I love!!!! Kkyahreuk!!
It was my first time in Sangam in a while!!!! Hehe!Lethal injection has become a prominent method of execution because other methods, including electrocution, could more easily be seen as conflicting with the Eighth Amendment's ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment, Ian Steadman writes in the New Statesman. However, critics of lethal injection argue that the procedure causes “extreme and unnecessary pain,” that the combination of drugs camouflage this pain and that the method itself is “cruel and unusual,” according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The most common method of execution since 1976, lethal injection typically has involved three specific drugs which when combined, induce death by paralyzing the muscles and stopping the heart. But the pipeline for the combination normally used in the procedure dried up across the country after European producers and ultimately the European Union restricted the sale of drugs for use in executions, according to the Post and Nature.
[ALSO: 16 Minors Found in Super Bowl Sex-Trafficking Sweep]Help is on the horizon for mobile developers dealing with the nuances of the numerous Android OS versions in circulation -- at least if they're developing Web-style apps.
An upcoming upgrade to the open source Apache Cordova device APIs will accommodate third-party WebViews to help developers get their apps up and running on the various Android versions, says Joe Bowser, a primary lead at Adobe Systems for Cordova on Android. This support comes in version 4.0 of Cordova, which is expected later this year, with Intel's Crosswalk slated as the first WebView supported.
A WebView is Google's name for a container that encapsulates Web apps in Android: They use HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS for the app functionality and UI, then place them in an Android container to access native OS functions. Cordova is a standardized set of JavaScript libraries for iOS, Android, and other mobile operating systems so that developers can develop consistent Web apps for multiple platforms.
Backing for Mozilla's GeckoView Android library project is planned at some point as well, along with support for other third-party views. PhoneGap, Adobe's commercial companion to Cordova, will support the third-party WebViews.
"[Third-party WebViews] are platform-independent so that we no longer have to deal with issues between Android versions," said Bowser, who spoke Thursday at OSCON in Portland, Ore. An API will be provided so that these WebViews work like plug-ins, and Bowser mentioned it will support the recent Android OSes, such as KitKat, Jelly Bean, and Gingerbread.
Cordova provides a platform for building native mobile apps using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Besides Android, Cordova has been available for Apple iOS, BlackBerry, and Microsoft Windows Phone. Crosswalk, meanwhile, was built for HTML5 applications and features the Blink rendering engine. It offers modern browser features, device integration, and an API for modern extensions, and it leverages Google's Chromium browser project.
This story, "Apache Cordova lets developers create Android apps from third-party WebViews," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.You Are Already Currently In A Media War — Start Fighting Back!
Caitlin Johnstone Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 10, 2017
People were asking me to write a story about the Comey thing when the news first broke, but in my opinion the whole affair is generally unexciting. The only thing that’s interesting to me about him getting fired is that there might be a bunch of FBI leaks in the future due to a shift in power dynamics; anyone who’s getting worked up about anything else is probably either a Russiagate nutter or one of the remaining true believers who are under the delusion that Trump hasn’t fully capitulated to the deep state. The #TrumpRussia dimwits are upset because this could mean a problem for the Trump-Russia election collusion investigation, which was never going to lead anywhere anyway because the allegations of collusion were only ever designed to pressure Trump into falling into line with the neocon establishment. The loyal Trumpsters are stoked because they think they’re going to get a firebrand rebel to replace Comey who’ll finally Lock Her Up, but that won’t happen either. The FBI is not your friend, my lovely deplorables, and its new director is not going to help you. That has never, ever been the FBI director’s job. The FBI director’s job is to advance the mission of the FBI: to maintain the status quo.
Comey will be replaced not with a Russian stooge nor with a clear-eyed anti-globalist, but with a nice, predictable Pompeo-like loyalist who won’t make any unexpected moves or cause headaches for the deep state and their media mouthpieces like Comey did. That’s about as exciting as this one’s going to get unless leaks start dropping later on.
What I do find interesting is instances like this:
Well would you look at that — CNN is suddenly aggressively questioning the collusion narrative! Ever since Trump tapped out and began playing along with every crucial deep state agenda, from Russia to Syria to WikiLeaks, the establishment propaganda machine has been slowly pacing us out of the collusion narrative as slyly and gradually as they paced us into it. After actively fanning the flames of a fact-free McCarthyist witch hunt for half a year, all of a sudden these corporate presstitutes have decided to act like real journalists and start demanding hard evidence. Here’s dead-eyed oligarchic bukkake slut Wolf Blitzer taking it to Dianne Feinstein a few days earlier:
As I predicted a couple of weeks ago, now that Trump has been pressured into being a good boy the deep state has been calling off its dogs. The xenophobic anti-Russia propaganda will continue because it is crucial to manufacturing public consent for escalations and proxy wars with that nation, but the accusation that Trump colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election will be gradually dialed down until the only people still talking about it are a few obsessive rank-and-file Democrats. The whole thing was a ruse. The Pissgate dossier, Rachel Maddow’s nonstop maniacal McCarthyist rants, the whole thing. Some doofy partisan hacks are trying to say that the Comey firing will lead to Trump’s impeachment because it is evidence of collusion. It will not, and it isn’t.
#TrumpRussia was never, ever about finding evidence of election collusion. If it was, the intelligence community’s sprawling surveillance networks would have found that evidence and leaked it to the Washington Post back in December. The whole thing was a brutal, sadistic act of psychological warfare upon the American public to ensure that the mass media’s oligarchic controllers get their way. Mainstream America was psychologically and emotionally pummelled into believing that the President of the United States was videotaped being urinated on by Russian prostitutes and is now a subversive agent of supervillain mastermind Vladimir Putin, who is bent on spreading fascism and oppression throughout the world. They still believe these things. America’s unelected power establishment deliberately inflicted that trauma upon innocent civilians just trying to live their lives who trust the news to tell them what’s happening.
Like it or not, you are at war. Your nation’s unelected power establishment has been waging an aggressive, destructive psywar upon you and your countrymen throughout your entire lifetime, and it’s getting more and more brazen in its psychological assaults as the public gets more and more access to new media. This is happening whether you fight back or not. Refusing to engage in the media war against the deep state propaganda machine is not refusing to get into a fight with a bully, it is allowing yourself to be punched in the face over and over again by a bully who is already currently fighting you.
My newest pet peeve is when people come up to me aggressively telling me what I need to write and how I need to write about it, which has been happening with increasing frequency lately. Look you myopic brats, I’m not publishing on any media outlet that you yourselves don’t have access to; I’ve got a Medium account, a Twitter account, a Facebook account, and now a sparsely-used YouTube account. I’m not some privileged MSNBC zillionaire who got this gig because I’m related to the CEO or deep throated the anchorman, I’m a rank-and-file civilian using the exact same rank-and-file weaponry that every single one of you has access to. You want something written about in a certain way? Great! Write it! Make it happen! I appreciate that you have ideas you want broadcast; that’s great, I fully support you. Do it.
In order to beat the legacy media we need to replace it, so the more psywar soldiers we’ve got creating content the better. Write articles, make videos, create memes, build a viral Twitter presence; use whatever gifts you’ve got to throw monkey wrenches in the gears of the propaganda machine. Even if no one ever sees what you made but your friends and family, you’re still making a difference, you’re still firing bullets, you’re still knocking pieces off the machine. Creating daily content is one of the best ways to rapidly grow a following, but creating very high-quality content every so often works too. Whatever you do, don’t hold back. Don’t wait for someone else to have your brain babies, have them right now! Have lots of them!
I’m a busy girl, but I’m going to try and do my best to use my modest platform to help elevate whatever quality content you create where I see it. Tag me in on your creations, your videos, your blogs, and feel free to share them in the comments section of my stuff, too. We now have the ability to kill the mass media machine by which the establishment keeps the world enslaved; let’s all help replace it with something beautiful, truthful, and unprecedented.
—
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please consider helping me out by sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even tossing me some money on Patreon so I can keep this gig up.We know the driverless cars are coming, with promise of making roads safer and eliminating traffic woes. But what will life be like for the last of us left on the road driving the old-fashioned way, Vin Diesel style?
It may breed chaos, at least according to Error-Prone, a free, online game which puts you behind the wheel of any one of 26 driverless cars that’s circling a tree.
Developed by the Swedish game accelerator Stugan and the Swedish Transport Administration, your only challenge is to handle the accelerator. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll break through the marching orders of the hive mind in about 0.3 seconds, smash into another car, and more or less repeat the process until a wide enough gap has been cleared to drive somewhat normally.
The game is a very simple proof of how on the roads, the human equation is so much more dangerous than the robotic one. And one could imagine how much worse the ripple effects of erratic driving patterns would be, were Error-Prone being simulated on a true, city grid. The consequences of a hard brake or acceleration wouldn’t just affect this one circle of cars; it would potentially spread through blocks, destroying any efficiency the robots brought us in the first place.
Even this basic simulation makes the case that we’ll need all sorts of designed interventions in place as more robots take the road. It won’t be enough for them just to avoid us because if we want to drive on traffic-less streets, the human cars will need some level of automation, too. Some have already suggested that a human car might kick into autonomous modes within certain city limits. Error-Prone’s repeated accidents make an excellent case as to why that might be necessary.
Of course, it’s not a total dystopian future for those who love to drive. Because as most of us at Co.Design noticed in our play-throughs, once you carve out your own pocket (by destroying enough autonomous cars), you can pretty much drive however you want, and the parade of perfect, safe drives will be forced to march in response to your will. For the last of the human drivers, the world might not be so oppressive. It could be a Fast & Furious playground, where crazy drivers can drive crazy with complete impunity. That is, until inevitable safety legislation pulls the wheels from all of our fleshy hands.
[via Wired]Police: TX murder suspect told his child to clean up blood after stabbing estranged wife
Lewis Bright, 47, was taken into custody at Bexar County Jail Monday night on a murder charge. Lewis Bright, 47, was taken into custody at Bexar County Jail Monday night on a murder charge. Image 1 of / 59 Caption Close Police: TX murder suspect told his child to clean up blood after stabbing estranged wife 1 / 59 Back to Gallery
The man accused of stabbing his estranged wife and leaving her at a San Antonio emergency clinic, where she died, was arrested Monday night.
Lewis Bright, 47, was taken into custody on a murder warrant almost three weeks after he dropped Erica Bright off at the First Choice Emergency Clinic on Nacogdoches Road Nov. 16.
RELATED: Reward offered for info on gunman in road rage shooting on U.S. 281 that left woman dead
She told the nursing staff before she died that Lewis Bright stabbed her with a knife at her home, according to the arrest affidavit.
Police obtained a search warrant and inside the apartment they found clumps of coagulated blood on the floor and a large kitchen knife in the sink with blood on its blade, the affidavit says.
Investigators interviewed the estranged couple's child, who reportedly saw Lewis Bright driving the family car with Erica Bright in the passenger seat with her head back, eyes closed and blood on her mouth.
The child said Lewis Bright said Erica Bright had cut herself and instructed the child to clean up all the blood in the apartment, according to the affidavit.
Bright's bond amount was not set as of Tuesday morning as he awaits a court date.
Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here. | [email protected] | Twitter: @FaresInSACheck our video above (click CC for subtitle) and updates below! :)
New press coverage: Interview on altcoinsnews.com
Transcript: What can we do to support scientists in solving todays problems such as finding a cure for cancer, discovery of new solar systems and the fight against climate change? We all know, it takes brilliant scientists and the best working environment available for this to become possible. [A major part of the work is this: In search for solutions, much time is spent on modelling and simulation before effects become real.] Infact, there are many research projects that rely on a vast amount of computation in order to make progress on complex problems. So, great effort is needed to run simulations on a large scale, to process and to verify all results. For instance, if you aim to find an antidote for ebola or HIV, you have to try billions of atomic combinations in order to test which molecules match the signature of a virus. Luckily, those work tasks can be automated. Still, a lot of computation is necessary that takes time and blocks ressources. Therefore, researchers came up with the idea to deliver work units to home computers that contribute part of the calculation and send back their results to the scientists. But, as of today, those scientific networks still rely on many volunteers that offer their free computing time for scientific advancement. In the next minutes, we are going to present PiGrid, an easy to use network that rewards BOINC contributions [by enabling plug-n-play configuration and Gridcoin usage].
BOINC has many different research projects, including galaxy mapping or counteragents for Malaria and Alzheimer's desease. for instance, Einstein@home is a project on BOINC looking for gravity waves and new stars. Three weeks ago, this project made headlines - they were able to find a rare pulsar that would not have been detected without BOINC participation (Knispel et al, 2015). Imagine what more could be achieved if the network became larger. PiGrid stipulates BOINC participation on ready to use, single board computers like the RaspberryPI (trademark, RaspberryPI Foundation). Getting started is supposed to be straight-forward: you would plug a Pie into your network and choose your favorite research projects via web browser. Thereby you could directly support global science and get rewarded.
PiGrid is a project with the aim to make the world a better place. We developed a device that works out of the box. Just plug in and BOINC. For your help in research calculations you get rewared with Gridcoin, a virtual currency. We will provide a nice interface for you. So you will be able to see actually how many work units your PiGrid computed successfully. Besides, it visualizes how much boinc credits PiGrids all over the world computed together. PiGrid will run on its own device and is therefore secure and seperate from your personal data. Simply plug in, connect to a WiFi, and then start your research journey. Included in your PiGrid you receive your own personal Gridcoin wallet. All these Gridcoins which were computed will belong to you. You can exchange Gridcoins for Dollar or other currencies and their price will rise with growing adoption. You could even print a Gridcoin voucher and hand it to someone or lock it away. [Later you scan this QR-code in order to retrieve those coins again.]
Five years ago, Bitcoin has introduced a technology that allows for secure transfer of money in an untrusted network like the internet. It is the electronic equivalent to cash, because you cannot reverse a transaction and refund the money you have spent. [Other than cash, Bitcoin transfers money around the globe in minutes. This year, Wall Street Journal noted, that the financial sector has not yet improved its efficiency like other industries had due to internet-driven cost-savings (Casey et al, 2015). So, virtual currencies are in pole position to revolutionize financial businesses.] Sadly, Forbes magazine estimated in 2013, that Bitcoin network used $15 millions worth of electricity every day (Worstall, 2013). This energy is used by Bitcoin miners to outpace each other in guessing numbers in a mathematical lottery. If Bitcoin grew to the size of creditcard networks today, the power consumption is likely to become even larger. The project PiGrid aims to be more energy efficient than Bitcoin. [Therefore, PiGrid supports Gridcoin, another innovative virtual currency that benefits science instead of wasting enery.]
Given all those problems and technologies, are we able to make good use of the growing computations? Team Gridcoin already has a BOINC world position in research contributions among the Top20. And here is the punch line, it took less than 500 members to get that high. Now, make up your mind for a second, this tiny community is only about to start and you can become a part of something incredible here. Help us advance the progress of medicine, biology, astrophysics and much more. Get on board and let us grow together!
____________________
Literature:
(Knispel et al, 2015): Knispel, B., et al. "Einstein@ Home Discovery of a PALFA Millisecond Pulsar in an Eccentric Binary Orbit." arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.03684 (2015).
(Worstall, 2013): Tim Worstall. "Fascinating Number: Bitcoin Mining Uses $15 Million's Worth Of Electricity Every Day." Forbes (2013). cf.: www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/03/fascinating-number-bitcoin-mining-uses-15-millions-worth-of-electricity-every-day
(Casey et al, 2015): Michael J. Casey, Paul Vigna. "Interest in Bitcoin Grows on Wall Street." Wall Street Journal (2015). cf.: blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/03/29/interest-in-bitcoin-grows-on-wall-street
Attribution, image courtesy: Gridcoin Illustration by http://cointelegraph.com/
Mention us on twitter: https://twitter.com/PiGrid_com
Help us spread our campaign link: http://pigrid.com/kickstarterAlbuquerque gym closes days after people pay for memberships Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved Video
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - An Albuquerque gym that just offered a deal on memberships has closed its doors without any warning. The door was locked with a notice ordering the gym owner to pack up and move.
Many members at Evolv Fitness of NM said they were just there last week and the notice on the door is the first they heard of the place closing.
"We just showed up and everything was closed," said Marc Ghattas, a member at Evolv Fitness.
Ghattas and dozens of others got there this week ready to work out, only to turn right back after seeing a sign reading, "Sorry, we're closed."
The doors are locked and the place is empty.
"No email. Nothing," Ghattas said. "I tried to reach out to one of the instructors, but I never got a response back."
Ghattas said his wife just paid $150 on Monday for three months at Evolv fitness near Paseo and I-25, and she's not the only one.
People are writing on Facebook with the same concerns, asking about a refund.
Online people can still pay $400 for an annual membership at Evolv even though all the classes are cancelled indefinitely.
"Tell me this is an April Fool's joke," someone posted on Facebook.
Gym-goers KRQE News 13 spoke with don't find this funny.
KRQE called owner Curt Chavez. He refused to talk on Wednesday.
The property owners said Chavez had been having trouble paying the rent for the last two years.
"We had them in court in October. We came up with a new rent strategy. That failed," said Kelly Mains. "They were in default again, over $60,000."
She said Chavez knew at the beginning of the month that he would be evicted.
The official notice was filed in court last week on Wed., March 25. The next day, Evolv advertised a deal to encourage people to buy annual memberships.
Customers are confused.
"There are lines to get into classes," Ghattas said. "There are waiting lists to get into classes, so there is a concern. What happens to the money that we paid for our memberships? If they didn't go to the rent. Where did they go?"
The gym's Facebook page said it was a brutal year because of Paseo construction and a battle with the landlord.
It said Evolv will be back within the next few weeks under new ownership at a nearby location and that all memberships will be honored and extended.If you had to pick one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life, which would it be? Tough question, I know. I would have to pick Mediterranean food. Fresh herbs, ripe produce, lemons, feta and olive oil? Yes, please. All the salads, please. Mediterranean cooking is a party with all of my favorite ingredients.
Given my predilection for Mediterranean food, I was excited to come across Maureen Abood’s new (and first!) cookbook, Rose Water and Orange Blossoms. It’s full of fresh and classic recipes from Maureen’s Lebanese-American kitchen. Think hummus, labneh, kibbeh and the more gorgeous tomato salads. It offers quite a few traditional desserts, breads, pickles and teas, too. The book wasn’t designed for vegetarians, so I only skimmed through the meaty entrée section, but that’s just me.
I love Maureen’s respect for classic Lebanese dishes and the fun little twists she incorporates in some of her recipes, which stay true to the original but make them a little more unique. Take classic tabbouleh salad, for example—she added diced avocado for some extra richness and served it in lettuce cups as an appetizer. Brilliant. This is the best tabbouleh I’ve ever had, let alone made!
Be forewarned that this salad requires some time at the cutting board, but it’s totally worth it. You can prep both the parsley and the bulgur in advance. Bulgur is not gluten free, so if you need a gluten-free alternative, I would substitute about 1/2 cup cooked quinoa (just a little will do, as this classic tabbouleh salad features far more parsley than grains). Feel free to serve it as a salad or as a fresh appetizer in little lettuce cups.
If you, like me, are now craving more Mediterranean food, check out my crispy baked falafel, Lebanese bean salad, green goddess hummus and Greek broccoli salad. I think those would all pair well together. More Mediterranean-inspired dishes here!
Products used to make this recipe
Wusthof 7-Inch Santoku Knife
Oxo Salad Spinner
▸ For more of my favorite cooking tools, shop my kitchen essentials!Product Description
Calculus Derivatives Color by Number
Even big kids love coloring. This fun, engaging activity includes sixteen review questions on derivatives before the chain rule. The power rule, product rule, quotient rules, trig functions, and e^x are included as are applications such as tangent lines, and velocity.
Students solve the problems, match the numerical answer to a color, and then color in the design, a Mandala. If desired, students can use their own color scheme.
This can be used as a review, individually or with small groups. Great for a Sub Folder, too. Full solutions included.
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©2017 Joan Kessler (distancemath.com™). Please note - this resource is for use by one teacher only. Colleagues must purchase additional licenses or you may purchase licenses for them at a discount. Note: You may not upload this resource to the Internet in any form.The Daily Report
Tales of MU will probably resume on Friday, and then pick back up with its regular schedule. I can’t make promises; there is an ongoing external situation here that is going to take up an unpredictable amount of my time and energy. I would love to keep everyone posted but it’s really hard to gauge these things as they’re ongoing.
I have joined the site Curious Cat, a social sub-medium that I’ve seen a few people on Twitter using. It’s like a way of bringing a Tumblr-style “ask box” to Twitter, and I joined because (as I said at the time) I apparently don’t have enough regrets in my life? I don’t know. I actually joined it while waiting in the hospital looking for distraction, and I think that’s probably it’s main virtue. My profile there is up at http://curiouscat.me/alexandraerin.
I’d like to keep it light. Please do not use it for work-related inquiries. You can ask about my works (i.e., story or character questions). But anything about work, please direct to my official contact email address of [email protected].
If it gets weird, if it gets boundary-crossing, if it gets creepy, I might just shut it down.
Another thing I did while waiting to go to the hospital and then waiting there is write the horror story on Twitter that I referenced in my post earlier. I think this is something I’m going to do more of: write fiction directly on Twitter, for the Twitter market. I did actually start a writing account at one point when I realized how much Twitter’s format appeals to my writer-brain, but it didn’t go very far, I think because what I tried to do is use Twitter’s constraints to write a traditional novel. The Trump horror story is written within the constraints of Twitter, and it uses them. It’s closer to an oral storytelling tradition than a written one, which is not surprising since my general approach to Twitter is oratorical in style. I’m going to be experimenting more with that.
Financial Status
Well, I just launched a fundraiser for September with the specific goal of $1,000, and the more general goal of recouping some losses of the past couple months and repairing the lost padding. Hoping that takes off.
The State of the Me
Sleep schedule = way off. Nutritional and supplemental regimen = slightly off. The lingering remnants of my foot injuries (chafing and blisters) have been reasserting themselves since I’ve been putting shoes on and going out every day, something which has also been taking a fatigue toll given the lingering summer heat. I have been in a state of fog and befuddlement so far this morning.
Plans For Today
I’m going to be writing some of what I’m currently calling Hell To Pay: The Strange Facts of the Sad Case of Donald J. Trump, being the longer form version of my Twitter story. I don’t expect to finish that day, though I do expect to finish it soon. I am also planning on expanding another of my hospital-waiting-related Twitter threads into a longer form, an essay or prose poem of sorts called “We Made A Song Our King”.
Like this: Like Loading...Yesterday in a packed auditorium at the Texas Department of State Health Services, legislators, doctors and other supporters of Planned Parenthood gathered to speak out--sometimes through tears--against proposed rules that would bar Planned Parenthood from participating in the state's Women's Health Program.
Photo from the Texas Department of State Health Services hearing via @PPGreaterTX
Read the rest of Andrea’s coverage of women’s health issues in Texas here and the rest of our coverage on the Texas Women’s Health Program here.
Yesterday, in a packed auditorium at the Texas Department of State Health Services, legislators and supporters of Planned Parenthood in Texas gathered to speak out against proposed rules that would bar Planned Parenthood from participating in the state’s Women’s Health Program, through which PP-Texas has provided the lion’s share of family planning services to low-income women. The new rules are fueled by right-wing lawmakers who want to forgo the available 90 percent of federal funding for the program in order to keep Planned Parenthood–and any other so-called “abortion affiliate”–from providing care via the W |
never legally incorporated into the Soviet Union. Besides, according to international law, no election conducted under occupation by foreign troops can be legally valid.
Latvia's minister in Washington, Dr. Alfred Bilmanis, who had been invested with emergency powers by the legitimate government, and the Latvian minister in London, Karlis Zarins, accordingly declared the elections null and void. Their emergency powers had been issued by the government of Latvia as late as May 18, 1940, with Dr. Bilmanis appointed as Zarins' substitute, in case of the death of the Latvian minister in London. The holder of the emergency powers of state was authorized to appoint delegates to international conferences and to appoint and transfer the staff of the Latvian legations and consulates. In fact Zarins was assigned the functions of the president and the government of Latvia. The Latvian puppet government declared both men traitors and deprived them of Latvian citizenship.
The sovietization of Latvia proceeded rapidly. By the end of September, 1940, all "large" private fortunes, private industry, commerce, banks, transportation, land and its natural resources, and rental property had been nationalized without compensation to the owners. On the contrary, they were slandered and libeled as exploiters and enemies of the toiling masses. The funds in the possession of the nationalized and disorganized banks were converted to worthless paper, and equally worthless Soviet paper rubles flooded the country. High prices in rubles were then fixed for all wares. Red Army soldiers and Soviet functionaries promptly cleared out the stores.
During the first major stage of the mass deportation program at least 35,828 persons were deported or murdered. American and other foreign sources estimate the number of persons from all walks of life deported or murdered at 60,000. After the outbreak of the German-Russian war, Latvian soldiers, included against the principles of international law in the Red Army, were withdrawn to Russia or murdered. Many civilians were carried off by the retreating Soviet authorities as well. Marked especially for extermination were Latvian government officials, members of the intelligentsia, and retired army officers. It should be noted that intellectuals suffered most from the persecution, because during the Latvian War of Liberation almost the entire student body of the University of Latvia volunteered to fight against the Red Army. Therefore the Soviets called the University of Latvia a citadel of arch-reactionaries.
Neither among the intellectuals nor the capitalists, however, did the Soviets find their most outspoken enemies. These were the farmers, because in Latvia 62 per cent of the inhabitants were farmers and their families. In fact they were their own bosses. From the Soviet point of view the backbone of the stable middle classes had to be broken by any and all means. The outbreak of the German-Russian War prevented the Soviet regime from forcing the collectivization of agriculture.[7]
The Soviet terror was met by an uprising of officers and enlisted men from the former Latvian Home Guard, a well-trained reserve army, and other Latvian nationalists. They seized control of most of Latvia after the outbreak of the German-Russian War. The German army conquered only the major cities – Riga, Liepaja (Libau), Ventspils (Windau), Jelgava (Mitau) and Daugavpils (Dünaburg). During the first days of July 1941, all of Latvia was occupied by the German army. The war swept across Latvia like a hurricane.
Despite the German liberation, Latvians were soon disappointed as it became obvious that Hitler's government had no intention of restoring Latvia's independence.
Beginning in the middle of July 1944, the German troops gradually retreated from Latvia after heavy fighting. The superiority of the Red Army was in no small part due to its support with weapons and all kinds of materiel by the U.S. and the British Empire. On May 8, 1945, the German troops laid down their arms in accordance with the terms of Germangs unconditional surrender on both the Western and Eastern fronts.
Realizing that with Latvia's third occupation by the Red Army at hand, the Soviet terror was again imminent, many Latvian activists saw exile as their only hope for the future. Experience had taught them that nothing is worse than Communism. According to information provided by the Latvian Red Cross, by 1947 there were 134,000 Latvian political refugees, the overwhelming majority of them in West Germany. This must be regarded as a minimum estimate.
Defeat and Reoccupation
Those Latvians who remained in Latvia had no illusions as to their fate. Within a few days the Red Army was followed by the NKVD. The Red secret police immediately interrogated the population by means of mandatory questionnaires. The Soviets declared that all who had not retreated with Soviet forces before the advance of the German Army were enemies of the Soviet Union and deserved exemplary punishment. The questions each Latvian was forced to answer included the following: "Why did you not retreat with the Soviet Army in 1941?" "What employment did you pursue during the German occupation?" "What anti-German sabotage did you carry out?" "Name three collaborators of the Germans."
Men were issued red tickets for military service, green for compulsory labor and white for deportation. People's courts, meeting in the absence of the accused, condemned Latvian patriots to long prison terms or deportation to the Gulag, while their families were picked up, separated at the entrainment points and dragged off to unknown parts of the Soviet Union. Beginning in 1948 collectivization váas imposed on most Latvian farms.
The University of Latvia was thoroughly russified and sovietized. An even more serious result of the Red Army's third occupation was the introduction of large numbers of ethnic Russians and natives of the U.S.S.R's Asiatic republics into the country to replace the deported Latvians.[8]
Latvian Guerrilla Resistance
These Soviet measures caused a very bloody large-scale guerrilla war, not only in Latvia but in Estonia and Lithuania as well, where similar policies were imposed. From 1944 to 1952, and on a smaller scale even up to 1956, fierce fighting still raged in the countryside. Only after the failure of the Hungarian revolt in 1956 did the Baltic peoples realize that the Western democracies were unable and unwilling to support them. The guerrilla war was waged on the largest scale in Lithuania. According to Lithuanian sources, the Lithuanians lost 30,000 men; Soviet losses are put at no fewer than 80,000 soldiers and NKVD men. These estimates have been reinforced by testimony obtained from Soviet officials, who had previously participated in suppressing the Lithuanian freedom fighters, after they themselves went into exile.[9]
Soviet authorities spoke very frankly about the extent of the guerrilla war. They estimated that there were around 9,000 Latvian national partisans, whom they resentfully referred to as "fascist bandits." The Communist regime branded the Latvians a counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet people. It is indeed a great compliment to be called such names by the Soviets. This is, furthermore, something new, because it has consistently been standard Soviet practice to feign friendship with all peoples and to differentiate between "exploiters," the "enemies of the people," and the population as a whole.
It should be noted that Latvian sources make roughly the same estimation of the number of the Latvian national partisans. On the average, the partisans survived the fighting only for two or three years, and then were replaced by other men with military training. Up until 1949 the national partisans controlled many parts of Latvia, especially the peninsula of Courland. Their successes can be explained by the fact that about 43 per cent of Latvia is covered by forests, lakes and swamps. This terrain was exploited by seasoned fighters from the two divisions of the Latvian Legion mobilized by the Germans. At the time of the German capitulation they had taken to the forests. These Latvian troops took their weapons with them, obtaining additional arms and ammunition from the German army depots in the fortress of Courland, the last-ditch redoubt of Hitler's Army Group North. Later on they used captured Russian weapons. Above all, they enjoyed the support of the overwhelming majority of Latvians.
After the collectivization of agriculture, the Soviet authorities carried out their largest deportation, involving mainly the farm population, in 1949. This measure considerably deprived the national partisans of food supplies, civilian support, and a source of new recruits. Nevertheless, so resourceful were the partisans that they captured food and money from the collective farms and state-owned stores.
The collectivization and mass deportations, however, spelled the beginning of the end of the large-scale guerrilla war. Gradually the partisans were demobilized. They were provided with forged or purchased identification documents in the black markets to enable them to filter back into the civilian population.
The question of the fate of the former partisans is still open. Those who criticize the guerrilla war assert that it was a lost cause from the very beginning. In fact, however, the national partisans, by executing many Soviet functionaries, made many of the others fear for their lives. In many cases Soviet officials intentionally overlooked the surviving partisans, especially when they moved far away from their former homes or to the metropolis of Riga, with its 700,000 inhabitants. Communists fear retaliation; this is the only argument that they understand. Nor should the fact be overlooked that the national partisans created a legend for the future. The only peoples who deserve independent states are those willing to fight for them!
The writer of this paper has the sad duty of pointing out that the noble aspiration and hope of President Ulmanis – to save the Latvian people from extermination by accepting the ultimatum of the Soviet Union without offering military resistance – proved mistaken. The mass deportations carried out by the government of the Soviet Union, the mobilization of over 150,000 Latvians by the Germans, and the very bloody guerrilla war caused such losses to the population that they cannot be correctly estimated at this time. These painful facts cannot diminish President Ulmanis' outstanding achievements and his glorious rule.
Donald Day, correspondent of the Chicago Tribune in Eastern Europe for 22 years, in his book Onward Christian Soldiers devotes more pages to Ulmanis than to any other statesman, including Poland's Marshal Pilsudski. According to Day, Ulmanis believed that the Latvians' best hope for a future national existence was to raise their living standard and culture to such a high level that the people, no matter what the immediate future might bring, would always treasure these memories in their hearts. In Days opinion Ulmanis was the greatest man Latvia has ever produced.[10]
Karlis Ulmanis was the great president of a small country. After the Hitler-Stalin pact and the outbreak of World War II, only God could save Latvia.
One misunderstanding should be corrected. There is still a widespread belief in the Western democracies that Communism is a lesser evil than National Socialism. The former Marxist Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, with great reluctance, recognized that National Socialism was a lesser evil than Communism. Indeed, it should be emphasized that even William L. Shirer, whose strong anti-German bias concerning all periods of German history is well known, when writing about Latvia and the other Baltic States in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, stated that Stalin, in dealing with small countries, could be as crude and as ruthless as Hitler, and even more cynical.[11]
Latvian Resistance, Soviet Oppression
After the end of the guerrilla war, the Latvians resorted to passive resistance. In spite of the well-known Latvian individualism, which has caused keen foreign observers to say that Latvians are strong as individuals and weak in cooperation, Soviet rule has fostered a strong Latvian national unity. Now, in Soviet-occupied Latvia, Latvians help their fellow Latvians in any way they can. There are no longer any parties in Latvia: all Latvians constitute one community of suffering.
In general Latvians do their best to maintain their language, culture and national traditions. Above alL they have done and continue to do everything possible to achieve the best education for their children. In this regard they have succeeded, because the Latvians. together with the Estonians, are the best educated among the captive peoples and by far more educated than the Russians.
In spite of all the Latvians' efforts to survive as a people, the outlook grows more bleak with each passing year. To be sure, after the major deportation of 1949, no new mass deportations have occurred. On the contrary, an amnesty for certain categories of political prisoners was proclaimed after Stalin's death in 1953. Several thousand Latvians returned to their native land, most of them as invalids, broken in body and spirit But deportations from Latvia still continue, as young people are inveigled into volunteering for the cultivation of virgin lands or for mining in Central Asia and Siberia.
The Russian eight years' war in Afghanistan provided the government of the Soviet Union with a new opportunity to deport Latvian youth. Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians and other subject peoples are sent as soldiers to Afghanistan to eliminate the Afghans and at the same time to spare, as much as possible, the pro-Soviet Russians. Losses among Latvian soldiers are very high because the Soviet authorities deliberately engage them in the riskiest military operations.
The Latvian organizations in exile have to some extent succeeded in reaching agreements with the fighting Afghans to spare Latvian prisoners of war. But these measures can only be of a limited scope, because the various Afghan tribes lack both a united military command and common organization abroad which could function as a government-in-exile.
The Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, caused by the gross negligence of the Soviet authorities, presented the Soviets with yet another pretext to deport Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and other subject peoples. Those drafted to clean up the Chernobyl mess were told that they would have to work for only three months at the site. Yet those who survived the nuclear clean-up, under the most miserable conditions, were not allowed to return to their homes. The cheapest thing in the Soviet Union is human life.
The Soviet authorities in occupied Latvia have engaged in the systematic destruction of graves, entire cemeteries, churches and many other historical monuments. For instance, the graves of President Karlis Ulmanis's family were destroyed by the Russian barbarians. The monument and memorial museum of the first Latvian commander-in-chief, Oskars Kalpaks, were likewise destroyed by the Soviets. Destruction of church property has been extensive. The historic Lutheran Dome of Riga – the cathedral of the archbishop – has been turned into a concert hall, the historic St. Peter's Church into a museum and the Greek Catholic Cathedral into a planetarium Numerous other churches have been transformed into warehouses cinemas, clubs, or meeting halls, or have been burned down. Many Latvians known for their outspoken anti-Communism have been killed in "accidents," not only in Soviet-ruled Latvia, but also in the United States, Canada and West Germany. Latvians are not safe from Russian persecution, even in exile.
The Fight Goes on Abroad
The Baltic exiles have not, however, allowed themselves to be intimidated. The diplomatic and consular representatives of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, in conjunction with the worldwide organizations of the Baltic peoples, function as governments in exile. A new generation of Baltic young people, provided by their parents with educations in the finest universities of America, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe, has moved into the leadership of the exile organizations. More important, they have succeeded in bringing their fight for justice and the liberation of their fatherlands into international forums.
As a result of their endless activity and effort, on January 13, 1983 the Parliament of Europe in Strasbourg passed a resolution that strongly condemned the occupation of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union. The resolution calls the Soviet Union the last colonial empire and demands that the issue of the Baltic States be brought before the United Nations. The European resolution is firmly based on numerous treaties, including those concluded and subsequently violated by the Soviet Union. The language of the resolution stresses that the three Baltic peoples waged a large-scale guerrilla war against the Russian troops for eight years (1944-1952) and that about 665,000 Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians have been deported by the Soviet authorities to forced labor camps since 1940.
Encouraged by this success, on July 25 and 26, 1985 the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian exile organizations held an international tribunal against the government of the Soviet Union, charging it with genocide and other crimes against humanity in the three Baltic states. A panel of internationally known authorities in the field of human rights issued its verdict, the Copenhagen Manifesto, which found the Soviet government guilty as charged.[12]
Meanwhile a Baltic ship, symbolizing the ideal of peace based upon freedom, sailed along the coasts of Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Impressive demonstrations against the Soviet Union took place in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki. West European TV networks and major newspapers gave these events good coverage. It is regrettable that only The Wall Street Journal, among major American papers, gave these stories any notice at all.
Useful Idiots Against Baltic Freedom: The OSI
As might have been expected, the Soviet Union answered these initiatives by organizing so-called war crimes trials. Unfortunately, the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) entered into collaboration with the Soviet secret police. Karl Linnas, an Estonian-born resident of Long Island who was stripped of his citizenship by a federal court for participating in alleged war crimes committed by Hider during World War II, was implicated by "evidence" compiled by the Soviet KGB. Their evidence was forged, fabricated and fraudulent As a result, Linnas was deported by the U.S. government to illegally occupied Estonia, where he had been already condemned to death by Soviet courts. On his arrival the Soviet prosecutor informed him that the Soviet Union had no case against him due to statutory limitation. Soon afterward, the Soviets announced his death.
The Linnas case was an outrageous violation of the U.S. Constitution. Linnas and other U.S. citizens of Eastern European origin in the so-called war criminal cases have been treated as third-class citizens, deprived of due process, a trial by jury, and protection from the application of ex post facto laws. The statutory basis for these outrages is a special law passed by Congress during the Carter administration. The writer of this paper believes that this is a bill of attainder, and thus forbidden by the U.S. Constitution. Congress has likewise grossly violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers of the three branches of government.
To do justice to President Reagan, it should be noted that he fired Allan A. Ryan, Jr., who was not covered by the civil service laws. Ryan's answer to the President was a book, Quiet Neighbors: Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals in America (New York Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1984). In this book Ryan shows great zeal to justify the activities of the nefarious OSI. Characterizing Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians in general as collaborators with the Germans, he engages in character assassination of the three peoples as a whole. He seems irritated that the U.S. government does not recognize the Soviet annexation of the three Baltic countries. Since colonialism has come to an end in Africa and Asia, Ryan and his Soviet accomplices are no longer in the mainstream of twentieth-century ideas. His book amply demonstrates that he and the OSI owe their allegiance to the Soviet Union, as evidenced by their instigation of ethnic and sectarian hatred and their attempts to intimidate outspoken anti-Communists.
Even in this regard, they have miserably failed. They are blind to the fact that young Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians are well educated, resourceful, and courageous. Baltic young people will only increase their struggle against the Soviet Union and its leftist fifth column in the U.S. The Baltic youth of today cannot and will not allow itself to be legally or morally burdened with war crimes committed before their births. They do not hate Ryan, they despise him. Only a misfit like Ryan fails to see this. Lenin called such persons "useful idiots." The pro-Soviet elements in the U.S., including the OSI, suffered a great setback in September 1986, when the superpowers met in a conference at Jurmala, Latvia. There, on the eighteenth of September, White House adviser and ambassador Jack Matlock told the conference, in the Latvian language, that the U.S. has never recognized and will not recognize the legitimacy of the forcible incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the Soviet Union.
This declaration was twice carried on local television and has spread throughout Riga the capital of Latvia. Mattock immediately became a national hero in Latvia, and Latvians consider President Reagan the best friend of Latvia. This was one declaration that the American news media could not suppress.
Prospects for an Independent Latvia
During the decade beginning in 1965, both houses of Congress passed sense-of-Congress resolutions condemning the genocidal measures of the government of the Soviet Union in the Baltic States, and asking for the restoration of these nations' independence. Congress has also passed annual resolutions declaring June 14 to be Baltic States' Day and condemning the mass deportations carried out by the Soviets in the Baltic nations.. President Reagan has each year signed strong Captive Nations proclamations and the Baltic States' Day resolutions calling the Soviet Union an aggressor and demanding the restoration of independence of Latvian Lithuania, and Estonia. Again, it is unfortunate that those resolutions and proclamations are almost never mentioned by our major news media.
Today there is a strong underground movement in the Baltic States. The underground organizations have frequently sent memoranda to the governments of the Western democracies asking for the restoration of the rights of self-determination and independence for the Baltic peoples. These communiques are also ignored by our news media.
It should be noted that a falsified history taught in Western academic institutions stresses alleged German imperialism, ignoring the fact that after 1254 (the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty), Germany became and remained largely a geographic concept up to the unification of Germany by Otto von Bismarck in 1870. Students in most American schools and universities are studiously deprived of the knowledge that for several centuries the Russians have engaged in large-scale colonial plundering and exploitation of quite advanced non-Russian and non-Slavic peoples, and that todays Soviet Russia is a prison of peoples.
It is a lack of intellectual integrity that prevents academics from informing American students that the Russians have consistent plans to achieve global domination by any and all means. A good example of this kind of misinformation is provided by the whole galaxy of U.S. and West European TV networks and newspapers, assisted by spurious pollsters, which have pictured Gorbachev as a leader with constructive ideas of how to achieve peace, contrary to the negative attitude of President Reagan. They deliberately ignore the fact that during the short totalitarian dictatorship of Gorbachev the mass murders in Afghanistan, including those of women and children, have reached a climax, resulting in the deaths or exile of a third of the population.. Thus, behind his facade of moderation, Gorbachev has demonstrated his true barbarian mentality.
It should be stated that only pro-Soviet Western capitalists, such as the Rockefellers, can postpone the disintegration of the Soviet empire due to its highly unstable and precarious economy, the explosive, growing nationalism of the captive peoples, and the conflicting interests of Soviet Russia and Red China.
Latvian youth, in Latvia and in exile, is using the slogan of President Ulmanis: "Latvia for Latvians and Latvians for Latvia." Before his deportation to Russia, Ulmanis declared to his closest coworkers: "We can be oppressed, we can be partly exterminated, but, as long as a single Latvian is alive, the struggle will continue for the right to live in a free and independent Latvia."
The author of this study believes that he will see an independent Latvia once more, a Latvia which is now in the process of formation, a new Latvia, Latvia restored.
NotesSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is still planning to introduce financial regulatory reform legislation on Monday, despite threats from Republican leadership that the bill would be filibustered on the floor.
Aides to the Nevada Democrat tell the Huffington Post that plans remain in place for a 5:00 p.m. cloture vote on the bill crafted by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) -- setting up, what promises to be, a major showdown between the two parties.
"Based on what we saw on the shows this morning, it sure looks like Republican senators are prepared to march in lock step over a political cliff," said Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman, before confirming the vote was still on.
Manley's comments come hours after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Fox News Sunday that he did not expect the chamber to vote on Monday. The bill, the Kentucky Republican said, still fell short in several areas. And 41 Republicans were committed to filibuster the legislation without changes.
"It's my expectation that we will not go forward with this partisan bill tomorrow. That will stimulate the kind of continued discussion we have to get it right," McConnell said.
"We don't have a bipartisan compromise yet," he added. "But I think there is a good chance we are going to get it."
The dual threats from McConnell and Reid add another element of tension to an already tense regulatory reform debate. Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday, Dodd and ranking Banking Committee member Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Al.) stressed that negotiations were progressing but not yet complete.
Dodd would suggest that the talks were close enough that they could conclude as early as tomorrow. But the end-date, even he acknowledged, was likely several days off.
"Will we get a bill tomorrow?" Shelby added. "I doubt it."
That Reid is planning to go forward even as Dodd seems open to having more time, suggests that his office believes a firm deadline -- and perhaps that alone -- will be the one thing to bring Republicans on board. Certainly, the Nevada Democrat recognizes that the politics may be on his side as well.Hi! I know you are probably asking what the heck is he doing? I will be honest here, this is not a tutorial but a simple quick fix to a problem I faced last night. I was invited by an author to take part in the so called blog hopping. One of the requirements was to find at least five other authors with blogs to join the adventure. So, I asked myself, how could I make this as much fun as possible and learn something at the same time?
So today, I packed my gear and headed to a nearby coffee shop to create something. In a few lines later (I had to wait for one hour after I exceeded 150 rate limit on Twitter), I had put together a simple script that helped me reduce the pain of searching for potential bloggers(who are authors).
Assumptions:
I assumed that Twitter users who mentioned the word ‘authors’ were likely to be authors themselves or review books through their blogs. Secondly, I made a partial assumption that most twitter users who talk about authors had their ‘website’ part of their profiles filled. So, I could easily get their blog addresses. If they didn’t have anything listed, I just moved on.
Now let us take a closer look at the code: part 1
[python]
#Let us get our first part out of the way here.
#I am using python, so let us import the needed libraries
import json
import urllib2
url = ‘http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=authors’ #link
user_ids = [] #list to store user_ids
#define our first of the two functions to be used
def get_user_ids():
data = urllib2.urlopen(url) #make the call to twitter
js = json.load(data) #parse using json.load() method
i = 0
while i < len(js[‘results’]): #you need to know what is returned
user_ids.append(js[‘results’][i][‘from_user_id_str’].encode(‘utf-8’))
i += 1
return user_ids
#Explanation:
#after getting data from twitter, I iterate through the ‘results’
#and grab the from_user_id_str – whoever mentioned the word ‘authors’
#I find this more convenient than using a screen name.
#I then add that value to the user_ids list for later use.
#finally, I return the list
print ‘Move to the next level now!’
[/python]
In the second part of this post, I want us to look at the second function definition that will complete our script. Yeah, it is really short!
[python]
#Within the same file, we will continue our script!
def get_blogs():
i = 0
user_urls = [] #define a list to store the urls
user_ids = get_user_ids() #get the user_ids and store for use
while i < len(user_ids):
url = ‘http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/’+
user_ids[i] + ‘.json’
data = urllib2.urlopen(url) #make the call
js = json.load(data)
if js[0][‘user’][‘url’] is not None:
user_urls.append(js[0][‘user’][‘url’])
i += 1
return user_urls
[/python]
Can you believe we have finished the script? Well, we have reached the end. I know you are saying: show me! And to that question, an answer is worth it – in a snapshot! Let us run this code by doing the following:
[python]
#Call the function and store the links in a list.
user_links = get_blogs()
for link in user_links:
print link
#That is all we need to get everything from the list!!
[/python]
And ….. here is what I got when I executed that code!
As you can see, you get easy to read urls that you can open using your browser of choice! One thing you might notice is that not all of the links are either wordpress or blogspot. You can go ahead and improve the script to grab only those links that have either wordpress or blogspot in them. You can view the image clearly by clicking on it!
So why is this a better idea than searching on Google for individual bloggers? Simple; you get a ton of links that you can scan through using your browser, sending requests to their owners and saving yourself some time!
As far as time is concerned, this script makes several API calls during the execution and you will notice a slight delay in completion. Also, you might hit the required rate limit (150) without knowing because you are making several requests per execution. That being said, I still had fun doing this and I have sent numerous requests for blog hops within a short time!
Summary:
I make an API call to Twitter servers to search for the word ‘authors’. Then saved the user_ids of the people who mentioned that word. We then use their user_ids to make another API call to their timelines. While doing that, we grab their url (the property that is part of the Twitter profile). If the url is missing, we ignore, otherwise, we store it in a new list. We finally iterate through the list and print the links out in a clean manner then visit them individually! That is it! I hope you had fun reading through this post. Got questions? Ask them! Thank you.Romania’s anti-corruption authority (DNA) has launched an investigation into nine former ministers suspected of accepting bribes in a licensing deal with Microsoft.
It is the largest corruption scandal to hit the country and parliament will vote to lift the immunity of the suspects, just weeks ahead of presidential elections.
The names cited by DNA include Dan Nica, Valerian Vreme, Daniel Funeriu, Alexandru Athanasiu, Mihai Tanasescu, Gabriel Sandu and Adriana Ticau. The senators Ecaterina Andronescu and Serban Mihailescu are likely to appear before a judicial committee on October 8th.
The current prime minister’s name has been mentioned in connection with the case.
“All procedures are being followed and nobody is refusing to cooperate,” explained Prime Minister Victor Ponta. “All those involved will have a chance to defend their actions. These are people who have enjoyed a clean reputation all their lives and it is their right to also state their point of view.”
The allegations date back to 2004 and run up to 2012, when the Romanian government was said to have bought Microsoft software intended for use in schools at 30-40 percent the market average from re-sellers.
Though Microsoft itself is not suspected of involvement, Fujitsu Siemens has also been cited in the case.During the month of April the Mary S. Roberts Pet Adoption Center will be offering no-cost spay and neuter surgeries, plus free rabies vaccinations as part of "Community Cat," PetSmart Charities' spay/neuter campaign to alter free-roaming cats.
Spaying and neutering is one of the most effective ways to reduce the homeless pet population and is safe for kittens as young as eight to 10 weeks old, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. Spaying a female cat before the first heat cycle can be beneficial, improving the health of the cat by reducing the risk of certain reproductive cancers and infections.
This special free rate is available to all residents of Riverside County. Residents feeding free-roaming cats who wish to take advantage of this offer must mention the "Community Cat" campaign when scheduling their appointment. Appointments are based on availability. For more information or to schedule an appointment, interested persons should visit call our clinic at 951-977-8634.Before Ross William Ulbricht decided he wanted to change the world, he studied physics at the University of Texas at Dallas, worked as a peer-reviewed research scientist, and finally, served as CEO of a small online used book store called Good Wagon Books. In his spare time, he enjoyed the occasional psychotropic drug.
Then, in 2010, Ulbright wrote on LinkedIn that he wanted to “use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind.”
I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force.
In May, Ulbricht’s LinkedIn resumé indicates he left his job at Good Wagon Books. What did he do next? His roommates, family, and even his best friends all say they had no idea how he made a living—except that it was online. His LinkedIn profile remained unchanged. But if allegations in a federal indictment filed last week prove true, Ulbricht was very busy.
MORE: The rise and fall of Silk Road’s heroin kingpin
On Jan. 27, 2011, Ulbricht anonymously unveiled his masterpiece to the world. In a brief post on psychedelic mushroom site Shroomery.org, he posed as an anonymous netizen who simply stumbled across a new website. It was called Silk Road. He asked for feedback.
The immediate response was skepticism. Ulbricht may have thought that his little marketing ploy had failed, so he wrote about Silk Road on the BitcoinTalk.org forum two days later with a very similar post. BitcoinTalk readers were interested immediately.
In fact, the initial Shroomery post had actually succeeded wildly. Over the next few months, Silk Road became genuinely popular among Shroomery users as word passed from person to person: “Yes, you really can buy drugs safely online.”
Others had come before the Silk Road. From the 1980s to the 1990s, Usenet groups, chat rooms, and markets like the Hive ushered in a revolution in the way the world discussed, shared knowledge about, and traded illegal drugs. Just prior to Silk Road’s launch, two sites—the Open Vendor Database (OVDB) and the Farmer’s Market—specialized in selling drugs online.
Like the Silk Road, these older markets used digital currencies—electronic money that acts as an alternative to dollars and euros—such as e-gold, Pecunix, and Liberty Reserve. Many of them even used Western Union and Paypal to handle transactions. But the majority of earlier markets didn’t even employ anonymizing technology. They largely existed in plain sight, apparently hoping that law enforcement would just miss them in the boundless landscape of cyberspace. They still made good money, however: The demand for online drugs has always been huge, and these flawed markets were scraping off a small piece of the pie. No one had really exploited the market.
Silk Road was different. It was the first market to leverage the anonymizing power of the browser Tor, the peer-to-peer crypto-currency Bitcoin, and the encryption program known as Pretty Good Privacy. Silk Road quickly attracted attention as the safest place to buy drugs online. It was the first website to model itself after the easy-to-use commerce giant Amazon.com, a comparison made by Ulbricht himself in early promotional posts.
By May 2011, Silk Road was home to hundreds of users selling and buying a growing variety of drugs across the world.
“Knowledge about how to access the website spread only by word of mouth,” Dread Pirate Roberts later wrote, “and the only way to find out about it was if you knew a guy who knew a guy who knew how to get into the site.”
At this early point, “everyone was sophisticated,” a money launderer on Silk Road who goes by the handle StExo told the Daily Dot. “Everyone was safe, everyone was cautious. There were no guides because the only people who could access such things generally were the very security-aware people.”
Of course, that would all change. On June 1, 2011, at the too-good-to-be-coincidental time of 4:20pm, Gawker’s Adrian Chen revealed the existence of Silk Road to the world.
“Silk Road was a godsend for me,” a user named SexyWax recently told the Daily Dot. “I was unemployed and miserable at the time… I had thoughts of suicide often. I was just a customer in early 2011. After the Gawker article came out, I began thinking about being a vendor.”
Before Chen’s article, Silk Road had hundreds of users. That soon jumped an order of magnitude, to over 10,000. That crush of visitors occasionally brought down the site’s servers. And it also encouraged scammers, ready to prey on curious newbies who, more often than not, didn’t know how to adequately protect their anonymity and money.
A still-volatile Bitcoin made doing business even riskier. Between |
, attempted to travel to Hong Kong last week but was stopped at the border. He was later questioned by police in Shenzhen, a city on the border with Hong Kong, and was released. He then traveled to Jiangxi province and disappeared, before his wife was notified by police.
“I was scared when the police called me, I was shaking with a mix of fear and anger,” Deng told the Guardian, adding she was worried she would be unable to support their two young children as well as three elderly relatives without his income.
The case highlights the political sensitivity of a brand associated with the family of Donald Trump, who repeatedly bashed China for taking American jobs on the campaign trail but has since cosied up to president Xi Jinping.
Trump himself has been granted dozens of trademarks in China since becoming president, and relatives of Jared Kushner, an advisor to the president, were recently caught trying to entice wealthy investors into luxury developments, with the prospect of receiving US green cards in return.
Foreign NGOs have also come under increased scrutiny since Xi came to power in 2012, and a newly enacted law requires groups that operate in the country to register with the police.
Two other men, Li Zhao and Su Heng, had investigated a factory in Jiangxi province that assembles Ivanka Trump shoes and were still missing on Wednesday, said Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch. He believes they have been detained by police or are being held at the factory.
“I think they were detained because this factory makes products for Ivanka Trump, so now this situation has become political and very complicated,” said Li. “I appeal to President Trump, Ivanka Trump herself, and to her brand to advocate and press for the release our activists.”
The undercover activists were to allege a host of labour violations at the plant, Li said, including paying below China’s legal minimum wage, managers verbally abusing workers and “violations of women’s rights”.
Li said he contacted the Ivanka Trump brand on April 27 to inform them of the labour violations, and urged them to ensure their suppliers were complying with Chinese law, but no changes were made.
The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment when contacted by the Guardian. A woman who answered the phone at the Ganzhou, Jiangxi public security bureau said only, “I’m busy now,” before hanging up.
Calls to Huajian Group, the owner of the factory, went unanswered and staff at the factory where the three activists had gone undercover said they were not aware of the case.
Huajian also manufactures products for Coach, Karl Lagerfeld and Kendall + Kylie at the factory where the activists went undercover.
“Over the last 17 years, we have conducted hundreds of investigations in factories across China, this is the first time any our investigators have been detained,” Li added. “The accusation from Jiangxi police has no factual basis.
Activists are usually simply ejected from the factory, or in the worst case questioned by police before being set free. China Labor Watch has previously gone undercover in Apple and Samsung plants in China, without incident.
Li Zhao, one of the missing activists, was telephoned by police before he disappeared, but was not asked to report for questioning. He worked at the same factory as Hua in Guangdong, but was fired after five days for taking photos on his mobile phone. He then went to Jiangxi and disappeared.
With additional reporting by Wang Zhen.
• This article was amended on 31 May 2017 to correct the spelling of Karl Lagerfeld.Crunchyroll announced on Friday that its foreign-language dubs for Schwarzes Marken, Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, and Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers will launch on November 16 for members and November 23 for free users. All three titles will be available in Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, and German.
Crunchyroll also clarified the regional availability for the dubs. The Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers dubs will be available worldwide outside of Asia while Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches will be available in the United States, Canada, Central and South America (including the Caribbean), South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
Regional availability for the Schwarzes Marken dubs will be based on language. Crunchyroll noted that the Spanish dub will be available in Latin America, the Portuguese dub in Brazil, and the French and German dubs in French- and German-speaking territories.His death was announced on Nov. 28 on the Twitter account of Suquor al-Izz Brigade, an armed group with which Mr. Riza was fighting, the report said. It added that Mr. Riza graduated from Al Mukmin Islamic boarding school, in the Central Java Province of Indonesia, an institution that has produced multiple terrorists and whose founder, the radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, is in prison on a terrorism conviction.
The report said that Indonesian Islamic organizations had made multiple humanitarian missions to Syria since the conflict began, “bringing in cash and medical assistance to the Islamist resistance in a way apparently designed to open channels for more direct participation in the fighting.”
Noor Huda Ismail, the founder of the Institute for International Peace Building, which helps assimilate former Indonesian terrorists back into society, noted that six people suspected of being terrorists who were killed after an all-night standoff beginning on Dec. 31 in a town outside Jakarta were planning to travel to Turkey and had already bought airline tickets.
“At the microlevel, most of the Indonesians who travel to Syria — whether they fight or were involved in humanitarian actions — they will tell their story when they return and inspire others to follow in their footsteps,” he said. “Individuals who travel there manage to provide a new narrative about jihad, which will be widely translated. This new narrative is the most important thing — a narrative about enlarging the conflict.”
Mr. Noor said the Syrian civil war was viewed by many Muslims as a conflict between Sunnis and the Shiite-backed government of Mr. Assad. He said the participation of Indonesian fighters would have ramifications back in Indonesia, which is the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation and has a small minority of Shiites who in recent years have faced harassment and physical attacks.
“The Indonesian Shiite groups are worried about these movements,” Mr. Noor said. “It creates ramifications where you see tensions between the Sunni and Shiite communities in Indonesia.”
Ms. Jones, of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, said another major concern was that Jemaah Islamiyah, which had fallen off the radar after ceasing terrorist attacks on Western targets in Indonesia in 2007 because of, among other things, an internal backlash over the fact that the majority of its victims were Indonesian Muslims, was increasing its prestige by helping to send fighters to Syria.
The revival of Jemaah Islamiyah as a jihadi organization could have significant consequences in the long term, she said.PORTLAND, Ore. – Police detained two men driving by a peaceful “No Ban, No Wall” rally in Downtown Portland after witnesses told police that one of them held up what looked like a handgun.
Officers later learned that the gun was a replica BB gun, however during a search of the truck they found an unloaded AR-15 rifle.
Hundreds gathered in the Terry Schrunk Plaza at noon Monday for a permitted protest of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. During the rally, a driver circled the block in a pickup truck that had "Trump" and American flags attached to the bed.
Someone called police to report that the passenger, later identified as 20-year-old Sergey Antonov of Battle Ground, Wash., held up the gun as they drove by the park.
Officers conducted a high-risk traffic stop nearby at Southwest 4th Avenue and Salmon Street.
Our news crew later saw police detain Antonov and the driver. Police seized the rifle and replica gun from inside the pickup.
Antonov was booked into the Multnomah County Jail on second-degree disorderly conduct.
The driver was released without charges, however police said they've taken the rifle for "safe-keeping." They say he can retrieve it at a later time.
This is a developing story; updates will be posted as information comes in.Kevin Kampl has several clubs who would like to sign him from Bayer Leverkusen.
Kevin Kampl is set to leave Bayer Leverkusen because of his disappointment at the decision to sack his mentor Roger Schmidt.
Kampl, 26, joined Leverkusen from Borussia Dortmund in 2015 to reunite with his old Red Bull Salzburg boss Roger Schmidt, and could now follow the future Beijing Guoan boss to the Chinese Super League.
The Slovenia international has already announced he will leave Leverkusen, and there have been "several enquiries, not only from the Chinese club" according to Rudi Voller, the club's sporting director.
"I will definitely leave Leverkusen. That's a fact," Kampl told kicker, and said that he never got over Schmidt's dismissal. "That thing with Roger injured me, it left traces.
"It's completely open where I'll go. I have many offers. China is far away, and if I go there, it's only because of Roger."
With Leverkusen reportedly holding out for a transfer fee of around €30 million and Beijing currently prepared to offer €20m, Kampl has also been linked with a switch to Serie A where AC Milan and Inter Milan are said to be interested.
Elsewhere, Anthony Modeste has left Cologne ahead of his move to Chinese Super League side Tianjin Quanjian. However, the transfer is yet to be completed and Bild reported that the 29-year-old striker did not inform his current club about his trip.
Although last week it appeared that the deal was set to be completed within a matter of days, the club have now been confronted with demands from the player's agents who reportedly want €6m of Cologne's share of the transfer fee.
Cologne sporting director Jorg Schmadtke said that the deal is currently on hold.
"You can only complete a medical once you've reached an agreement," he said in Bild.
Stephan Uersfeld is the Germany correspondent for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @uersfeld.About
Magazine Pages
ITHERVERSE
Hello and well met, fellow Game Masters and Players of tabletop dice and story-telling role playing games. You are going to LOVE what we have put together for you today.
First, let me address the Game Masters, but I have something for Players too, so stand by.
GAME MASTERS
Have you found yourself searching high and low for pre-written, play-tested, adventures and material that will work with YOUR setting and more importantly, YOUR game system.
Medieval Fantasy
Western Frontier
Space Marines & Pirates
Gnarly Sea-Faring Pirates
Post-Apocalyptic Mutants
Super Heroes & Villains
Zombies
Modern
Horror
etc..
ITHERVERSE is a monthly e-publication (or e-Magazine if you will) that will be packed with just what you need. EVERY MONTH, as a subscriber, you receive an email link to your copy of the latest release (and depending on how our stretch goals go, we very likely may offer printed and mailed versions), but I don't want to get ahead of myself.
Did you hear me a moment ago?
These adventures, scenarios and encounters have been designed to work in ANY game setting and easily convertible to ANY game system. Emphasis on EASY!
The Itherverse motto is "It's YOUR game, play by YOUR rules" and we're not changing your game in the slightest, only providing you with exciting new content and an easy way to use it.
DISCLAIMER: Now let me clarify - we will NOT violate copyright policies for all those great systems out there, and state that what we write is out-of-the box compatible.
What we are saying is that the ITHERVERSE conversion system is EASY to use and allows you the GM to convert our numbers to the numbers you need. You can either quickly convert the numbers on the fly during game play, or take a moment and jot them down while you are preparing.
TOP SECRET - CONVERSION CHARTS
Every friend, foe and trap you encounter has a simple block of information including our number and you can even write-in your number in the blank provided (use pencil or note paper). The point is, every issue has a copy of the ITHERVERSE CONVERSION CHARTS and you can use them to turn a percentile die roll (for instance) into a series of d6s or perhaps a d20 roll.
RESEARCH
We have researched countless game systems (and will continue to do so - in the ongoing development of this product). We need your help and in the end, we will be confident that we have accommodated every possible dice system we could find. We even located a rather unique system designed by a company in Central Florida based on a series of exploding d5 rolls. Have you seen a five-sided die yet? We have found 2 designs so far, and both are rather ingenious. Look them up online.
ANY SETTING
In the side bar we provide countless options on how to convert our scenario from whatever setting and genre it was written for, into a version that will work for you and your game. The temple adventure highlighted in our video works in a lot of game settings without adjustment, but what if you're playing a futuristic game or you are on a planet with limited sunlight and water. We give alternative suggestions on building materials, locations, sources of food and sustenance. This temple has undead and a magic fountain, but what if your game doesn't allow for the supernatural? We give you great ideas on how to alter these to something acceptable in your genre.
PLAYERS (NOT THE GM)
A lot is still top secret around here, but we have a lot in store for you. Sprinkled throughout our e-Publication are tons of ideas and concepts to improve your game. We will teach you interesting trap designs (and how they work), but also snares you can use in your game - so you can impress your GM and the other players. There will be details on fun-to-play personality quirks. There will be clever uses of non-weapons in tactical situations, and in ways that you probably never thought of. And there will be a lot more, but one of the more exciting sections is what we're calling player crafting.
CRAFTING?
Players, correct me if I'm wrong - but certain things are difficult to find (rare magic items, highly valuable chemicals or construction materials, and a lack of ammunition in some game settings can turn deadly), but the one thing that you probably have an abundance of is currency. Coin, gold, cash, futuristic credits, whatever. Let's face it, every body you loot has a few baubles. They add up and WE will give you great ideas - genius ideas - on how to spend it. We even focus on designs and contraptions that the GM should have a hard time denying you, because the raw materials are every day objects, not rare, and not expensive. The labor may be costly, to build it - but that's why you have all that coin.
Any Setting, Any System
THE WAG-O-PULT
In the video we introduce the Wagon Catapult, or as we like to call it, the "Wag-o-pult." This is just a quick example of things to come. It is somewhere between 1/4 and 1/8 the size of the big siege engine, but tow-able behind your horse or your wagon. Just think how much fun it would be to use something like this. Granted, it's not practical for every encounter, but it is guaranteed to change any encounter you use it in. (It will launch a half-ling about 100 yards)... "Disclaimer: We did not say it would be safe for the half-ling."
In any case, we go as far as to give you tips on how to convince your GM to let you have it. The raw materials are easy to come by and worst case it becomes a poorly made, high-maintenance, version - constructed by a really bad blacksmith and carpenter - at least you have one - Right?!
Again, we help you envision versions of this item in YOUR game and your SETTING. Convert it to a harpoon mount,cannon mount, ballista mount, or a bundle of laser rifles all strapped together to create some kind of unwieldy but nasty dangerous mounted multiple-beam laser cannon. And this is just the beginning Players.
harpoon mount
cannon mount
ballista mount
laser rifle bundle mount
GAME MASTER & PLAYER - JOINT BENEFITS
Players - Keep in mind, everything written for a GM, you can benefit from as well. You might want to play through those scenarios first, having not read them - but after you have done so, there is much to be learned about how the traps work and the tactics that the enemies employ. You could consider these ideas in your own game play.
Game Masters - You can make use of the information provided to players to make your NPCs more exciting and robust, or to add some of these bizarre objects to YOUR game, (like the wag-o-pult) and let the enemy employ them against the players.
IN CLOSING
A great deal has been accomplished already, but we are excited to take the next steps and there is much work to do. Your support will allow us to first create a legal entity - be it a corporation or LLC of some kind, so that we are in a better position to engage in business and partner with other companies long-term.
Stretch goals will allow us to seek out programmers and application developers to create a conversion tool for your portable smart device. We also need to exhaust every effort to make sure we have covered every dice system we can find. Lastly, we envision this becoming much more than just an e-Publication, but a community of like minded gamers - contributing and sharing information using the latest and greatest online media available. A place where you can add your suggestions on how to convert a scenario or an item to a genre that we didn't think of. A place you can ask for help - because your players (like some of mine) want to game in really bizarre settings.
THANK YOU
Ladies and Gentlemen - Let's do this together, because...
"It's YOUR game, play be YOUR rules"
___________________________________________If you’re looking for a company that really cares about the troops, look no further than Pringles.
Few people deserve more respect and adoration than the heroes who willingly sacrifice their lives to protect America’s freedom, and no one knows that better than Pringles, which is stepping up for the troops in a big way: The snack-manufacturing powerhouse just introduced a new line of damp chips that won’t crunch loud enough to ruin a moment of silence for our fallen soldiers.
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Wow. What a powerful way to help customers show respect for the troops!
According to Pringles executives, the new line of chips will come in the same essential flavors customers have come to love, but will be presoaked inside the Pringles tube, making the chips just damp enough to replace any crunching sounds that would disrupt a somber rendition of “Taps” with a gentle, muffled sloshing. Through extensive testing, these mushier chips have been shown to be so quiet that, when eaten, it is virtually impossible to make enough noise to ruin a moment of silence for a fallen soldier.
With the new product, which they’re calling Patriot’s Discretion Pringles, customers will now be able to pull out a few wet chips, place the damp snack onto their tongues or pack it into their cheeks, and let their favorite flavors melt into their mouths, all without the fear of bringing a hero’s memorial to a screeching halt with a single, booming bite.
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Patriotism FTW!
“Everyone wishes they could be eating chips when they’re at a service commemorating a fallen solider, but up until now, it’s just been way too loud,” said Pringles CEO Michael A. Powell at an event unrolling their newest product. “Before, the best you could do was settle for something quiet like mints or gum, but those bland, flavorless days of quiet respect are now a thing of the past.”
“We at Pringles know how important it is to remember those who have sacrificed their lives to protect the American way,” he added. “And now, with our line of damp Patriot’s Discretion Pringles, there is finally a way to do it without sacrificing your hunger.”
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Amazing. It looks like Pringles is a company that isn’t about to let customers ruin a moment of silence, but isn’t about to let them go hungry either. Whether you’re at a veteran’s funeral, halftime at a local high school football game, or even the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the days of having to choose between tossing back a couple Pringles or paying tribute to a fallen service member seem to be over. Here’s to hoping more companies begin showing the same commitment to our troops that Pringles does!Every year, on December 31, merrily inebriated people gather to sing the same song, Auld Lang Syne. The fact that few actually know all of the words, let alone their meaning, has rarely stopped anyone from joining in.
However, now is your chance to be well-informed and in tune with these facts about the song:
1. Robert Burns didn't invent Auld Lang Syne as we know it
The Scottish bard wrote many wonderful pieces of original verse, but this was not among them. Instead, he was the first person to write down a much older Scottish folk song. In 1788 he sent a copy of the song to his friend, Mrs Agnes Dunlop, exclaiming: "There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half a dozen of modern...Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston joked that he wouldn't get "Manziel disease" as FSU's potential starter. (Stacy Revere/Getty Images) Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston joked that he wouldn't get "Manziel disease" as FSU's potential starter. (Stacy Revere/Getty Images)
Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston — currently in a battle to become the Seminoles' starter this season — joked with reporters on Sunday that he doesn't want to catch "Manziel disease," referring to the spotlight and criticism that has followed Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel.
"If I ever get Manziel disease, I want all of you to smack me in the head with your microphones," the redshirt freshman Winston told reporters, according to Sporting News.
Winston added that he didn't mean that as a slight to Manziel, who Winston told reporters he had heard was a good person.
Winston, a two-sport star who plays baseball, is in a two-man battle with redshirt sophomore Jacob Coker to replace EJ Manuel as Florida State's starting quarterback. Manuel is now battling for a starting job with the NFL's Buffalo Bills.
Whereas Coker is reserved, Winston has quickly become renowned for his larger-than-life personality. He ended his session with reporters Sunday with a mic drop — and he filled the session with one liners like this one when comparing his job to Manziel's:
Jameis: "Look at Johnny Manziel. Didn't he have a O lineman drafted in 1st rd? I've got 5 of them." — David Hale (@DavidHaleESPN) August 11, 2013The largest city in North America has done away with one of the biggest hidden subsidies for driving: minimum parking requirements.
Mexico City eliminated requirements that force developers to build a minimum number of parking spaces in each project. The city will instead cap the number of parking spaces allowed in new development, depending on the type and size of the building. Existing parking spaces can also be converted to other uses.
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Mancera signed the new regulations into effect last week.
The policy change applies to every land use and throughout the entire city of 8.8 million residents. It promises to make housing more affordable, reduce traffic, and improve air quality.
…The old rules mandated parking even though only about 30 percent of Mexico City residents own cars and the city has a well-developed subway system.
There are now parking maximums in place instead of minimums…
Within the central city, the new rules also require developers to pay a fee if they build more than 50 percent of the maximum parking allowed…
Revenues from the parking fee will be used to improve transit and subsidize housing.Beware of escalating witch-hunt against lawmakers
The recent interpretation of Article 104 of the Basic Law by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) has not only provoked a ferocious backlash but also sparked a witch-hunting frenzy.
This is in the form of judicial review applications against pro-democracy or pro-establishment lawmakers who could have violated the Oaths and Declarations Ordinance.
As of Nov. 23, as many as 28 lawmakers were facing legal challenges.
The political uncertainty brought about by the wave of judicial reviews have taken a heavy toll on the harmony and stability of our society.
The NPCSC’s interpretation did not help facilitate consensus as some Beijing officials had expected.
Instead, it has exacerbated divisions and confrontations.
The people who filed judicial review applications against other lawmakers after the removal of the Youngspiration duo from office fall into two main categories — they are either pro-Beijing loyalists who wanted to inflict further damage on the pro-democracy camp, or pro-democracy activists who wanted to voice their anger over the NPCSC interpretation by filing judicial reviews against pro-establishment lawmakers in revenge.
However, most of the arguments presented by these applicants are either legally groundless or illogical and flimsy.
For example, many of them have cited legally irrelevant “evidence” such as some anti-Beijing remarks made by certain lawmakers before or after the Legco swearing-in ceremony on Oct. 12.
Obviously, they have got it all wrong because when deciding whether or not a public office holder has violated Article 104 of the Basic Law or the Oaths and Declarations Ordinance, the court will only take into account the actual manner in which the defendants took their oath and the wording they used in their oath on Oct. 12.
Any other factors such as the remarks they made or the action they took before or after the swearing-in ceremony on that day are deemed irrelevant by the court.
Besides, there is already a well-established mechanism in the Basic Law to deal with lawmakers who have violated their oath of the Legco office such as making pro-independence remarks inside or outside Legco.
Under Article 79, removal of a lawmaker from office for misconduct or violation of the oath first requires the passage of a motion of reprimand and then a two-thirds majority vote to officially disqualify him from office.
In other words, since there is already a standard and detailed procedure in place to remove a lawmaker from office for misconduct, the matter can be fully settled within the jurisdiction of Legco and hence there is no need to take it to the courts.
Some pro-Beijing loyalists even took their witch-hunting campaign one step further and filed judicial review applications against pro-democracy lawmakers and sought their removal from office on the grounds that they had publicly rooted for “democratic self-determination” and “Hong Kong comes first”, something that, they claimed, amounts to advocating Hong Kong’s independence.
Again, such accusations are illogical and groundless. It is nonsensical to draw a parallel between “democratic self-determination” and “secession from China”, which are two entirely different concepts.
In fact, “democratic self-determination” only refers to enhancing the role of the public in the decision-making process of our government, a far cry from seeking independence.
Such acts of framing one’s political opponents for fabricated charges and putting political labels on others at will remind me of the political persecution and the struggle sessions commonly seen during Mao Zedong’s reign.
Tens of thousands of innocent civilians were labeled as rightist traitors or counter-revolutionaries and subjected to brutal persecution.
It is of the utmost importance to prevent Hong Kong from going down the same path.
The fact that more and more young people favor Hong Kong’s independence is no doubt alarming, but also alarming is the escalating witch-hunt frenzy against the pro-democracy camp because both of them are equally harmful to our society.
Rational debates and dialogue are always better than political persecution when it comes to mending fences among different political factions.
This article appeared in the Hong Kong Economic Journal on Nov. 24
Translation by Alan Lee
[Chinese version 中文版]
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AL/DY/RAThe head of the United Nations’ environmental office said Tuesday that he expects the United States to live up to its commitments under the Paris climate deal despite President Trump’s plan to pull out of the agreement.
Erik Solheim, the director of the U.N. Environment Program, said the U.S. could achieve its goals because “all the big American companies are dedicated to go in the green direction,” The Associated Press reports.
He added, that, despite Trump, “at the end of the day... the private sector and business are now driving the agenda” in the United States.
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Solheim’s comments came as the United Nations released a new report calling on the world’s nations to do more to tackle climate change.
The report concluded the greenhouse gas reduction goals established in the Paris deal are only one-third of what is necessary to keep the Earth from warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius. That’s the level at which scientists believe the worst effects of climate change will kick in, and the Paris agreement aims to prevent that much warming.
Trump in June said he would pull the United States out of the Paris deal, under which the Obama administration had pledged a 26 percent to 28 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Trump can’t formally take the U.S. out of the deal until 2020 at the earliest.
Many large American businesses, including some energy firms, pushed Trump to stay in the agreement rather than pull the U.S. out, calling climate change a threat and promising to reduce emissions on their own.This article was written by Andrew Coates from UCL and was originally published by The Conversation.
Water played a key role in the early history of Mars, some 3.8 billion years ago, before it became cold and dry. In the past few years, scientists have found evidence of much more recent liquid water: gullies apparently formed by running water within the last million years, and regions where salty liquid water may seep to the surface even now. But a new study, published in Nature Geoscience, shows that these Martian gullies, which resemble water-sculpted gullies on our own planet, may have been formed by dry ice instead.
A number of past missions have found evidence of water and water ice on Mars - building the evidence for a warm, wet past on a potentially habitable Mars some 3.8 billion years ago.
The Viking orbiter found large networks of outflow channels, which are thought to be due to ancient surface water. Mars Global Surveyor discovered several gullies on slopes near crater rims, consisting of alcoves, channels and deposited material, which were attributed to the more recent effects of running water, which was apparently coming to the surface from below and transporting material down slopes.
Mars Odyssey also found local, large-scale concentrations of hydrogen below the surface, implying there is water in polar and equatorial regions.
Branched gullies Jim Secosky/NASA
The Phoenix Mars Lander found direct evidence of water ice - effectively permafrost, near the North pole - which escaped into the thin atmosphere as vapour when the lander dug a shallow trench with a scoop. It also detected droplets of water on its own leg.
Most recently, Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter looked in more detail at the gullies and also dark streaks on the planet’s slopes, known as "recurrent slope lineae", finding that they are seasonal and implying that flowing liquid water exists now.
Alternative processes
However, another explanation for the gullies has now been proposed. The new study shows that large amounts of water would have been needed very recently to explain the distribution of the gullies and their dimensions - a challenge to our overall picture of Mars's history.
The explanation involves carbon dioxide - the principal component of Mars's thin atmosphere, and also the composition of much of the seasonal icecaps and frost. If the CO 2 frost becomes thick enough it would eventually, as it warms in the spring, anneal to become a translucent ice layer.
Sunlight could penetrate to the under side and cause some of it to vaporise without turning into a liquid, a process known as sublimation. Eventually this could blow out, bringing surface material with it, eventually creating gully features.
Gullies on Earth (Aoineadh Beinn na Sroine, UK). Andy Waddington, CC BY-SA
The authors made a detailed computer model based on Mars's surface and atmospheric details, including frost locations, seasonal formation and thickening. They mapped the latitudes and slopes where the sublimation and blow out can occur, and found a good match with the observed locations of gullies.
They also looked at the effect of the changing tilt of Mars's spin axis over the last million years, which affects the climate and amount of sunlight it gets, and showed that, again, gully formation driven by sublimation and blow out agrees with the changes. However the model cannot reproduce all aspects and it may be that other processes involving water or ice may be important, too.
Nevertheless, their results show that dry ice, rather than flowing water, could well be the dominant formation process. However, that doesn’t mean there is no flowing water on Mars - just that it may not have formed the gullies. The dark streaks on the planet’s slopes indicate that water may still be seeping to the surface today.
Recent missions have concentrated on water and its history and effects on Mars. But the study shows that we must not be too guided by the processes occurring on our own planet. We should be open to other mechanisms on other worlds.
Future missions and analysis may help to prove once and for all whether the gullies were caused by running water or not. But this is not all - they will also be trying to understand other puzzles.
For example, the interior structure of Mars will be probed by NASA’s Insight mission in 2016. Trace amounts of mysterious methane, which should be dissociated by sunlight and thus short lived in the Martian atmosphere, will also be investigated. There must be a recent source - either geothermal activity or some sort of microbial life. ExoMars 2016 will follow this up by mapping the methane on the planet.
Even more excitingly, the European Space Agency and Russia will look for actual signs of life by drilling underneath the harsh surface with the ExoMars 2018 rover, and then NASA will further explore habitability with Mars 2020. The next few years will be interesting ones for Mars exploration - hopefully unveiling many of the red planet’s innermost secrets.
Andrew Coates, Professor of Physics, Deputy Director (Solar System) at the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL.
This article was originally published by The Conversation. Read the original article.Legalizing Marijuana Could Bring in Millions for Pennsylvania
HARRISBURG, February 1, 2013 – As Gov. Corbett lays the groundwork to privatize Pennsylvania’s liquor stores and fund education this year with the revenue raised, Sen. Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery/Delaware) has offered an alternative plan: legalize marijuana and generate a constant revenue source for the state to use for years to come.
“We don’t need to sell our state stores to the highest bidder to bring in money to fund education, especially if the money gained can only be used once,” Leach said. “This plan may help our state in the short term, but is a foolish long term strategy, as it offers no permanent solutions. Why eliminate a constant revenue stream when we could keep it, continue to benefit from it, and add to it by regulating, taxing and selling marijuana under the state store umbrella?”
Corbett’s proposal would relinquish the state’s control over its liquor stores and use the $1 billion raised from licensing fees to fund a four-year state education grant program. Under the plan, schools could only use the block grant funds for school safety purposes, to create individualized learning plans, to improve reading and math skills in early elementary classrooms and for science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs. The plan would aim to resolve a major crisis our public schools faced after Corbett slashed $1 billion in education funding in his first budget.
Leach, who this session will introduce a marijuana legalization bill, said the answer our state is looking for is simple.
“In addition to raising millions of dollars per year from tax revenue, Pennsylvania would save more than $325 million per year by legalizing marijuana. The most conservative estimates say the revenue generated by taxing the sales of marijuana would amount to at least $24 million per year. Legalizing marijuana and taxing its sale could provide a multi-million dollar reoccurring revenue source that our state could tap into for years to come,” Leach said.
Under the terms of Leach’s bill, marijuana would be a regulated product, treated similarly to alcohol. He noted that his bill would not change current laws against driving under the influence of marijuana, selling marijuana to minors and disorderly conduct while publicly intoxicated.
###An artificial intelligence recently released a death metal album created entirely by machine learning algorithms. There is already programmable machine to create new music. But this time is different. Because you can’t tell the difference.
With advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, computers are now capable of creating music that is difficult find whether it’s created by man or machine. And an example for this is Coditany of Timeness, a black metal album made entirely by an artificial neural network.
Coditany of Timeness is the product of a project undertaken by CJ Carr and Zack Zukowski. It’s a five-track black metal album that features songs with algorithmically generated titles like,
Memoryearion (02:29) Timension (01:37) Wisdom Trippin’ (04:06) Energiveness (02:09) Inhusk (03:00)
The album’s name and the titles of the songs were conceived by another AI. And the artwork for the album cover was created by another algorithm. In other words, a band of robots just dropped an independent metal album.
DADABOTS’ debut album was created, musically, by a neural-network studying the work of a human metal band called Krallice.
Basically, the AI listened to all the sounds it was fed and started trying to guess what more of the same would sound like it. It did this a few million times before it was able to create its own original work.
Refrences: TheNextWebRand Paul embarrassed Mitch McConnell a few months ago by forcing parts of the PATRIOT Act to expire on the Senate majority leader’s watch. But on Tuesday, McConnell rewarded his fellow Kentuckian by tapping him to help lead the charge to defund Planned Parenthood.
And just this week, Utah Sen. Mike Lee infuriated McConnell with a move seen as undermining the GOP caucus |
the number of people, the safe position is given by the function f ( n ) = 2 l + 1 {\displaystyle f(n)=2l+1},where n = 2 m + l {\displaystyle n=2^{m}+l} and 0 ≤ l < 2 m {\displaystyle 0\leq l<2^{m}}.
Now if we represent the number in binary format, the first bit denotes 2 m {\displaystyle 2^{m}} and remaining bits will denote l {\displaystyle l}. For example, when n=41, its binary representation is
n = 1 0 1 0 0 1
2m = 1 0 0 0 0 0
l = 0 1 0 0 1
/** * * @param n the number of people standing in the circle * @return the safe position who will survive the execution * f(N) = 2L + 1 where N =2^M + L and 0 <= L < 2^M */ public int getSafePosition ( int n ) { // find value of L for the equation int valueOfL = n - Integer. highestOneBit ( n ); int safePosition = 2 * valueOfL + 1 ; return safePosition ; }
Bitwise [ edit ]
The easiest way to find the safe position is by using bitwise operators. In this approach shifting the most-significant set bit of n to the least significant bit will return the safe position.[10] Input must be a positive integer.
n = 1 0 1 0 0 1
n = 0 1 0 0 1 1
/** * * @param n (41) the number of people standing in the circle * @return the safe position who will survive the execution * ~Integer.highestOneBit(n*2) * Multiply n by 2, get the first set bit and take its compliment * ((n<<1) | 1) * Left Shift n and flipping the last bit * ~Integer.highestOneBit(n*2) & ((n<<1) | 1) * Bitwise And to copy bits exists in both operands. */ public int getSafePosition ( int n ) { return ~ Integer. highestOneBit ( n * 2 ) & (( n << 1 ) | 1 ); }
The general case [ edit ]
Dynamic programming is used to solve this problem in the general case by performing the first step and then using the solution of the remaining problem. When the index starts from one, then the person at s {\displaystyle s} shifts from the first person is in position ( ( s − 1 ) mod n ) + 1 {\displaystyle ((s-1){\bmod {n}})+1}, where n is the total number of persons. Let f ( n, k ) {\displaystyle f(n,k)} denote the position of the survivor. After the k {\displaystyle k} -th person is killed, we're left with a circle of n − 1 {\displaystyle n-1}, and we start the next count with the person whose number in the original problem was ( k mod n ) + 1 {\displaystyle (k{\bmod {n}})+1}. The position of the survivor in the remaining circle would be f ( n − 1, k ) {\displaystyle f(n-1,k)} if we start counting at 1 {\displaystyle 1} ; shifting this to account for the fact that we're starting at ( k mod n ) + 1 {\displaystyle (k{\bmod {n}})+1} yields the recurrence
f ( n, k ) = ( ( f ( n − 1, k ) + k − 1 ) mod n ) + 1, with f ( 1, k ) = 1, {\displaystyle f(n,k)=((f(n-1,k)+k-1){\bmod {n}})+1,{\text{ with }}f(1,k)=1\,,}
which takes the simpler form
g ( n, k ) = ( g ( n − 1, k ) + k ) mod n, with g ( 1, k ) = 0 {\displaystyle g(n,k)=(g(n-1,k)+k){\bmod {n}},{\text{ with }}g(1,k)=0}
if we number the positions from 0 {\displaystyle 0} to n − 1 {\displaystyle n-1} instead.
This approach has running time O ( n ) {\displaystyle O(n)}, but for small k {\displaystyle k} and large n {\displaystyle n} there is another approach. The second approach also uses dynamic programming but has running time O ( k log n ) {\displaystyle O(k\log n)}. It is based on considering killing k-th, 2k-th,..., ( ⌊ n / k ⌋ k ) {\displaystyle (\lfloor n/k\rfloor k)} -th people as one step, then changing the numbering.[citation needed]
This improved approach takes the form
g ( n, k ) = { 0 if n = 1 ( g ( n − 1, k ) + k ) mod n if 1 < n < k ⌊ k ( ( g ( n ′, k ) − n mod k ) mod n ′ ) k − 1 ⌋ where n ′ = n − ⌊ n k ⌋ if k ≤ n {\displaystyle g(n,k)={\begin{cases}0&{\text{if }}n=1\\(g(n-1,k)+k){\bmod {n}}&{\text{if }}1<n<k\\\left\lfloor {\frac {k((g(n',k)-n{\bmod {k}}){\bmod {n}}')}{k-1}}\right\rfloor {\text{where }}n'=n-\left\lfloor {\frac {n}{k}}\right\rfloor &{\text{if }}k\leq n\\\end{cases}}}
Notes [ edit ]Speaking with our friend Corey Erdman of Fight Network, Banner Promotions chief Artie Pelullo said that his fighter, WBO junior welterweight titlist Ruslan Provodnikov, won't be fighting Brandon Rios. The reason? Pelullo doesn't believe Rios can make 140 -- and says that Bob Arum can't guarantee he will -- and he doesn't want to waste his fighter's time:
"We would love to fight Brandon Rios, but not at 155 pounds, or 154 pounds, or 147.... Brandon Rios is a good fighter. He's lost his last two fights and in his last fight he tested positive for, I guess, performance-enhancing drugs, I guess it was diuretics or whatever. The problem we have with that fight is that I don't think his own promoter can guarantee that he can make weight, and I don't want my fighter, who's always in shape and is a great athlete, and is on the cusp of fighting the Pacquiaos, the Bradleys, the Marquezes -- they're all essentially trying to avoid him, because he's the biggest puncher in the division. "We fight Brandon Rios and he can't make weight, that's a problem. That's a real problem for the fans and for my kid, who's actually making weight. See, when you have to make weight, you're working at cutting weight, so you're taking your body apart to make weight. And if we make it a 140-pound title, and that's what we'd have to do to defend our title, and he comes in at 47, 48, 46, 45, he didn't break his body down to make the weight. He didn't have to go the extra nine yards. "I'm not gonna do that. And Bob Arum told me he cannot deliver (Rios) at 140 pounds. And we're not going up to 147, because that benefits him. My kid fights at 140. Only time he ever fought at 47 was against Bradley, and he came in at 44, because it was an opportunity. Now if there's a Bradley or Pacquiao fight and there's millions of dollars, he's going back to 47. But not for Brandon Rios. (Rios) has to make 40. And I don't believe he can make 40."
So where does that leave Provodnikov? With some less than thrilling options, in all honesty:
"Right now he'll be back on HBO sometime in May or June. Those are the deadlines for his fight. And there's a lot of guys that we're talking about. (Thomas) Dulorme is one, (Antonio) DeMarco is another one, and the kid who won the fight on Friday night on ESPN, (Chris) Algieri is another one. Basically, we have told HBO that he will fight anybody at 140 pounds. Because Ruslan can beat anybody at 140 pounds. So we're OK with whoever they want to put us with."
Dulorme (20-1, 14 KO) has won four straight as he's worked to get himself down from 147 to 140 following a TKO loss to Luis Carlos Abregu on HBO in 2012, but he's far from a legitimate contender at this point. The same can be said of DeMarco (30-3-1, 23 KO), who moved up from lightweight to welterweight after his punishing loss in 2012 to Adrien Broner, winning two fights over veteran non-contenders. DeMarco is a pretty decent fighter, but not a contender at 140. And Algieri (19-0, 8 KO) is just starting to get some TV exposure, but he's also 29 years old, and his window figures to be small.
None of these are fights that I expect would get too many people excited, but the good news with a guy like Provodnikov (23-2, 16 KO) is you will always tune in specifically to see him fight, thanks to his fan-friendly style. So he's at least got that going for him, and let's not forget that they tried to fight Juan Manuel Marquez, who didn't want anything to do with it. It's also hard to blame them for not wanting to give up anything to face Brandon Rios, who is on a losing streak, or take the risk that Rios won't even make weight, because it's been a consistent problem.Vancouver police are recommending assault charges against two men after a violent confrontation in Yaletown Saturday night.
Police say three people eating dinner outside Urban Fare on Davie Street around 7:45 p.m. were approached by two intoxicated men. The pair allegedly began aiming racial slurs at the trio. One of the victims was punched in the head and another was slapped.
When the third person tried to intervene, he was pushed into a brick wall. Bystanders then attempted to stop the attack.
“I was just eating dinner with my wife and her cousin when all of a sudden he came and he just said the N-word and hit me,” one of the victims told Global News. “I don’t even know him. I didn’t even see him from the back.”
“It’s very sad,” said the victim, who was visiting from Seattle. “I love Vancouver. I always come here and enjoy it. I’ve never seen such a thing.”
Both suspects were taken into custody.A big part of the 2015 Stanley Cup Final was the battle between 2013 Cup winner Corey Crawford of the Chicago Blackhawks and Ben Bishop of the Tampa Bay Lightning. NHL.com scouted the goalies before the series and tracked their performances each game, identifying attack trends and shot quality. Kevin Woodley, managing editor of InGoal Magazine, uses Double Blue Sports Analytics software to chart goals and shots in each game. Here are his findings from Game 6, a 2-0 Cup-clinching victory by the Blackhawks, as well as a shot quality overview of the entire Stanley Cup Final.
For all the questions Corey Crawford faced as the Chicago Blackhawks' No.1 goaltender, he has twice won the Stanley Cup. He faced more tough chances in the Stanley Cup Final than the Tampa Bay Lightning's Ben Bishop and Andrei Vasilevskiy to win his second championship with the Blackhawks' 2-0 victory in Game 6 on Monday.
Chicago did a good job of keeping the Tampa Bay attackers to the outside in the Cup-clinching Game 6 victory, but Crawford came up with his best save early in the second period, staying with Tampa Bay captain Steven Stamkos on a breakaway that set the tone for his 25-save shutout.
Despite an easier Game 6 compared to Bishop, Crawford faced more shots off screens (22), deflections (12), shots after lateral passes (36) and one-timers (36) in the Cup Final than Bishop and Vasilevskiy faced in the Lightning net. Lightning goalies faced 18 shots off screens, seven deflections, 35 one-timers and 30 shots off lateral passes. The only shot metric that was higher for Tampa Bay's two goalies was clean shots; they faced 85 (55.6 percent of all shots on goal), while Crawford got a clean look at 75 (51.2 percent).
In Game 6 nine of the 25 shots Crawford faced came from within the home-plate area that extends from the edge of the crease to the faceoff dots and up to the top of the circles, but seven were from in close below the bottom hash marks and around his crease.
Tampa Bay also attacked less often from sharp angles in Game 6. That had been an area where they had success early in the series but failed to convert from late when Crawford made adjustments to his post integration tactics.
Bishop did his best to force a Game 7, making two great saves on lateral power-play chances for Blackhawks forwards Jonathan Toews and Teuvo Teravainen early in the game. Each play crossed the Royal Road, an imaginary line splitting the offensive zone below the top of the faceoff circles. Introduced by former NHL goalie and current MSG analyst Steve Valiquette, the Royal Road identifies tough chances that force a goalie to turn and reset his angle. Bishop faced four Royal Road chances in Game 6, the most in any Cup Final game, including the play that led to an insurance goal by Blackhawks forward Patrick Kane
Crawford stopped the three Royal Road chances he faced in Game 6, including Stamkos' breakaway move from left to right.
Bishop, who faced 16 shots from inside the home plate area in Game 6, didn't have much of a chance on Kane's goal. But he got caught recovering back to his skates on the game-winning goal by Blackhawks defenseman Duncan Keith. Identified as a trend going into the series, Bishop tends to get back to his skates in situations where most goalies will stay on their knees and move laterally with a butterfly push. Whether or not it was related to the torn groin he revealed after the game, the slight delay of getting back up with his left skate after already establishing a push edge with his right skate was costly in his recovery to the left.
The Blackhawks fired eight shots at Bishop's glove in Game 6, part of a trend in the Cup Final that included 35 mid-to-high shots on the glove side compared to 25 in the same area on the blocker side.
Things were more balanced for Crawford, who for all the talk about his glove hand during the past few years actually had more shots directed at his blocker (31) than mid-to-high on the glove side (29).
Perhaps that will be enough to end some of the glove hand talk in the future. With two Stanley Cup championships to his credit now, it's probably not the only storyline Crawford quieted this season.Cricket phrase
M*A*S*H episode, see For theepisode, see Sticky Wicket
A sticky wicket (or sticky dog, or glue pot)[1] is a metaphor[2] used to describe a difficult circumstance. It originated as a term for difficult circumstances in the sport of cricket, caused by a damp and soft pitch.[3]
In cricket [ edit ]
The phrase comes from the game of cricket. "Wicket" has several meanings in cricket: in this case it refers to the rectangular area, also known as the pitch, in the centre of the cricket field between the stumps. The wicket is usually covered in a much shorter grass than the rest of the field or entirely bare, making it susceptible to variations in weather, which in turn cause the ball to bounce differently.[4]
If rain falls and the wicket becomes wet, the ball may not bounce predictably, making it very difficult for the batsman.[5] Furthermore, as the pitch dries, conditions can change swiftly, with spin bowling being especially devastating, as the ball can deviate laterally from straight by several feet. Once the wet surface begins to dry in a hot sun "the ball will rise sharply, steeply and erratically. A good length ball... becomes a potential lethal delivery. Most batsmen on such wickets found it virtually impossible to survive let alone score."[6] Certain cricketers developed reputations for their outstanding abilities to perform on sticky wickets. Australian Victor Trumper was one.[6]
On occasions in the history of cricket unusual tactics have been employed to extract the best use of a sticky wicket. One example is the First Test in the 1950–51 Ashes series.[7] As recorded in The Ashes' Strangest Moments, as the pitch at the Gabba began to dry, England declared their first innings at just 68/7, in order to exploit the conditions.[7] Australia were even more extreme, declaring at 32/7.[7] "...the ball proceeded to perform capers all against the laws of gravitation, and there came the craziest day's cricket imaginable, with twenty wickets falling for 130 runs and two declarations that must surely be unique in the annals of Test cricket."[8]
The Language of Cricket (1934) defines a sticky wicket as "when its surface is in a glutinous condition".[9] Hence a "sticky wicket" refers to a difficult situation.[10]
In modern day professional cricket [ edit ]
Modern professional cricket is played, around the world, on covered pitches. Sticky wickets are mostly seen in amateur cricket, but the phenomenon can occur when covers are defective, slow to be applied or, particularly in warm weather, the grass underneath "sweats" as moisture evaporates.[11] When covers were introduced into England's County Championship, John Woodcock wrote an article for the 1981 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, criticising the move, in an article titled, "Sticky dog is put down".[12] He added, "I cannot forbear... from lamenting... a part of the very heritage of English cricket – a drying pitch and a sizzling sun."[12]
In croquet [ edit ]
In the game of croquet, the phrase "sticky wicket" may refer to a hoop (wicket) that is difficult for a ball to go through because of the narrowness of the opening. This usage is confined to the United States.[13]
As a metaphor [ edit ]
An early example of the term in the cricket sense can be seen in Bell's Life in London, July 1882: "The ground... was suffering from the effects of recent rain, and once more the Australians found themselves on a sticky wicket."[14]
The term is frequently used in everyday parlance as a metaphor. An example from finance is that The Independent used the phrase in a story about the Bank of England.[15]
The former leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament, Tom Spencer MEP occasionally used to refer to batting on a sticky wicket to confuse the Parliament's interpreters, it being very difficult to translate into other languages.[citation needed]
In popular culture [ edit ]
In the Greg Brown song "Kokomo", a lyric references a'sticky wicket': "...with a sticky wicket and a Greyhound ticket...".
Jazz vocalist Al Jarreau’s 1984 album High Crime includes a song titled “Sticky Wicket,” regarding the escapades of a young girl entertaining more suitors than she can handle for her young age.
In 2010, on the hit Nickelodeon show "Big Time Rush" the character Logan Henderson said that he was in a "bit of a sticky wicket" when trying to do a British accent and then embarrassing himself in front of a girl he liked, named Jo. In episode "Big Time Love Song" which aired February 5, 2010.
In 2013, Irish cricket-pop band The Duckworth Lewis Method called their second album, and one of its songs, Sticky Wickets.
In the 2015 HBO series "The Brink", episode 7 is titled, "Sticky Wicket".MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina — Canada’s men’s volleyball team produced one of the biggest victories in its history Thursday, upsetting Olympic champion Russia in five sets in its opening match in the FIVB World League Final.
Canada overcame a 0-2 deficit in sets to take the match 3-2 (20-25, 21-25, 25-23, 25-21, 15-11).
Watch as Canada battles Brazil in FIVB Volleyball World League Friday at 3:30 p.m. ET on Sportsnet ONE | TV schedule Canada is ranked 18th in the world and Russia second. The Russians were playing their 73rd World League Final match while Canada was playing its first.
Gord Perrin of Creston, B.C., led the Canadian attack with 20 points, Gavin Schmitt of Saskatoon, who missed the last five matches due to a leg injury, added 13 and Fred Winters of Victoria chipped in 11.
Canada coach Glenn Hoag said there is still room for improvement despite the incredible win.
"I’m very happy (with the win), it’s a big step for us to come here, our program has evolved in the last six years and this is a great accomplishment," said Hoag, "but this tournament is far from over, and it’s going to be a big fight tomorrow against an excellent team again."
Canada reached the final by placing first in Group C during the preliminary round with a record of 8-2. Canada has won seven straight matches with Thursday’s win.
In the Pool E World League Final standings, Russia (1-1) is first with three points, Canada (1-0) second with two and Brazil (0-1) third at 1 point. In five set matches the winning team gets two points and the loser one. Russia beat Brazil in five on Wednesday.
In Pool D, Bulgaria (1-0) is first with three points while Argentina (0-1) and Italy (0-0) have no points. Italy faces Bulgaria later Thursday. The top-two in each group advance to the semis on Saturday.
Canada plays the number-one ranked Brazilians on Friday.Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., on April 17. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The rise of Donald Trump has generated remarkable global interest in the U.S. presidential campaign — and even the North Koreans are commenting on the proposals of the business mogul.
During an interview with CNN, a Pyongyang-based official said comments made by Trump about nuclear proliferation were "totally absurd and illogical."
"The U.S. tells us to give up our nuclear program, is preparing a nuclear attack against us, and on the other hand would tell its allies to have nuclear weapons. Isn't this (a) double standard?" Ri Jong Ryul, deputy director general of the Institute of International Studies in Pyongyang, told the American broadcaster.
Ri was referring to comments made by Trump in an interview with the New York Times, in which the presidential hopeful suggested that Japan and South Korea could build up nuclear arsenals so that they would not have to depend on the United States so much. In the interview, Trump also had suggested that he would consider removing American troops from these countries if they did not contribute more funding to help house and feed them. The comments have drawn criticism from a variety of foreign-policy analysts.
Ri said Trump exemplified a broader U.S. hostility toward North Koreans. "Simply put, America's hostile acts against us are making the situation on the Korean Peninsula worse," Ri said.
The remarks from Ri appear to be the first time that a North Korean official has directly commented on Trump's statements or his place in the presidential race (though one satirical Twitter account recently misled many into believing that North Korea had referred to Trump as a "noted scholar"). While North Korean state media often criticizes foreign leaders, including President Obama, it has not followed the 2016 U.S. election cycle closely. Ri told CNN that North Koreans "don't care who becomes next U.S. President," adding that both Republicans and Democrats would continue the United States' hostile policy toward North Korea.
Despite sanctions and international isolation, North Korea has pursued a viable nuclear weapon program for years. On Monday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Pyongyang appears to be preparing for a fifth nuclear test soon.
More on WorldViews
No, North Korea did not offer support for ‘noted scholar’ Donald Trump
North Korea’s making a lot of threats these days. How worried should we be?A lot of us chuckled when we saw Google Cardboard for the first time, but it’s actually quite genius. Google shared today that its virtual reality experience Google Cardboard is now available in 39 languages and over 100 countries for both Android and iOS.
The developer docs are now in 10 languages, to make the VR experience even more worldwide.
The 15 million installs of Cardboard apps is pretty impressive, given that we all thought it was a gimmick. Truth is, it’s the way that most people will experience virtual reality for the first time…and before they buy expensive equipment like an Oculus.
Want to travel to beautiful places but don’t have the cash? Google Street View now works with Cardboard, so just update the app for iOS or Android and pop Cardboard onto your device.The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was delete. Other matters discussed here are not relevant to the clear consensus that this does not (yet) meet Wikipedia's notability threshold. JohnCD (talk) 17:16, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
Another altcoin article. Reads like a WP:PROMO in addition to failing WP:GNG due to lack of sources. Citation Needed | Talk 20:53, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
Comment This is great...an AfD with the start of it saying "Another alcoin article" from the creator of Dogecoin. I love to see how impartial you can be. Much hate, no value Huey2323 (talk) 18:16, 14 January 2014 (UTC) The difference is though, Dogecoin is clearly notable, due to the multiple nontrivial mentions in reliable sources (even if it is as a joke). Maybe we should compare? Stablecoin vs Dogecoin. Not that this is relevant, of course (WP:OTHERSTUFF). If you want to make an actual accusation of WP:COI based on that, then feel free, otherwise please stop saying the same thing over and over (although, even if the original poster did have COI, that wouldnt affect the people voting delete). Benboy00 (talk) 18:53, 14 January 2014 (UTC) In addition, the article creator seems to be a WP:SPA with his/her only edits on one article that he created. Citation Needed | Talk 21:06, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
Delete Both of those references are press releases by Stablecoin. Stablecoin has re-started very recently, and this page is no doubt part of their "awareness campaign". They desperately need exposure (because the more people that are interested, the higher the price will be), and they seem pretty desperate to keep the price high. Also, there doesnt seem to be any news. The problem with things like this is that when theyre starting up, its pretty much a pyramid/ponzi scheme. It rewards early investors to the point that using it as a currency would be silly. The reason i think this should be deleted, though, is because its not notable (yet?) and is clearly promotional. Benboy00 (talk) 22:31, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
The source just added by a different SPA is also a press release from Stablecoin. Benboy00 (talk) 22:34, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
Comment - I am declaring my neutrality in this discussion due to me being a regular of /g/ and /pol/, which happens to be main hotspots for discussion regarding this specific coin. I've also made a statement on a StableCoin general on 4chan (listed here at http://i.imgur.com/nkzQSGZ.png, because 4chan is blacklisted) explaining the issues that the article currently faces. Citation Needed | Talk 22:58, 7 January 2014 (UTC) There is a local source from a NBC affiliate in Virginia that talks about the coin, but this won't be enough. Either way, here's the source: http://www.wsls.com/story/24227113/innovative-bitcoin-alternative-stablecoin-posts-strong-gains-in-return Citation Needed | Talk 23:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC) Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. Martin 4 5 1 23:03, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
Thats from here, which is a press release. I'm not sure if we can rly count that as a reliable source, although maybe since the local news service reposted it, it might count (not sure of the exact rules on that). Benboy00 (talk) 04:01, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. Martin 4 5 1 23:04, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
Delete - the article reads like an advertisement. SamanthaPuckettIndo (talk) 23:36, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
- the article reads like an advertisement. SamanthaPuckettIndo (talk) 23:36, 7 January 2014 (UTC) Comment - I am, along with others, actively changing the page due to the direction of the text in the article. When the page was first created it did sound like a promotional page. I have removed a lot of wording that would make it look that way. I am continuing to pull sources and other information from the developer to expand on the history and revisions of the topic. I will continue to update as the information comes in. Huey2323 (talk) 14:32, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Comment As it stands, the entirety of the section "mixing service" is a copyvio from here. The problem with all these sites is that none of them count as a reliable source under WP:RELIABLE. This is, as stated before, "just another altcoin article". Bitcoin is notable because it has a whole heap of news coverage (and some serious adoption). Coinye is notable because it has a load of news coverage. This, however, does not have coverage in reliable independent sources. Of the current 8 sources: 3 are forums, 1 is a blogspot page, 3 are crypto-currency specialist websites, and the last is a press release website. Unless this changes, the page is unlikely to remain. Benboy00 (talk) 15:33, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Comment Therefore, from your reasoning, in order to be "relevant" the "news" has to cover it? That doesn't seem to be the way to determine relevancy due to the slant of popular new organizations. As I stated before, I will be updating the page along with references to make it less than promotional. You are wrong about who copied from where...The mixing information was copied from here [1] which is directly from the developer. Huey2323 (talk) 16:27, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
It's not his reasoning, is the standard Wikipedia policy: WP:GNG. Smite-Meister (talk) 18:19, 8 January 2014 (UTC) It doesn't matter where it was copied from unless that source had a compatible CCP License (which it doesn't). Copying verbatim is not allowed. Please see WP:COPYPASTE. Also, as smite-meister says, WP:GNG is wikipedia policy, and it does make sense. There are also several other policies that this page probably fails, like WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. Benboy00 (talk) 09:21, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
Delete - electronic currency article of unclear notability. Refs provided are forums and marketing/press release sites and not RS coverage. A search revealed no significant RS coverage. As mentioned above, article was created by an SPA as possibly promotional.Dialectric (talk) 17:32, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Delete - Utter failure of GNG. Sources are blogs or promotional press releases. Joint work of several SPA authors. I only wish that there was a faster way to delete articles like this. Smite-Meister (talk) 18:16, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Delete: StableCoin looks as if it has potential, but it still doesn't pass the GNG. Perhaps in the future. Tractor Tyres (talk) 16:01, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
Delete. No independent coverage in reliable sources. This reads like the articles for non-notable businesses that get deleted all the time. I suspect it was written with a similar promotional purpose in mind. Lagrange613 01:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
Comment This looks like a WP:SNOWBALL. Any admins want to delete? Benboy00 (talk) 01:39, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
Review Article has been improved and its sources as well, if you think it should be rewritten just rewrite it not delete. --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 09:31, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
Comment Unfortunately, sources have not actually been improved. Since I listed the sources and why they are not suitable (8th Jan), nothing has been added. The people here don't seem to think the article should be rewritten (certainly I dont), we think it should be deleted. Benboy00 (talk) 11:45, 11 January 2014 (UTC) Comment Unfortunately, you have created such a rapport with the 4chan community, they seem to think that your suggestion to delete this page is highly regarded. In your previous post you recommend that it be deleted but it seems that you have an agenda (http://i.imgur.com/nkzQSGZ.png). I have updated the page to not be promotional but only facts that haven't reported by multiple people (including the actual developer). If people still think that it needs changed, please let me know. Comment First of all, please sign your posts (4~'s). Next, thats not me, thats the nominator. Your link doesnt really show that he has an agenda. It shows that he's following wikipedia policy. The thing you dont seem to understand is that we dont think this article could necessarily be improved, we think it shouldnt exist in any form (at least with this title). You cannot make a subject more notable by editing wikipedia. There is nothing you can do to this article to change our minds unless you can find reliable sources for it (that satisfy WP:GNG). This has nothing to do with 4chan (I dont think I've even visited 4chan in the past few years) and I would be surprised if many of the people responding here have even seen that thread. Just because people disagree with you, doesnt mean they have an agenda, and thats actually quite a serious accusation. Since that link clearly doesnt show an agenda, do you have any other evidence? Thanks, Benboy00 (talk) 18:06, 11 January 2014 (UTC) First off, I uploaded that myself to declare myself neutral in this discussion because I do have a potential WP:COI with this coin due to me visiting /g/ regularly (apparently, you visit /g/ too, so we both have 'em). Secondly, my nomination doesn't count as a vote or anything like that, except to bring to attention possible concerns and problems with the article. Thirdly, the consensus seems to be plenty for deletion regardless of any "agenda" because so far the article has not been improved according to the eyes of the community. You won't change any minds by accusing me of having an agenda, but you can change minds if there is massive improvement. Citation Needed | Talk 22:29, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Delete. Subject fails notability. Did not find mention in any reliable sources in my Google searches of books, newspapers, academic journals/sources, or in the first 50 search results returned by Google's web search. I tried verifying reliability of cited sources within the article, and all failed to meet WP:RS; they were not close calls, and were so far from being reliable that I removed the citations and cited claims. Without any reliable sources to work from, the article cannot be improved. Please post any reliable sources on the topic if you find them. --Agyle (talk) 18:29, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
. Subject fails notability. Did not find mention in any reliable sources in my Google searches of books, newspapers, academic journals/sources, or in the first 50 search results returned by Google's web search. I tried verifying reliability of cited sources within the article, and all failed to meet WP:RS; they were not close calls, and were so far from being reliable that I removed the citations and cited claims. Without any reliable sources to work from, the article cannot be improved. Please post any reliable sources on the |
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MAR191408 ZORRO LEGENDARY ADVENTURES BOOK 2 #4 LTD ED CVR $9.99Timeline of the far future is one of my favorite pages on Wikipedia. It details what might happen to humanity, human artifacts, the Earth, the solar system, and the Universe from 10,000 years from now until long past the heat death of the Universe. Information is Beautiful has made a lovely infographic of the timeline.
Reading through the timeline is a glorious way to spend time…here are a few favorites I noticed this time around as well as some from my first post.
August 20, 10,663: “A simultaneous total solar eclipse and transit of Mercury.”
20,000 years: “The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the 1,000 sq mi area of Ukraine and Belarus left deserted by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, becomes safe for human life.”
296,000 years: “Voyager 2 passes within 4.3 light-years of Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.”
1 million years: “Highest estimated time until the red supergiant star Betelgeuse explodes in a supernova. The explosion is expected to be easily visible in daylight.”
1 million years: “On the Moon, Neil Armstrong’s ‘one small step’ footprint at Tranquility Base will erode by this time, along with those left by all twelve Apollo moonwalkers, due to the accumulated effects of space weathering.”
15.7 million: “Half-life of iodine-129, the most durable long-lived fission product in uranium-derived nuclear waste.”
100 million years: “Future archaeologists should be able to identify an ‘Urban Stratum’ of fossilized great coastal cities, mostly through the remains of underground infrastructure such as building foundations and utility tunnels.”
1 billion years: “Estimated lifespan of the two Voyager Golden Records, before the information stored on them is rendered unrecoverable.”
4 billion years: “Median point by which the Andromeda Galaxy will have collided with the Milky Way, which will thereafter merge to form a galaxy dubbed ‘Milkomeda’.”
7.59 billion years: The Earth and Moon are very likely destroyed by falling into the Sun, just before the Sun reaches the tip of its red giant phase and its maximum radius of 256 times the present-day value. Before the final collision, the Moon possibly spirals below Earth’s Roche limit, breaking into a ring of debris, most of which falls to the Earth’s surface.
100 billion years: “The Universe’s expansion causes all galaxies beyond the Milky Way’s Local Group to disappear beyond the cosmic light horizon, removing them from the observable universe.”Many times the sisters at some of the monasteries I visit will try to commit one or more akathists or supplicatory canons to memory. Here is how they do this:
Some print off the prayers they want to learn and cut them into small sections to keep in their pocket. When they are doing some of the more simpler jobs or tasks around the monastery they take out one piece of paper at a time and lay it in front of them. Then they say that section over and over again until they have it committed to memory. Afterward they take out the next piece of paper, adding another stanza or ode and so on until they have memorized the whole thing.
Others will use small prayer books to do they same thing – taking them out to read when they get stumped.
In the monastery there is always work to be done, rarely will a nun find herself idle. But in the world we are constantly waiting in lines at the grocery store, at the mechanic’s shop etc. And so, even if we don’t particularly care to commit a large prayer to memory, we can keep our mind occupied with prayer.
I wanted to memorize some prayers, so I took a tip from the sisters and made my own miniature prayer book. I thought writing out the prayers would help. So I that’s what I did. I keep it in my bag so that I have it wherever I go.
When I’m on the bus or waiting for something I pull it out and read an akathist. It only fits two akasthists and a few other favourite prayers but it is very helpful – mostly because it’s size makes reading the prayers in public somewhat discreet.
You don’t have to hand-write a prayer book, you could simply glue photocopies of prayers in a small book, or keep a larger prayer book with you. The point is to offer our attention – our nous – to God, to make an effort to “pray without ceasing”. I haven’t memorized any akathists yet, but I try to tell myself the point is to pray them, not accomplish something arbitrarily so I can feel self-righteous.
And besides, I love an excuse to try and make something look pretty. Having a notebook filled with prayers and icons and a little calligraphy makes the work worthwhile.
“Be thankful to God that this desire for the Prayer and this facility in it have been manifested in you. It is a natural consequence which follows constant effort and spiritual achievement…. Now you see with what admirable gifts God in His love for mankind has endowed even the bodily nature of man. You see what feelings can be produced even outside a state of grace in a soul which is sinful and with passions unsubdued, as you yourself have experienced. But how wonderful, how delightful and how consoling a thing it is when God is pleased to grant the gift of self-acting spiritual prayer, and to cleanse the soul from all sensuality! It is a condition which is impossible to describe, and the discovery of this mystery of prayer is a foretaste on earth of the bliss of Heaven. Such happiness is reserved for those who seek after God in the simplicity of a loving heart.” (The Way of the Pilgrim – a word from the pilgrim’s spiritual father)
AdvertisementsHomeless Veterans Face Challenges Beyond The Rental Check
Enlarge this image toggle caption Heiko Kueverling /iStockphoto Heiko Kueverling /iStockphoto
The Obama administration says it wants to end veterans homelessness by the end of this year — but it's not going to happen. That's partly because, despite government support, many landlords remain reluctant to rent to homeless individuals.
At the end of October, almost 6,200 homeless military veterans had government vouchers to cover their rent, but they had yet to find landlords willing to accept them. Among those vets is Joseph Coles of Washington, D.C., where you're lucky to get a one-bedroom apartment for less than $1,400 a month.
"At one time you could get an apartment anywhere for nothing," Coles says. "Now, with so many people moving in there, we're at the mercy of the landlords and apartment complexes. They can choose who they want and who they don't want."
So Coles, who's been searching since September, has yet to find a place. He's in temporary transitional housing now but doesn't know what he'll do if an apartment doesn't come through soon.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Pam Fessler/NPR Pam Fessler/NPR
"I shudder to think about that," he says.
The problem is popping up everywhere, especially in tight rental markets like Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco. In Miami, government vouchers will cover $900 a month in rent for a one-bedroom apartment, but those are hard to find.
"We're out there begging, pleading and doing whatever is necessary to persuade landlords to participate in our program," says Ron Book, chairman of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, which is trying to place 200 homeless vets by year's end. Earlier this month, the trust held a telethon with a local TV station, which produced dozens of promising leads.
Book says they're fighting not only a tight rental market but stereotypes as well.
"Quite candidly, look, there's always going to be some hesitancy by landlords to house somebody that they perceive having lived on the streets," Book says.
Part of his appeal, then, has been to make sure landlords know that their new tenants have been screened and that, once housed, they'll get whatever support they need, like mental health services and job counseling.
Still, Eric Grumdahl, who is coordinating Minnesota's effort to end veterans homelessness, knows landlords are being asked to take a leap of faith. His state recently decided to offer property owners a $1,000 signing bonus for each vet they house by the end of January — "to recognize that we are asking landlords to affirmatively choose to house veterans who, frankly, in this market would be very easy to screen out," Grumdahl says.
"They're often veterans that are facing challenges that may have to do with the fact that they have poor rental history or very little rental history."
And it's not just veterans. Washington, D.C., is trying to house 700 homeless families and another 1,000 individuals as soon as possible. The city just hired a team of navigators to work with potential landlords.
It can be a tough sell, though. Navigator LaShun Lawson recently tried to finalize a deal with property manager Oswald Durant, of Oasis Realty, who has six available units and wants to help — but needs some reassurance.
First, he wants to make sure that the apartments will be inspected by the city quickly, so tenants can move in as soon as possible.
"Because everyone wants it quick," Durant tells Lawson. "You want it quickly. We want it quickly. We definitely don't want to go over 30 days."
The city has agreed to advance Durant $1,000 for each apartment he holds open for a month, until the deal can be finalized.
The guaranteed rental payments are attractive to Durant, but like other landlords, he also worries about getting mired in bureaucracy, or having to deal with a problem tenant on his own.
"So who is it that comes to visit the client in their house every four months? The caseworker?" he asks.
Lawson assures him that the city will be sending caseworkers to make sure the tenants are adjusting and receiving the help they need.
Eventually, Durant agrees, on a trial basis. He says if it works out, he might have some additional units to rent out to homeless families in the future.fotosinteresantes via Flikr [Note: This is an unusually controversial piece, even for my blog, for reasons that will quickly become obvious. Linkages between Al-Qa'ida and Russian intelligence have been discussed in hushed tones among spies in many countries, for years, and this matter has been a "hobby file" of mine for some time. Here is a think-piece on it, in the hope of spurring additional discussion and research into this important yet murky matter. This is particularly necessary given rising tensions between Moscow and the West at present. Considering the subject, I have eschewed my usual hyperlinks in favor of proper end-notes.]
"There are two histories: The official history, mendacious, which is given to us; and the secret history, where you find the real causes of events, a shameful history."
- Honoré de Balzac
The history of al-Qa'ida has been extensively documented in many languages. Since the 9/11 attacks on the United States, massive research has been devoted to uncovering the origins of the global jihad movement, its strategies, concepts of operations, and ultimate aspirations.[1]
Such works have been assisted by the willingness of al-Qa'ida to talk openly about some parts of its narrative. While many aspects of al-Qa'ida's almost thirty-year history have been examined in impressive detail, other parts of the story remain shrouded in mystery. In some cases, gaps are caused by a lack of information available to analysts and researchers. However, other underreported stories in the development of the global jihad movement remain untold, or unexplained, by apparent design.
No greater example exists of this "blank page" in the al-Qa'ida story than its connections to foreign intelligence services. While it is generally known that bin Laden's legionaries have fostered ties, at times, with secret services as varied as the Saudi, Pakistani, Sudanese, Iranian, Iraqi, and Bosnian, few details have emerged, thanks to the desire on all sides to keep the saga out of the media spotlight.[2]
The murkiest of these relations, however, has been the connection between al-Qa'ida and Russian intelligence. While the outlines of the story have been known for years, and even admitted by Moscow and the mujahidin, details remain elusive. Moreover, asking important questions about this relationship seems to be an issue few appear interested in probing deeply, even in the United States.
That Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's right-hand man and the leader of the global jihad movement since bin Laden's death in May 2011, spent almost a half-year in the mid-1990s in the custody of Russian intelligence is admitted by both sides and is a matter of public record.[3]
Just as significant, Zawahiri's Russian sojourn occurred at a pivotal point in the development of al-Qa'ida; the shift in strategy, resulting in attacks on the "far enemy" (i.e. the United States), the road leading to 9/11, occurred after Zawahiri's imprisonment by the Russians.
The outline of the story is clear.[4] At about 4 am on December 1, 1996, Zawahiri was detained in southern Russia while attempting to enter Chechnya, the breakaway province of Moscow recently roiled by war. Accompanying the doctor in the van were two other radicals from Egypt and a Chechen guide.
The Egyptians, wanted men in their home country and several others, were traveling under aliases; Zawahiri was "Abdullah Imam Mohammed Amin," according to the Sudanese passport he carried, which had stamps from many countries - among them Yemen, Malaysia, Singapore - he had visited in the 20 months before his arrest.
Zawahiri's two Egyptian companions were veteran mujahidin from Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), the group Zawahiri had been associated with for years and had headed since 1993. Ahmad Salama Mabruk ran EIJ's activities in Azerbaijan under the cover of a trading firm called Bavari-C, while Mahmud Hisham al-Hennawi had extensive experience on jihad in parts of Asia.
The three Arabs were extensively interrogated by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), which noted the inmates' religious fervor, and the surprising support they received from Islamic organizations around the Muslim world. Twenty-six imams signed an appeal for the release of the three "businessmen"; others denounced Russian authorities of doing "the devil's work" by detaining the hard-praying Muslims.
The FSB had ample reason to doubt the Arabs' cover story. Among the items confiscated from the trio included details about bank accounts in Hong Kong, mainland China, Malaysia, and the U.S. (specifically St. Louis), plus substantial cash in seven currencies. Their laptop computer was seized and subjected to forensic analysis by the FSB.
"Mr. Amin," whose Sudanese passport depicted a Western-dressed middle-aged man with a very short beard, arrived in Russia possessing two forged graduation certificates from Cairo University's medical faculty, with differing dates. FSB investigation of Bavari-C, the EIJ front company in Baku, quickly determined that no such firm existed in Azerbaijan.
Radical Muslims in Russia, including one member of the Duma, pleaded for their release, explaining that the Arabs had come to Russia to "study the market for food trade." Various activists from across the region likewise wrote letters on the men's behalf, claiming they embodied "honesty and decency"; the advocates included leading Arab mujahidin, among them Tharwat Salah Shehata, later head of EIJ.
When Shehata got permission to visit "Mr. Amin" in his prison cell, he was given an encrypted letter by the inmate; after the visit, the FSB claimed to have found $3,000 in the cell occupied by the Arabs.
When the case finally went to court in April 1997, "Mr. Amin" prayed hard and lied effectively, claiming that he had entered Russia "to find out the price for leather, medicine, and other goods." Rejecting the prosecution's request for a three-year sentence, the judge gave them six months each; almost immediately they were released, time served.
The FSB returned the men their possessions, including the cash, communications gear, and the laptop. After their release, Zawahiri spent ten days clandestinely meeting with Islamists in Dagestan, which presumably had been the original purpose of his trip to the region.
Shortly thereafter, he headed for Afghanistan to establish his fateful alliance with bin Laden, which was cemented in the mid-February 1998 announcement of a new partnership between the men and their organizations in a Global Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders. Thus was al-Qa'ida officially born and the path to 9/11 was established.
Zawahiri has been tight-lipped about his half-year in Russia; his numerous writings and pronouncements about his life barely mention the tale. "God blinded them to our identities," he explained. The FSB agrees that they failed to identify the leading holy warrior. "In 1997, Russian special services were not aware of al-Zawahiri," elaborated an FSB spokesman in 2003: "However, later, using various databases, we managed to identify this former detainee."[5]
There are many reasons to doubt the official story told by both sides in the affair. In the first place, Zawahiri was one of the world's most wanted terrorists in 1996, having played a leading role in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981; the doctor's role in the subsequent public trial was televised in many countries.
He was hardly a secret mujahid. Furthermore, it is difficult to believe that a security service as proficient and thorough as the FSB did not have its interest piqued by the appearance of three Arab mystery men, bearing multiple identities and cash, in the middle of a warzone.
It is equally difficult to accept that the FSB was unable to uncover the mysteries contained in Zawahiri's laptop - as the Americans would do after many such laptops belonging to al-Qa'ida leadership were captured in Afghanistan after 9/11 - had the Russians really wanted to.
Last, it can be assumed that the FSB would have tortured the Arabs to obtain information, had that been deemed necessary; and Zawahiri's breaking by the Egyptian security service through torture in the 1980s is a matter of public record, and a subject of some remorse by the al-Qa'ida leader.
What, then, is to be made of Dr. Zawahiri's Russian sojourn? Few have bothered to ask the question in any detail.[6] While some conspiracy theorists have touched the issue, they have shed little light on the real story.[7]
While the idea that Russian intelligence may have developed a relationship with Zawahiri sounds fantastic to most in the West, the notion is far from implausible, and is consistent with known Soviet/Russian espionage practices. During the Cold War, the KGB had robust ties with many terrorist groups, including several from the Middle East.
Its links to the PLO, including arms and training for cadres, were substantial for decades, while Palestinian groups like PFLP-GC were, in effect, wholly owned subsidiaries of the KGB. It would be naïve to think such ties evaporated with the Soviet Union.
Moreover, anyone acquainted with the Russian practice of provokatsiya(provocation) as Moscow's preferred counterterrorism technique, finds the idea of a Russian relationship with al-Qa'ida to be entirely plausible. Indeed, such is the easiest explanation for Zawahiri's six months in Russian custody and sudden release back to wage jihad.
Hard evidence about what Zawahiri was doing in Russian custody has not been forthcoming. Dissident FSB Colonel Aleksandr Litvinenko made explosive claims. In a 2005 interview, Litvinenko asserted that Zawahiri actually underwent training by the FSB in Dagestan during his half-year in Russian custody, and that Russian intelligence then dispatched him to Afghanistan to become bin Laden's right-hand man. "I worked in the same division [of the FSB]," he stated, "I have grounds to assert that al-Zawahiri is not the only link between the FSB and al-Qa'ida."[8]
Litvinenko's assertions are impossible to substantiate, though his assassination in London a little over a year after giving that interview, apparently at the hands of Russian intelligence, gives the claims perhaps more believability than they might otherwise warrant.[9]
Just as important, it is known that Russian intelligence had ties to Islamist extremists in Chechnya long before Zawahiri entered the region. From the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian intelligence formed discreet ties with radical Islamists in the Caucasus, including men who would later become leading mujahidin.
In perhaps the best example, Shamil Basayev, the long-serving emir of the mujahidin in Chechnya, was an agent of Russian military intelligence (GRU) in the 1990s. In 1992-93, he and his brother Shirvani fought in Abkhazia against Georgian forces, leading fighters as surrogates for Moscow's policies in the breakaway region.[10]
Although Basayev was for many years Russia's most wanted man and alleged to be behind dozens of terrorist attacks on Russian soil, his collaboration with Russian intelligence has long been something of an open secret. Not long before Basayev's death in July 2006, apparently at the hands of the FSB, a GRU officer cryptically noted to the media, "We know everything about him."[11]
Secular elements of the Chechen independence movement have long alleged collaboration between Moscow and the mujahidin, with the aim of discrediting the nationalist cause by tarring it with extremism and terrorism. Moderate imams in Chechnya have been reluctant to have ties to more radical Muslims, fearing them to be Russian agents provocateurs.[12]
Collusion between radical Islamists and Russian special services in the Caucasus would be fully consistent with traditional Soviet/Russian counterterrorism techniques; it also adds a very different dimension to understanding the Chechen wars of the last fifteen years, and their links to the global jihad.
The mujahidin-led invasion of Dagestan in August 1999 in brigade strength that helped trigger the Second Chechen War was led by Shamil Basayev. Moscow publicly blamed "Al-Qa'ida-Wahhabite aggression" for that event, using it as justification to restart the war on terms more favorable to Moscow.
But what, then, is to be made of Basayev, who has been memorably described as "a GRU staff member with a great deal of work experience?"[13] The other direct cause of the Second Chechen War, the bloody apartment bombings around Moscow in August 1999 that killed over 300 civilians, likewise remain shrouded in mystery.
Basayev was blamed for those atrocities, too, but what really happened continues to be hotly controversial. The case for some FSB involvement in the bombings, always strong, has grown stronger over the past decade, yet remains a highly taboo topic in Russia.[14]
What, then, can we conclude about al-Qa'ida's murky Russian connection? Unsurprisingly, Dr. Zawahiri has had little to say about his half-year adventure with the FSB. He has often criticized Russia and its policies, sometimes in vehement terms.
Yet he speaks of Iran with equal venom, and al-Qa'ida's discreet yet detectable relationship with Iranian intelligence goes back to at least 1996, and apparently continues to the present day.
His two Egyptian cellmates aren't available to add details. Mahmud Hisham al-Hennawi stayed in the Caucasus, was convicted in Egypt in 1998 on terrorism charges in absentia, receiving a ten year sentence, and was reportedly killed in action in Chechnya in 2005.[15]
Ahmad Salama Mabruk was arrested in Azerbaijan in 1998 on terrorism charges, and was extradited to Egypt, where he was convicted on numerous charges and sent to prison.[16] The FSB, to no one's surprise, has said nothing publicly about this case except for a brief press release in 2003.
It is fanciful to suggest that any formal alliance exists between Moscow and al-Qa'ida; bin Laden's mujahidin have worked with several foreign security agencies in the service of the jihad, but have never been willing to put themselves fully at the disposal of any of them.[17]
Nevertheless, it seems justified, based on the available evidence, to suggest that Dr. Zawahiri reached a quid pro quo with Moscow while he was in FSB custody. That he underwent FSB training appears plausible; that there may be some kind of relationship even today between Russia and al-Qa'ida exists within the realm of possibility.
Russia, with its large, growing, and potentially restless Muslim minority, would have ample motivation to reach terms with al-Qa'ida, in the hope of stemming radicalism.
Might Moscow have suggested that it would look the other way about al-Qa'ida's activities in Chechnya as long as bin Laden and Zawahiri left Russia alone otherwise? It surely appears significant that Zawahiri led bin Laden down the path of global jihad, and direct confrontation with the United States, after emerging from his half-year as a guest of the FSB.
As President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made clear, a unipolar, American-led global system is not in Russia's interests. To this day, Russia has endured many attacks by Chechen militants, but no confirmed acts of terrorism perpetrated by al-Qa'ida Central. This vexing issue continues to offer more questions than answers, and needs additional research, particularly considering the state of relations between Moscow and the West.
SOURCES:
[1] For a detailed example based on research of what al-Qa'ida thinks about these issues, see this author's The Terrorist Perspectives Project: Strategic and Operational Views of al-Qa'ida (U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2008), co-authored with Mark Stout and Jessica Huckabey.
[2] The most information is available about the robust ties between al-Qa'ida and Bosnian intelligence, with Iranian assistance, in the 1990s; see this author's Unholy Terror: Bosnia, al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad (Zenith Press, 2007).
[3]Agentsvo Voyennykh Novostey (Moscow), 23 Apr 2003.
[4] The most detailed account is an article by Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison, "A Terrorist's Odyssey," The Wall Street Journal, 2 Jul 2002. For a Russian perspective see the article by Yuriy Tyssovskiy, "Bin Laden nomer 2 sdelalo vremya v nashykh tyur'makh," in the weekly newspaper Vek (Moscow), Vol.22, 12 Jul 2002.
[5]Agentsvo Voyennykh Novostey (Moscow), 23 Apr 2003.
[6] An exception is Evgenii Novikov, "A Russian Agent at the Right Hand of bin Laden?" Terrorism Monitor (Jamestown Foundation), Vol.2, No.1, 15 Jan 2004, which provides more questions than answers.
[7] For examples see the articles by Michel Elbaz of Axis Information and Analysis (axisglobe.com), specifically "Russian Secret Services' Links with Al-Qaeda" (18 Jul 2005), and "Russian Secrets of Al-Qaeda's Number Two" (19 Jul 2005).
[8] Krystyna Kurczab-Redlich, "Drogi terroryzmu - Kto wspiera napastnicy?,"Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), 16 Jul 2005.
[9] See Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko, Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB (Free Press, 2007).
[10] Patrick Cockburn, "Russia 'planned Chechen war before bombings'," The Independent (London), 29 Jan 2000.
[11] Svetlana Meteleva, "Chechnya: my mozhem ubit' Basayeva, no nikto ne dolzhen," Moskovskiy Komsolmolets (Moscow), 21 Mar 2005.
[12] For a detailed examination of this viewpoint see the declaration of Chechenpress, 10 Jul 2009, available in both Russian and English at chechenpress.info.
[13] This murky relationship is explained well by Boris Kagarlitskiy, "My ne govorim, chtoby terroristy, no my pomoch' im?" Novaya Gazeta (Moscow), 23 Jan 2000.
[14] The best case for the "FSB did it" hypothesis remains David Satter, Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State (Yale Univ. Press, 2003), pp. 24-33. In September 2009, GQ magazine refused to run in its Russian edition an article by investigative journalist Scott Anderson entitled "Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power," which added details to the FSB role in the 1999 apartment bombings, based on testimony by Mikhail Trepashin, a former KGB/FSB officer - see David Folkenflik, "Why GQ Doesn't Want Russians to Read its Story," National Public Radio (npr.org), 4 Sep 2009.
[15] "Death of Senior EIJ Member Mahmud Hisham al-Hennawi Reported in the Caucasus," 17 Apr 2005, at globalterroralert.com.
[16] "Razvedyvatel'naya sluzhba bor'by protiv Islamskovo dzhikhada," Ekho(Baku), 13 Oct 2001.
[17] Efforts to depict such an "alliance" are overstated, e.g. Konstantin Preobazhensky, "Russia and Islam are not separate: Why Russia backs al-Qaeda,"Intel Analyses, 31 Aug 2007.In a Boston comedy show last night, comedian Wanda Sykes was loudly booed by large portions of the audience near the end of her set as she referred to President-elect Donald Trump as a “racist, sexist, homophobic person.”
Sykes set at the Comics Come Home |
of 1963," when the picture was taken. And to the extent the group was active at all by then, he said, it would have been in greater New York City, not a city in the South.
In other words, whatever Oswald was doing pamphleting on that day in New Orleans was likely a freelance effort to "provoke something" that would get him attention, Gosse said. Tying Cruz to the photograph as an associate of Oswald "just looks like a fabrication," Gosse said.
Other experts on the period agreed that it was unlikely that Oswald and Cruz had crossed paths.
"Top leaders of anti-Castro organizations claim not to have met Cruz, and I have never come across his name in declassified records," said María Cristina García, a Cornell University historian and author of Havana USA: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994. "You can be sure that if there is any dirt on Rafael Cruz, the Castro government will find it and release it."
William M. LeoGrande, an American University government professor and author of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana, agreed. "I have never come across Mr. Cruz's name as a pro-Castro activist," he said.
David Abraham, a law professor at the University of Miami, concurred that the pairing sounds unlikely.
"I know of no evidence that would have put Cruz in the world of Oswald," Abraham said. "The Fair Play for Cuba Committee types were a mix of ideological supporters of socialist transformation and romantic innocents. Whatever one thinks Oswald was, Cruz was neither of these, so I would doubt that they would have met."
And Steven Beschloss, author of The Gunman and His Mother: Lee Harvey Oswald, Marguerite Oswald and The Making of an Assassin, finds nothing to the supposed link.
"Any effort to find a more meaningful connection that somehow implicates Cruz Sr. seems outlandish at best," Beschloss said.
Our ruling
Trump said that Rafael Cruz "was with Lee Harvey Oswald" before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The sole "evidence" for this claim is a grainy photograph that shows Oswald with a man who may bear a resemblance to Cruz. But experts tell PolitiFact that the image is too degraded to offer much confidence. At the same time, multiple experts about the world of early 1960s pro-Castro advocacy said they have never seen evidence of Cruz associating with Oswald and consider Trump’s claim implausible at best and ridiculous at worst.
We rate the claim Pants on Fire.
https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/c3361f8f-0108-4c22-874e-6ca77257190bGet the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
Ready at Dawn, the studio behind the upcoming third-person shooter, The Order: 1886, has revealed the game's visual quality could have only been achieved on the PlayStation 4.
Speaking at a recent Sony event in New York, J Goldberg, community manager at Ready at Dawn, said the studio came up with the idea for The Order: 1886 while still making games for the PSP. However, the game's main conceit--an experience that feels like a movie but plays like a game--required a console with the right technical specifications. "We couldn’t have achieved this graphical fidelity with any other console," Goldberg said.
The studio used full performance capture for all characters in the game, as well as the same character model for gameplay sequences and cutscenes, making the transition from one to the other almost seamless. "We're moving the camera in space, we're not loading in a video."
"We're moving the camera in space, we're not loading in a video." -- Goldberg
First announced at E3 2013, The Order: 1886 takes place in Victorian London, where a faster, stronger Industrial Revolution has created new technologies and gadgetry. But some Dickensian misery remains--the lower classes, unsatisfied with their lot in life, threaten the social order. Keeping order is a group of knights descended from King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, a group of morally just peacekeepers who protect the upper classes. Adding to the threat are packs of half-breed monsters--part-human, part-animal--who've been at war with the human race since the seventh century.
The Knights have an advantage--a supernatural element called Black Water, which allows them to move faster and heal more quickly, as well as a diverse range of sophisticated steampunk weapons. A few examples include a thermite rifle that shoots clouds of aluminium oxide pellets and an Arc Gun, which fires bolts of lightning.
"There hasn't really been a game set in this period," Goldberg said. "There were a lot of incredibly cool things that happened, with the government, with inventions, and so on--folks love that stuff. We knew we could have a lot of fun with it if we took that rich history and put our own spin on it."
The Order: 1886 launches exclusively on PS4 on February 20, 2015, and you can read more about our hands-on experience with the game at E3 right here.Feature Thu May 28 2009
For an occasional series in Transmission, we'll be revisiting the legacy of old music venues in the Chicago area that have since closed down — places long gone, boarded up and turned into condominiums or shiny storefronts. The places that once contained the voices of the passionate few who crammed themselves in compact spaces night after night to see their favorite underground band play that first chord. Starting off the series, Transmission looks at Off the Alley, an all-ages club in south suburban Homewood that was one of the first venues to host several influential punk bands, including The Queers, Alkaline Trio and Winepress. E-mail suggestions about clubs you would like to see featured to [email protected].
What remains: a storefront turned into a martial arts center, and, behind that, an alley, with three conspicuous blue garbage bins, overflowing with this week's trash from yesterday's memories. In three windows, there are painted images of familiar cartoon characters — one that looks like Clifford the Big Red Dog, Tweety Bird and Sylvester the Cat. Behind a No Parking sign, a "South Side Anger" sticker remains attached to the post.
Twenty years ago, teens from the south suburbs and northwest Indiana considered this alleyway their second home. When Fridays and the weekends finally came around, they drove or walked to this alley to check out Off the Alley, an all-ages music and dance club that opened in the fall of 1989 in downtown Homewood. A small October 13, 1989 Chicago Tribune news brief begins, "Homewood's first juice bar and dance club for teenagers will open in the back of a record store next month."
That record store is Record Swap, formerly at 18061 Dixie Hwy., now home to the Draco Academy of Martial Arts. The village board approved the club unanimously but only under certain conditions: owners Theodore and Robert Diener were required to have at least four security guards on duty while the club was open, "particularly to discourage customers from loitering in the alley and to enforce curfew restrictions."
A few years later, and all of these mundane village ordinance details didn't really matter anymore: Off the Alley was now a club, slowly attracting anyone with a punk heart or desire to dance away inhibitions. Part of its story begins with the people who danced.
Outsiders
Jessica Wolfe, 36, Chicago
Sometimes, a conga line would form. Wolfe loved the music at the club, but she also remembers spending hours dressing up with her sister to "to get our hair to do those unnatural things like get into spikes or teased up Siouxsie Sioux style. It was a bit of a punk-rock fashion show for us girls, and we loved it." All this for preparation for a night of dancing and music.
Wolfe began going to Off the Alley in the late 1980s, when she was 14 years old. She split her time between Off the Alley and Medusa's, another all-ages club.
"I used to find it fun when an impromptu conga line would happen to bands like Nitzer Ebb or Front 242," she remembers.
Wolfe grew up in nearby Park Forest and started going to Record Swap just as bands like The Cure and Depeche Mode began dominating her record collection.
"Back when I attended, it was mostly music, but I remember that it was a great place for dancing and I would play suggestions and music I couldn't hear anywhere else," she says.
DJs would spin anything from Bad Brains, or The Specials, to the Sisters of Mercy, and "they were not afraid to play the stuff that the radio wouldn't play, but what I was listening to."
Wolfe describes herself as someone who was "a bit of a nerd" back then, but at Off the Alley, she could wear her "black clothing, and dance around like a fool, and not feel too out of place." Teens like Wolfe, and many others, began to feel in place.
Off The Alley Dance (Courtesy Paul Rogers)
Paul Rogers, 35, Alsip
Rogers began going to the club in 1990 when he was 17 years old. He and his friends often shopped at Record Swap, run by the same owners as Off the Alley. "My friends and I used to always go shopping there and would hear the music always coming from the back of the store," Rogers says in an e-mail interview. "One day, we decided to check it out. It was great because it was an underage juice bar and it was some place for us to go on the weekends."
Even though the club didn't sell alcohol, Rogers and his friends would drink across the street before going to the club. He liked the club so much that he began working for Record Swap in 1992. In 1994, he began DJ'ing under the name DJ Nitz, spinning New Wave music from the '80s. Off the Alley was more than an important place for him at an important time — it was part of a movement too fluid to classify.
"Before Grunge," he recalls, "there were a lot of people already wearing flannels, Doc Marten boots, chains attached to wallets, piercing in weird places, people who'd wear all black (Goth), men who'd wear make-up! We kind of classified ourselves as Alternative back in the day. But recently that word has been thrown around and abused. It's not even worth using anymore. The crowd that hung around Off the Alley always seemed to be ahead of the times. What we were then is what Grunge and Goth became a few years later. This was a place we could all go and have a good time and listen to music that not many people have heard of at the time."
But the live bands, it turns out, weren't what first attracted Rogers to the club.
"I've never seen any concerts there," he says. "I just really enjoyed setting up the club. I used to have to set up the lights so the disco ball would shine just right. I would have to fill the smoke machine and make sure it worked. I'd also have to make sure the levels on the mix board were set right. I would lay out a set list to make sure I kept people dancing all night."
Kristen (Ulrich) Erickson, 34, Des Moines, Iowa
The dancing, it turns out, also attracted Erickson, who lived within walking distance to the club in the late '80s and early '90s. Erickson went to the club most Friday and Saturday nights, eager to move her way to the dance floor and meet new people beyond her classmates at Homewood-Flossmoor High School. "I feel like I was there all the time," she laughs in a phone interview from her home in Iowa.
Erickson and her family moved from Dolton to Homewood when she was in 7th grade because of the stronger education system. But her family was not as affluent as some of the families who lived in the area then, so she found herself feeling a little alienated in school.
"I was kind of quiet, nerdy and shy until right around age 15," she says. "I changed to a whole different group of friends and started feeling better about myself...I got more self-confident around then. Some people hit that point in college, some people when they're older. I hit it when I was 15."
Off the Alley, in Erickson's mind, was a place for these outsiders to hang out, even if they only saw each other at the club. "It was a great thing for me," she says. "I feel like it fit really well with my needs at the time."
Walking into the club, Erickson recalls turning into an alley in downtown Homewood and walking into a non-descript hallway. Turn left, and she would see a big room with a juice bar, a video screen and the dance floor. This club belonged to them.
"Although it was an all ages club, it really made me feel like I was going to a real club," she continues. "It had the feel of being a real legitimate club, and not being a thing for kids, even though it was for kids as an all-ages club."
Nearly every weekend, Erickson pressed her feet against large rectangular designs on the dance floor, where guys in combat boots would create mock mosh pits that were more polite than aggressive. She remembers Erasure songs playing often in the background.
While some people outside of the club took drugs and drank, Erickson said she never felt the pressure, "which was kind of nice."
"I did not drink. I did not do drugs. I didn't have sex then, and I didn't feel like that was a problem," she says.
And while a lot of beginning punk bands played Off the Alley, Erickson says she was more into the dance scene, but she never felt alienated from the punks.
"I'm 5 '2 and 115 pounds," she says. "I'm a tiny, little person. I was into the alternative music...but not super into the punk. I was more into the dancy kind of stuff. There was a whole mix of people there. I never felt like the people who listened to punk music had anything bad to say about me dancing."
Off The Alley (Courtesy of Steven Barick)
Young Punks
Another part of the story begins with the people who were there for the music. Pretty soon, an article in the Chicago Sun-Times would label them "young punks," and the "new generation of rock 'n' rollers."
David Stein, 32, Dyer, Ind.
Stein was there for the music. He started going to the club in the fall of 1992. He was a teenager at the time and living in Dyer, Ind., about 20 minutes from Homewood.
Before he and his friends had licenses to drive, they would hang out at The Rink, an indoor skating club in Merrillville, Ind. But, Stein says in an e-mail, they all knew that "Off the Alley to us was the little big time. It had an entire audience outside of the kids we knew that were into the same music as us. It had a real stage and a sound guy and even employees serving expensive pop."
Stein played guitar in a band called Catch 22, and frequented Off the Alley on weekends to hear his favorite bands. Some of Stein's favorite bands playing there included The Queers, Snap Judgment, Sled, Winepress, The Bollweevils and Waco 51.
Catch 22 played its first show at the club in 1993, though Stein recalls that he wasn't sure how they would be perceived "because our style of punk was more of the early 80's LA style" à la Black Flag, Circle Jerks and The Germs, whereas a lot of the other bands playing the club liked the more melodic punk sound of bands such as The Queers and Screeching Weasel. "[We were] kids from northwest Indiana who wanted to make a name for ourselves and our scene," he remembers.
Stein also recalls the inside of the club, a kind of second home to many teenagers. "I remember it smelled like Clove cigarettes, and it was hot as hell," he says. "It had a small back room to store the equipment before the shows, which is where the bands would hang out. There [were] a few booths along the back wall, but mostly, it was standing room."
By the mid-'90s, Off the Alley had slowly established itself as a destination club. In a 1995 Chicago Sun-Times article on all-age clubs, freelance writer Mo Ryan describes Off the Alley as the club where kids "sport the dyed hair or suspenders-and-Doc Martens skinhead look of punk's first wave, and a few of them recycle the elitist attitudes that drove the punk scene into the musical fringes in the late '80s and early '90s." She quotes one unnamed high school student who jokes, "My mom used to think they sacrificed animals here. She thinks a lot of freaks hang out here."
In her article, Ryan points to the importance of the all-ages scene, quoting a young promoter who says he tells up-coming bands to play the local all-ages circuit first before setting eyes on bigger clubs such as the Metro. She also points to a problem that would haunt Off the Alley: the lack of money in all-ages venues because they cannot sell alcohol.
One of the kids quoted in the article is 15-year-old Eric Boyle, who played in several bands, including Johnny One Note, The Laxatives, Stillwell and Kotter. Boyle told Ryan, "I come here to support bands because when I'm in a band, I want people to come and see me. It's important to support the bands, even if they're bad. If people tell them they (stink), they'll get better." Boyle, now 29, still remembers how Off the Alley affected him.
Eric Boyle playing in Stillwell
Eric Boyle, 29, Chicago
Boyle grew up in Homewood, about a mile away from OTA. He was about 13 when he first started going the club, lured to the club by his brother Mike's friends.
"The first time I went was with one of my brother's friends. He was walking past our house on his way there and asked me if I wanted to go. I didn't go again for at least a year after that," he remembers in an e-mail interview.
That changed, however, during Boyle's freshman year of high school. One day, he and his friend Jesse Haskell were hanging out at Record Swap a lot, talking about music and starting a band. They chatted with Ryan DeYoung, who worked at Record Swap and booked bands for OTA, "and he invited us to see his band Winepress at Off the Alley. From then on I was pretty much a regular," Boyle recalls.
He and Haskell played their first show on December 31, 1993. Inside, he remembers mostly black walls "with some gray accents here and there." The inside of neo on Clark Street reminds him a bit of the club.
Beyond his band playing there, Boyle says some of the most memorable shows he saw there included Jawbreaker, some time in spring of 1994, and Lifetime in summer 1997. Though he says the club had a tendency to short change bands, this didn't stop a lot of great bands from playing there.
"OTA exposed us to underground music and really changed our lives in a lot of ways," he says. "I can't imagine what music I'd be listening to right now without it. It showed me that there was a lot of great music that wasn't getting played on the radio and MTV. I'm sure I'd be a completely different person if OTA never existed."
Boyle recently started playing music again in a band called Needle Age with some other musicians who played Off the Alley, though Boyle only met them recently.
John Benetti, 29, Chicago
Benetti began going to Off the Alley in 1992, when he was 13. A friend's band was playing, and he was "scared shitless," but he was still drawn to the club. "I was definitely an outcast and a place like that had a lot of appeal to me," he says in an e-mail interview. He ended up working at Record Swap and at Off the Alley from 1997 to 1999, booking bands and managing the sound.
What made the club special in Benetti's mind? "All ages / no booze / cheap tickets / great bands / strong scene. You don't see that combo anymore in Chicago," he says.
Every time he walked in the club, he remembers it being dark, and "it was always pretty full and smokey. It was also very intimidating when I was 13/14. [There were] a lot of older people who all seemed to know each other. Years later, you realized that everyone pretty much felt the same way."
Some of his favorite bands included Jawbreaker, "the band that defined that era for me," The Bollweevils and Winepress.
Aaron Keefner, 27, Chicago
One of the youngest among the group, Keefner started going to the club in 1993, when he was just 11 years old. He grew up in Glenwood, a small suburb neighboring Homewood. "I was attracted to Off The Alley because it had such a cool scene that hung out there," he recalls in an e-mail interview. "I loved the music they showcased and even if the bands sucked, it was a good place to spend a Friday or Saturday night."
When you first entered the club, Keefner remembers it being "totally black inside. You walked through the door, went down a short hallway, the bar was in front of you on the right, there was a small stage in the left front corner, and then booths in the back and this tall black thing in the back corner. I used to hop up on it and watch shows from up there."
Some of his favorite bands that played there included Alkaline Trio, who played some of their first shows there, as well as Tuesday, Mushuganas, Zoinks!, Boris The Sprinkler and two bands from H-F: Kotter, which Boyle played in, and AYA.
Like a lot of people who frequented Off the Alley, Keefner reiterates one simple thing about the club: "There really is no club like OTA anymore."
"A Pair"
Off the Alley closed when Record Swap went out of business in January 2000, just as all-ages clubs became less popular around the city and owning an independent record store became more challenging. Benetti, who worked at both Off the Alley and Record Swap, blames part of its demise on "bad management, stealing employees, and an overall sense of'spread too thin.'" He remembers that Winepress may have been booked to play one of the last shows on Halloween or November 1. Though Winepress's exact playlist that night isn't known, it's likely the band may have played "Stay Awhile," now up on the band's MySpace page: "Well I've tried so hard for so long/And now nothing can go wrong/You and me, we make a pair/They say it's wrong, but I don't care/I'll meet you there."
Off the Alley Playlists:
Jessica Wolfe:
Front 242, "Headhunter"
Pailhead, "I Will Refuse"
Ministry, "Everyday is Halloween"
KMFDM, "More and Faster"
Soft Cell, "Tainted Love"
Nitzer Ebb, "Join in the Chant"
Thrill Kill Kult, "Kooler than Jesus"
Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Cities in Dust"
Depeche Mode, "Personal Jesus" (We'd always stomp the beat out very loudly when this came on)
The Smiths, "How Soon in Now" (always very popular)
Kristen Erickson:
Front 242, "Headhunter"
Deee-lite, "Groove Is in the Heart"
Siouxsie & the Banshees, "Cities in Dust"
PTP, "Rubber Glove Seduction"
Nitzer Ebb, "Join in the Chant"
Joey Beltram, "Energy Flash"
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, "Kooler Than Jesus"
Ministry, "Stigmata"
The Stone Roses, "Fool's Gold"
Pailhead, "I Will Refuse"
Front 242, "Welcome to Paradise"
Soft Cell, "Tainted Love"
The Cure, "Why Can't I Be You?"
Sisters of Mercy, "This Corrosion"
Nine Inch Nails, "Head Like a Hole"
Depeche Mode, "Personal Jesus"
The Smiths, "How Soon Is Now?"
The Shamen, "Progen"
Meat Beat Manifesto, "Psyche-Out"
Paul Rogers:
"When the night would start kicking, I would not play just '80s. Here is what I usually played when the place was at its peak."
Blur, "Boy and Girls"
NIN, "Closer"
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, "Kooler Than Jesus"
The Shamen, "Boss Drum (Beatmaster's mix)"
Dexy's Midnight Runners, "Come On Eileen"
Kon Kan, "I Beg Your Pardon"
Bjork, "Big Time Sensuality"
Deee-Lite, "Groove is In the Heart"
K.M.F.D.M., "Lights"
M.A.R.R.S., "Pump Up the Volume"
Madonna, "Justify My Love"
Morrissey, "Interesting Drug"
Opus III, "It's a Fine Day"
"This list would keep people dancing non-stop!"
Eric Boyle:
The Bollweevils, "999 Stoney"
Oblivion, "Fear of China"
Lifetime, "The Boy's No Good"
Winepress, "Winona"
The Mushuganas, "Iowa"
Jawbreaker, "Do You Still Hate Me?"
The Smoking Popes, "Not That Kind of Girlfriend"
About the Author:
Sheila Burt is a freelance writer based in Chicago and Gapers Block contributor.Yet despite the talk of a borderless currency, a handful of Chinese companies have in effect assumed majority control of the bitcoin network. They have done so through canny investments and vast farms of computer servers dispersed around the country. The US delegation flew to Beijing because that was where much of the bitcoin power was concentrated. At the time of the meeting, held at the Grand Hyatt hotel, more than 70 per cent of the transactions on the bitcoin network were going through just four Chinese companies, known as bitcoin mining pools - and most flowed through just two of those companies. That gives them what amounts to veto power over any changes to the bitcoin software and technology. China has become a market for bitcoin unlike anything in the West, fuelling huge investments in server farms as well as enormous speculative trading on Chinese bitcoin exchanges. Chinese exchanges have accounted for 42 per cent of all bitcoin transactions this year, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times by Chainalysis. Just last week, the Chinese internet giant Baidu joined with three Chinese banks to invest in the US bitcoin company Circle. But China's clout is raising worries about bitcoin's independence and decentralisation, which was supposed to give the technology freedom from the sort of government crackdowns and interventions that are commonplace in the Chinese financial world. "The concentration in a single jurisdiction does not bode well," said Emin Gun Sirer, a professor at Cornell University and a bitcoin researcher. "We need to pay attention to these things if we want decentralisation to be a meaningful thing."
The power of Chinese companies has already come to play a major role in a civil war that has divided bitcoin followers over the last year and led to the departure of one of the top developers of the virtual currency. The dispute has hinged on technical matters as well as on bigger questions of what bitcoin should look like in 10 or 20 years. Network bottleneck The US companies whose executives journeyed to the Grand Hyatt - including venture-capital-funded start-ups like Coinbase and Circle - are fighting to make bitcoin bigger. They hope to expand the capacity of the bitcoin network so that it can process more transactions and compete with the PayPals and Visas of the world. The current size of the network goes back to the early days, when bitcoin's founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, limited the amount of data that could travel through the network, essentially capping it at about seven transactions a second. As bitcoin has grown more popular, those limits have caused severe congestion and led to lengthy transaction delays. The US delegation in China had a software proposal, known as bitcoin Classic, that would change all that.
The Chinese companies, though, had the ultimate decision-making power over any changes in the software, and they did not agree with the American delegation. The Chinese had thrown in their lot with another group of long-time programmers who wanted to keep bitcoin smaller, in part to keep it more secure. The Americans hoped to persuade the Chinese to switch sides. In a hotel conference room, the US team of about a half-dozen people cycled through its PowerPoint slides, in English and Chinese, arguing for expansion of the network, most notably pointing to the long delays that have been plaguing the system as a result of the congestion. The Chinese representatives listened and conferred among themselves. The group took a break for a lunch of lamb and dumplings at a nearby mall. "We kept coming back and saying, 'For better or worse, you have this leadership in the industry, and everyone is looking to you to show some leadership,'" said Brian Armstrong, chief executive of Coinbase. Ultimately, Armstrong said, "We were unable to convince them." Some bitcoin advocates have complained that the Chinese companies have been motivated only by short-term profit, rather than the long-term success and ideals of the project. Bobby Lee, chief executive of the bitcoin company BTCC, which is based in Shanghai, bristled at that - and at the notion that the Chinese companies represent any sort of united front. He attended the April meeting and pointed out that the Chinese companies had disagreed among themselves on how urgent it was to make changes to the bitcoin software.
He said the American companies failed to understand the power dynamics in the room that day. "It was almost like imperialistic Westerners coming to China and telling us what to do," Lee said in an interview last week. "There has been a history on this. The Chinese people have long memories." For the first few years, aside from its use as a payment method on the Silk Road, an online drug market that has since been shut down, bitcoin failed to gain much traction. It burst into the world's consciousness in 2013 when the price of the digital money began to spike, in no small part because Chinese investors began trading bitcoins in large numbers. Lee said the Chinese took quickly to bitcoin for several reasons. For one thing, the Chinese government had strictly limited other potential investment avenues, giving citizens a hunger for new assets. Also, Lee said, the Chinese loved the volatile price of bitcoin, which gave the fledgling currency network the feeling of online gambling, a very popular activity in China. There has been widespread speculation that Chinese people have used bitcoin to get money out of the country and evade capital controls, but Lee and other experts said the evidence suggests this is not a significant phenomenon. "No Chinese person is pushing for bitcoin because it's libertarian or because it's going to cause the downfall of governments," said Lee, who moved to China after growing up in Africa and the United States and studying at Stanford University. "This was an investment."
The extent of the speculative activity in China in late 2013 pushed the price of a single bitcoin above $1,000. That surge - and the accompanying media spotlight - led China's government to intervene in December 2013 and cut off the flow of money between Chinese banks and bitcoin exchanges, popping what appeared to be a bitcoin bubble. The frenzy, though, awakened interest in another aspect of the currency: bitcoin mining. Peter Ng, a former investment manager, is one of the many people in China who moved from trading bitcoins to amassing computing power to mine them. First, he mined for himself. More recently he has created data centres across China where other people can pay to set up their own mining computers. He now has 28 such centres, all of them filled with endless racks of servers, tangled cords and fans cooling the machines. Ng, 36, said he had become an expert in finding cheap energy, often in places where a coal plant or hydroelectric dam was built to support some industrial project that never happened. The bitcoin mining machines in his facilities use about 38 megawatts of electricity, he said, enough to power a small city. Perhaps the most important player in the Chinese bitcoin world is Jihan Wu, 30, a former investment analyst who founded what is often described in China as the world's most valuable bitcoin company. That company, Bitmain, began to build computers in 2013 using chips specially designed to do mining computations.
Bitmain, which has 250 employees, manufactures and sells bitcoin mining computers. It also operates a pool that other miners can join, called Antpool, and keeps a significant number of mining machines for itself, which it maintains in Iceland and the United States, as well as in China. The machines that Bitmain retains for itself account for 10 percent of the computing power on the global bitcoin network and are enough to produce new coins worth about $US230,000 each day, at the exchange rate last week. Wu and the other mining pool operators in China have often seemed somewhat surprised, and even unhappy, that their investments have given them decision-making power within the bitcoin network. "Miners are the hardware guys. Why are you asking us about software?" is the line that Ng said he often hears from miners. However the software debate goes, there are fears that China's government could decide, at some point, to pressure miners in the country to use their influence to alter the rules of the bitcoin network. The government's intervention in 2013 suggests that bitcoin is not too small to escape notice. Wu dismissed that concern. He also said that as more Americans buy his Bitmain machines and take advantage of cheap power in places like Washington state, mining will naturally become more decentralised. Already, he said, 30 to 40 per cent of new Bitmain machines are being shipped out of China. For now, though, China remains dominant.
"The Chinese government normally expects its businesses to obtain a leading role in emerging industries," he said. "China's bitcoin businesses have achieved that." David Kestenbaum and Paul Mozur contributed reporting. New York TimesThe Lumia 1320 was always a more budget targeted, large screen phone. And those who bought it largely adored it. Fast forward to Mobile World Congress 2015. Now with Microsoft doing its thing, there's a successor to the Lumia 1320. A new, affordable, large screen Windows Phone. And with the new phone comes a new moniker: XL. And that stands for exactly what you think it does. The Lumia 640 XL is in many ways similar to the Lumia 640, only bigger. And in some cases, better.
What you'll like: Great value for money.
A free year of Office 365
Good quality cameras
Large display complete with Glance screen
Good battery life What you won't like: Internal storage is pretty low
No wireless charging as standard though there are contacts underneath
Some weirdness with on-screen buttons interfering with apps About this review This review has been written based on time spent with an Italian CV device in the UK. It's the single-sim, non LTE version. The UK CV will be the single-SIM, LTE version. Video hands-on
Under the hood The specs
Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2 with Lumia Denim
Windows 10 Ready
Colors: Matte cyan, orange and black, as well as both matte and glossy white
Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 (MSM8226), 1.2 GHz quad-core processor
5.7" HD (1280x720, 16:9) IPS LCD, 259 PPI, Glance screen, Corning Gorilla Glass 3, Sunlight readability enhancements
1GB RAM
8 GB internal mass memory + up to 128 GB Micro SD & 30GB free OneDrive cloud storage
Rear camera: 13 MP AF, 1080p @ 30 fps video (continuous autofocus), Flash: LED, Lumia Camera 5.0 (with Dynamic Flash, HDR)
Front camera: HD 5 MP wide angle, 1080p video
Connectivity: BT 4.0, microUSB2.0, Micro SIM, A-GPS+GLONASS, BeiDou, DLNA, Screen cloning with Miracast, WLAN 802.11 b/g/n/
Sensors: Accelerometer, Magnetometer, Proximity, Ambient Light Sensor, SensorCore
Battery: 3000 mAh (BV-T4B) removable battery
Weight: 171 g
Size: 157.9 x 81.5 x 9.0 mm The hardware
The smaller Lumia 640 is an iteration on the design front from that which came before it. The Lumia 640 XL has a lot in common in its overall look with its smaller sibling. From the front, camera placement aside, they're very much alike. One large, one not so large. And like the Lumia 640, the internals used by Microsoft aren't anything to shout about, either. In fact, the basic hardware is identical. There's a Snapdragon 400 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot. The display has the same resolution as the Lumia 640 while bumping the size by 0.7-inches, leading to a noticeable drop in PPI. If you look at the two side-by-side, it's impossible not to notice that the smaller display is visibly sharper. Around the back, the Lumia 640 XL boasts a hint of the Lumia 1520 with the way the camera hump looks. The 13MP shooter with Zeiss lens is a step up from the 640, likewise with its 5MP front-facing counterpart. We'll look at both a little further along. For such a large phone, you'd be forgiven for expecting a sealed back. That's not the case, though, and pulling off the replaceable back cover opens up the 3000mAh removable battery, microSIM card slot and microSD card slot. Oh, and it has the black accent buttons too which looks great. Especially on the orange one we have here. One criticism I do have is the lack of a physical camera shutter button The matte finish on the orange is a welcome touch, as frankly, a glossy phone this size would be a bit of a slippery fish to hold on to. It's big, but not |
FEZ. “We have preliminary applications for the 20-30 hectares of land in the Meghri Free Economic Zone”, Vahagn Lalayan said.
He said from the moment when that idea came to create the FEZ, both the program and general description were distributed in different languages in the targeted countries, as well as in the Eurasian Economic Union’s territory. A preliminary application form has been prepared to understand in which spheres investments are possible. “Mainly the companies operating in agricultural products processing, services, tourism infrastructure, processing industry fields are interested in. These are the fields the production of which will be interesting to transport to Iran and vice versa, to establish a production of Iranian goods in Armenia and transport them to the EAEU or the European market”, he said.
As for the process of accepting the main applications, Vahagn Lalayan said the applications will be accepted immediately after the FEZ is put into operation. He added that the process of accepting and approving the applications has been simplified as much as possible and it will be possible to receive permission for conducting an activity in 15-20 days. “Theoretically it is possible that there will be already operating companies in the FEZ by the end of the year”, the ministry official said.
According to Vahagn Lalayan, the Meghri FEZ is one of the 8 free economic zones in the EAEU space which provides greater privileges than the others. “The privilege is that individuals can trade in certain quantities there and acquire goods with the so-called duty free regime”, Vahagn Lalayan noted.
As for the cooperation format with the Aras free economic zone operating in Iran, there are plans to develop new mechanisms later.
During the August 3, 2017 session the Armenian Government approved the decision to establish the Meghri Free Economic Zone CJSC which has been presented by the ministry of economic development and investments. At the moment two free economic zones, Alliance and Meridian, are operating in the territory of Armenia.As a stepping stone towards the App Store release, you can now sign up for a public Beta test of the iOS version!
May 17, 2018 at 1:08 PM by Talion
Albion Online is aiming to deliver a complete and captivating cross-platform MMORPG experience on desktop and mobile devices - and we are now taking another big step towards this goal.
To participate, you need to sign up using this form. Every player with a Founder or Starter Pack and an iOS device is welcome to join this test.
iOS Beta Test
On our way towards an App Store release, we are launching a Testflight-based Beta test of our iOS client. The iOS version will contain the same features and content as the PC version, and can be tested by iPad and iPhone users on the Live server.
To participate in the test, players with a Founder or Starter Pack can sign up below. As Testflight only offers a limited number of test slots, we cannot guarantee that everyone signing up will receive an invitation, sorry!
Before you scroll down to the sign-up link, please read the following paragraphs about limitations and known issues of the iOS client carefully!
System Requirements, Limitations and Their Friends
At the moment, Albion Online supports iOS devices with 3GB of RAM or more. It is also recommended to have a decent screen size of 7 inches or more for proper control and a better user experience.
However, based on our testing so far, the game works fine with less RAM and smaller screens. It is worth noting that on devices with 2GB, there is a risk of occasional crashes. We recommend closing all other apps before you start the game, and reduce the in-game settings as much as possible.
During this Beta test, we will continue to optimize the iOS client, and try to make it run in a stable manner on 2GB devices too. While we are allocating significant resources towards this, we can give no guarantee that we will ultimately succeed. Albion Online is one of the most complex and resource-intensive games available on iOS so far, and it is pushing the devices to their limits.
Prior to the official App Store release of the game, we will update the system requirements based on our tests. This means that there is a chance that 2GB devices will officially be supported. 3GB devices almost certainly will be.
Below you will find the list of devices that can take part in this Beta test:
What Should You Do When Testing iOS?
Simple: play the game. Report anything that feels off and provide feedback on performance. Please report any bugs you find using the #bug command. Additional Feedback you can and should post in this forum.
Sign up here
We will be using Testflight for this test. To participate, you need to sign up using this form. We will then send out invitations to as many people with diverse device types as possible.
The testers we pick will receive an e-mail with a redemption code for Testflight, with which they can then download and install the iOS version.House Republican centrists are furious that GOP leaders are considering abandoning their pledge not to change Medicare retirement benefits for people 55 years and older.
According to several sources, a handful of centrist GOP lawmakers attending a recent Tuesday Group luncheon erupted when Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) broke the news.
After agreeing to write a budget resolution that will balance the budget over the next decade, Ryan conceded that he might have to adjust the age to as high as 59.
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“Paul Ryan was pretty clear that that could happen. You could have to take it up to a higher number like 56, 57, 59... it could be higher than 55, but he also said, ‘We don’t have any numbers yet,’ ” said a Republican lawmaker who attended the meeting.
The dwindling group of middle-of-the-road House Republican lawmakers decried the potential change in age because the party for the past two years has repeatedly cited 55 years and above as the untouched generation. Some of the members are also facing challenging reelection races next year.
“A lot of people had made commitments at 55. In other words, in the campaign [Republican vulnerable members] said it wouldn’t affect your Medicare for retirees or near retirees for those 55 and up... and [if] this budget forces them to renege on that, that would be problematic for many,” said the GOP lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Both Mitt Romney and Ryan cited the 55 figure during their run for the White House last year.
House Democrats are salivating at the opportunity to run against the Ryan budget in the 2014 elections. In 2012, Democrats picked up eight House seats after highlighting the Ryan blueprint on the campaign trail.
But this year’s version will be more to the liking of conservatives. The 2012 measure would have balanced the budget by 2040 — this year’s would do it by 2023, meaning there would be greater spending cuts.
Historically, the budget vote falls along party lines. No Democrat voted for Ryan’s budget in 2011 or 2012. Ten Republicans voted no in 2012, including Reps. Justin Amash Justin AmashHouse to push back at Trump on border Ex-GOP lawmakers urge Republicans to block Trump's emergency declaration This week: Congress, Trump set for showdown on emergency declaration MORE (Mich.), Chris Gibson (N.Y.), Walter Jones (N.C.) and Tim Huelskamp (Kan.).
One veteran Republican lawmaker on the Budget Committee acknowledged that some adjustment in the age might be needed to get to balance in 10 years, but said it might not be as troublesome as some anticipate.
Even if Ryan does raise the age, it would likely be closer to 56 or 57, providing lawmakers with a technical “out” when they return home to their districts, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said, pointing out that the initial Ryan budget passed two years ago.
“If we said we’d gotten what we’d wanted last year and the year before, [it] would have started at 55. You’ve got to kind of inch it up a bit, but it doesn’t make that much difference financially. There’s still some Budget Committee deliberation and decisions to be made,” Cole said.
But centrists’ concerns extend to how the policy was shaped in the first place. Many did not want to require a balanced budget within 10 years, noting that’s been a conservative cause championed by lawmakers in the Republican Study Committee (RSC).
The self-proclaimed “pragmatic” Republican lawmakers suspect that the 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee and House GOP leaders caved to conservatives in the conference at the late January conference retreat in Williamsburg, Va., exchanging a 10-year balanced budget for support of the bill to suspend the debt limit until May.
While Ryan and McCarthy denied cutting such a deal at the retreat, centrists remain suspicious. They also hold some power because Republicans can only afford 15 defections on the yet-to-be-released Ryan resolution, should all Democrats vote no.
Former Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) said he’s perplexed as to why leaders would cut a deal with conservatives, noting that some of them will likely defect anyway.
LaTourette, the new head of the centrist Republican Main Street Partnership, predicted that leaders might not be able to rely on the traditionally reliable centrist voting bloc.
“The anger [among centrists] is that, ‘Look, we’ve been home and we’ve told the people you don’t have to worry — 55 and older... so now because these nuts are demanding a 10-year [balanced] budget, which they are going to vote against, you’re expecting us [to pass it] again?’ And so I don’t think that’s going to happen,” LaTourette said.
William Allison, the Budget Committee’s GOP spokesman, would not comment on the meeting that took place two weeks ago, but reiterated Ryan’s promise to “advance a responsible, balanced budget.”
In regard to Medicare, Allison said, “His reforms ensure no changes for those in or near retirement, a sharp contrast to the real harm inflicted on seniors by the president’s healthcare law.”
A leadership source told The Hill that the leaders “are not panicked” about getting the votes, noting that “this is always a difficult process. The only time it was easy was when we were in the minority and we knew we were voting ‘no.’ ”
The source conceded that “this is a more fractious Republican Conference, but it’s a brave conference that’s been willing to make tough decisions and know it was going to take a political pummeling,” adding, “Paul Ryan is a superb policy person, but he’s also a practical politician and a great team player.”
Another GOP leadership aide would not comment on behind-the-scenes conversations, but noted that Ryan had yet to present the final specifics of his budget.Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says the 2015 elections can be moved by one year to avoid Westminister clash.
© STV
The Scottish Parliament has been offered the chance to change the date of the next Holyrood election, it has been confirmed.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the date could be moved forward or back by one year to avoid a clash with the UK general election on May 7, 2015.
It means future Holyrood terms could last five years instead of four.
The Government has written to the presiding officers of the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales about the move.
Mr Clegg, said: "We want to ensure that election campaigns for the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales can be distinctly separate from the build-up to and aftermath of the 2015 Westminster election.
"But this is their choice to make - they can hold it in May 2015 if they wish, or a year before or after if they prefer - as part of this Government's commitment to mutual respect, devolution of power and political accountability."
MSPs will now be asked to consider the issue, but will be required to come up with an answer before Parliament is dissolved in March for this year's election.
Mark Harper, Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, said the move followed "several months of dialogue" with the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments.
He said: "They have asked for this power and we think it is right to give them this choice."
The Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales will both need to pass a resolution agreeing that the 2015 election should be moved on a one-off basis to another date one year earlier or later than May 2015 before they rise ahead of this year's election.
The resolution must be passed with a two-thirds majority, meaning the Government could table an amendment to the Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill.
The Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill, which sets UK Parliamentary general elections to every five years, is currently before the House of Lords and will have its second reading on March 1.The old cliche that a football player is doing his job when he’s not noticed is usually reserved for offensive linemen.
But in the case of the Buffalo Bills, it fits for safety Jordan Poyer.
“You hit the nail on the head – he’s been flying under the radar,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “His role on this defense is vital. He communicates well back there for us. He’s one of the quarterbacks along with Micah Hyde, for the defense and the secondary.”
Poyer’s training camp was quiet in a good way. He’s stayed off the injury report, which for a player who missed 10 games in 2016 had to be priority No. 1.
“That feels great,” said Poyer, who suffered a lacerated kidney, bruised liver and internal bleeding as the result of a massive blindside hit last October. “I've been working hard this offseason and coming into camp to just be in a position to be a starter on this team. That's what I want.”
He’s been that seemingly from the moment he signed a four-year contract with the Bills in March that could pay him up to $13 million.
“Love the way he plays, love his brand of football,” McDermott said. “Works extremely hard, and really personifies what we’re about with the hard work, with the toughness, he puts the team first. All those characteristics are what we’re about.”
Told of his coach’s comments, Poyer kept an even keel – which is his default approach.
“To hear that from the head coach, it's always great,” he said, “but I still know I've got a lot to work on.... That's how I always approach camp. I'm just out there trying do my job, my 1/11th as coach always says. Keep continuing to grow within this defense, keep continuing to communicate and get better each and every day."
The glass-half-empty approach to a quiet training camp would be that Poyer hasn’t made a lot of big plays.
“You've got to create turnovers, you've got to take the ball away,” he said. “Any time you have that mentality, you're going to give yourself a chance to win.”
Poyer made a couple of impact plays in the Bills' second preseason game against the Eagles last Thursday, finishing with a tackle for a loss and a pass defensed in 29 defensive snaps.
"I feel like I'm picking up the defense really well," he said.
That's good news for a secondary that, after the trade of Ronald Darby to the Eagles, has been totally rebuilt. In addition to Darby, other starters gone from last year include cornerback Stephon Gilmore and safeties Corey Graham and Aaron Williams. Even in the here-today, gone-tommorrow world of the NFL, that's a massive amount of turnover for one team.
That makes communication between Poyer and Hyde vital. The Bills will start a rookie at cornerback in first-round draft pick Tre'Davious White and are holding a competition to see who will replace Darby.
"You've got to be on top of that each and every single day," Poyer said of getting everyone on the same page. "Communication is a big key in any defense, but particulary in our defense because we're all so new."Advertisement
This curious cat got up close and personal with a tourist while on safari at the Masai Mara game reserve in Kenya.
The wild cat, with its razor sharp claws and teeth, sure is one moggy you'd rather not have curling up on your lap.
But, nevertheless, the bold animal hopped into the back seat of a jeep as it drove through the African plains - much to the shock of an Irishman inside.
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A curious wild cat got up close and personal with a holidaymaker on safari in Kenya when the animal jumped into the back seat of a jeep
After entering the vehicle, it slowly sauntered over to holidaymaker Mickey McCaldin until it was barely a foot away from his face.
Family friend David Horsey captured the tense standoff between the pair as it looked like the cheetah was going to make himself comfortable on Mickey's lap.
David, 62 from Mombasa, Kenya, said: 'I've been living in Kenya all my life and I've never seen anything like this.
'The cheetah just wasn't scared of getting up close and personal. At first Mickey was really relaxed but I think he was quite concerned it might try and sit in his lap.
'Unlike a domestic cat, you certainly don't want that.'
At first, the cheetah simply looked at Irish tourist Mickey McCaldin curiously, but then it moved closer as if to curl up on his lap
At one point, the large cat was so close to Mickey that it was only about a foot away from his face
Family friend David Horsey captured the tense standoff between the pair, including the moment that the animal lept into the safari jeep
Making himself comfortable: The cheeky cheetah and his family casually lounged atop the group's Land Cruiser jeep
David captured the pictures on June 12, as the group tracked a well-known family of cheetahs, whose mother is called Malaika.
Having followed them for a couple of days previously, they observed that the family hadn't had a kill for several days.
David said: 'The family had been looking for a gazelle for a few days with no luck.
'As we'd been around for a couple of days, I think they were used to the jeep so the mum jumped on top to get a better view.
'I think the other cheetah tried to follow her up but went a different way.
'Once it had got bored of Mickey it turned away and looked out of the vehicle for a few minutes.
'It just jumped out afterwards.'
Photographer David, 62 from Mombasa, Kenya, said: 'I've been living in Kenya all my life and I've never seen anything like this'
The incredible pictures were taken on June 12, as the group tracked a well-known family of cheetahs, whose mother is called Malaika
The group was a bit nervous after learning that the cheetah family hadn't had a kill for several days and were likely hungry
David explained: 'I think they were used to the jeep so the mum jumped on top to get a better view'
While at first Mickey was quite relaxed, the group quickly became concerned that the cat may decide to snuggle up next to him
Once the cheetah got bored of staring at Mickey, it turned away and looked out of the vehicle before ultimately jumping out
Surprise of their lives! The safari group was comprised of a guide, as well as Mickey, his wife, sister, photographer David and David's wife
Mickey was out on holiday with his wife and sister, who are friends of David and his wife Vicky.
David said: 'Me and Vicky have lived in Kenya all our lives but we never feel the urge to leave.
'People always ask us where we're going on holiday and it's always around the game reserves.You might want to hold off on buying an iPad right now. According to reputable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the Cupertino tech giant has a new lineup of iPad Pro and iPad tablets slated for next year, with a "revolutionary" flexible OLED model to follow in 2018.
According to Kuo's latest research (as reported by MacRumors), Apple will release a new 10.5 inch version of the iPad Pro as well as a 12.9-inch iPad Pro 2, both of which may run on a speedy new A10X processor. The company is also reportedly prepping a new "low-cost" 9.7-inch iPad, which could be powered by the current A9X chip.
MORE: Our Favorite Tablets for Work and Play
The iPad Pro currently comes in 12.9-inch and 9.7-inch variations, so the 10.5-inch model could appeal to shoppers who want a bigger-than-normal (but not absolutely massive) productivity tablet. A cheaper 9.7-inch iPad would give budget-conscious customers more options; the 16GB iPad mini 2 is Apple's only slate under $300. As for the mini, there's no word on what this new lineup might mean for Apple's smallest tablet.
But while next year could usher in some welcome iPad refreshes, 2018 may be a year of revolution for Apple's slate. Kuo predicts that the iPad will adopt a flexible AMOLED panel by 2018, which could allow for new, slimmer designs, richer colors and better power consumption. This falls in line with reports of Apple's iPhone adopting OLED, which could happen as soon as next year.
Even with these new models on the horizon, Kuo predicts that tablets will continue to decline, possibly due in part to smartphones continuing to offer bigger and better screens. Still, if you've been eyeing the iPad Pro or 9.7-inch iPad, next year might be a good time to pick one up. Apple's next major launch event is expected to take place on Sept. 7 -- it will likely be focused on new iPhones, but you might want to keep your eyes peeled for new tablets.
✖ iPad Pro Tips and Tricks Next Tips »»Enjoy this preview of Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld, the next installment in the Ringworld saga, out on August 21st from Tor Books.
For decades, the spacefaring species of Known Space have battled over the largest artifact—and grandest prize—in the galaxy: the all-but-limitless resources and technology of the Ringworld. But without warning the Ringworld has vanished, leaving behind three rival war fleets.
Something must justify the blood and treasure spent. If the fallen civilization of the Ringworld can no longer be despoiled of its secrets, the Puppeteers will be forced to surrender theirs.
PRELUDE
Earth Date: 2893
A beautiful world, alone, serene, races through the interstellar void. Warmed by necklaces of artificial suns orbiting from pole to pole, the world’s climate is everywhere and always temperate. Beneath the many suns, oceans sparkle and cloud tops gleam. Bountiful fields and lush forests span continents. Here and there cities stand, proud and prosperous.
The human inhabitants call this paradise New Terra. Only in story do they remember the days when their home was known merely as Nature Preserve Four. When their home was but one farm world among many in the Fleet of Worlds. When alien masters ruled their lives. “Citizens,” the aliens called themselves and, moreover, “saviors.”
But young and old on New Terra know the hard-won truth: that their former masters had attacked their ancestors’ ramscoop, not chanced upon a derelict starship. That from the wrecked ship’s embryo banks the aliens had bred a race of slaves.
Independence had not come easily, but now New Terra sets its own course through space.
And what of Old Terra? Earth? No one here could say where the ancestral world may lie.
Not only artificial suns accompany New Terra on its seemingly endless trek through the darkness. Myriads of tiny spacecraft, sprinkled across many light-days, hold formation with the world. The early-warning array endlessly scans in all directions, endlessly probing with every known method of long-range sensing.
In the planetary defense center, staffed round the clock, people try to imagine against what, besides boredom, they stand guard. New Terra is light-years from the nearest star. Aboard their Fleet of Worlds, the ruthlessly cowardly Citizens—increasingly, and aptly, come to be known to all here as Puppeteers—have receded beyond the reach of every instrument except powerful optical telescopes.
Suddenly every element in the planetary early-warning array clamors in unison. Every watch stander in the planetary defense center jolts to full alertness to stare at their consoles.
To gape at the impossible.
RIPPLE
Earth Date: 2893
1
“There is an intruder, sir,” Jeeves announced, breaking the silence.
Sigmund Ausfaller sighed. Age had not so much mellowed as exhausted him. The universe was out to get him, and so what? It had been—years?— since he had mustered the energy to care. Maybe it had been years since he had cared that he no longer cared.
“Sir?”
Shading his eyes with an upraised hand, Sigmund peered across the desert. The day’s final string of suns was low to the horizon. Here and there, scattered across barren landscape, cacti cast long shadows. A lone bird glided overhead. Beyond the limits of his stone patio, civilization had left no visible mark.
A cluster of cacti reminded him of other columns. Long ago. Far away. Columns of a world-shattering machine. And they had shattered a world, although by the time it had happened he had been dead. That happened to him far too often. The getting dead part. Peril to entire worlds, too, but—
“You should withdraw to safety, sir,” Jeeves prompted.
Sigmund sighed again, this time at himself. Age made one’s mind wander. So did living by oneself. Not that, with Jeeves around, he was truly alone. To be old and alone—
“Sir,” Jeeves insisted.
Sigmund struggled out of his big mesh hammock to stand. “Describe the intruder.”
“An antigrav flitter. It’s on approach from the east at just within the lowaltitude speed limit.”
“Visual sighting?”
“Too distant at present. Radar, sir.” “How long until it arrives?”
“Ten minutes, sir, if the craft maintains its current velocity.”
Sigmund glanced at the dark circle inset in a corner of his patio. The circle was the bottom of a stepping disc. Apart from its active side being obstructed—and so rendered inert—the device was like millions across the world. Flip to light-colored side up and in one pace he could teleport at light speed to any disc of his choosing, almost anywhere on the planet.
But were he to invert the disc, then others, if they had the authority to preempt his privacy settings, could teleport here.
Sigmund valued his privacy, and his stepping disc stayed upside down. And to be honest, his disc was not exactly like the millions of others. The micro-fusion reactor on this disc would overload seconds after he stepped out, destroying all record of his destination.
He really valued his privacy. “Sir?”
Sigmund considered. “They’re not stealthed. They’re approaching from the east, easy to spot, not flying out of the setting suns. They want us to know they’re coming.” Sigmund gestured at his modest home, in which, on the oaken desk he had crafted by hand, his pocket comp sat powered down. “It’s not as though they can call ahead.”
“Very good, sir,” Jeeves said in his gentleman’s gentleman tone of voice: acknowledgment and mild reproach together.
Jeeves was more ancient even than Sigmund. The butler mannerisms that had once been a few lines of code—an affectation or a jape on someone’s part—had, over the centuries, permeated every facet of the AI’s persona. Kind of like paranoia in Sigmund’s brain.
Friends don’t reprogram friends, even when they’re able.
Sigmund dropped back with a grunt into his hammock. “Let’s find out what our visitor wants.”
THE FLITTER MORPHED from invisible to droning speck to, all of a sudden, here. Sigmund stood watching as the craft swooped in for a landing on the windswept sands. The canopy pivoted upward from its aft edge; a woman, dressed in the trim blue uniform of the New Terran Defense Forces, stepped out of the cockpit.
“Good evening, Minister,” his granddaughter called.
Minister. An official visit, as though her uniform would not have told Sigmund that.
“It’s hot,” Sigmund said. “Join me in the shade, Captain.”
“Thank you, sir.” Julia looked around before joining Sigmund under the awning that overhung half the patio. She was a tall, lithe, beautiful woman with pale blue eyes and shoulder-length ash-blond hair.
“Sit, Captain. May I get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you, sir.” His visitor stood, ill at ease, uniform cap clutched under an arm.
Her nametag read byerley-mancini. Sunslight reflecting off the nametag rendered a shimmering hologram, detailed beyond the capability of badge-sized photonics to mimic. So, too, did her rank insignia. On a world where everyone dressed in garments of programmable nanocloth, where on a whim the wearer could change the color, texture, and pattern of her clothing, the credentials of the planetary defense forces remained— special. And, in theory, difficult to counterfeit.
In progeny and in uniforms, Sigmund’s legacy survived. And in a third respect: that New Terra remained free and whole. If others had had their way...
“If I may, sir,” Julia prompted gently, as though channeling Jeeves. “Go ahead,” Sigmund said. “What brings you here?”
“An astrophysical phenomenon, sir. An anomaly.”
Sigmund twitched. Twice in his long life he had been marooned, alone, deep in space. Three times he had been murdered, each death grislier than the last. A glimpse of an astrophysical phenomenon had presaged his most recent death and, after resurrection, left him stranded in interstellar space.
Turbulence in the ineffably tenuous interstellar medium. An uptick in concentrations of interstellar helium. Only by such subtleties had the Pak invasion armada, wave upon wave of ramscoop warships, given warning of its coming.
The Pak were genocidal xenophobes, a pestilence upon every other form of life. As protectors, the neuter postadult life stage, Pak were freakishly brilliant, reflexively aggressive, utterly selfish in the defense of their bloodlines. Eating tree-of-life root transformed an adult, what protectors dismissively called a breeder, into a protector.
Humanity, it turned out, descended from a Pak colony that had failed on Earth millions of years ago, because Earth lacked trace elements essential to tree-of-life. From the Pak perspective humans were, rather than distant cousins, mutants to be obliterated.
Sigmund shivered, all too aware that the universe cared not a fig for his memories or his phobias.
Julia was doing her best to hide her feelings, but beneath a stoic, professional veneer she was tense. Perhaps only someone who knew her well would notice.
Sigmund said, “I’m no astrophysicist.” Open up, Julia. Tell me what’s troubling you.
“Understood, sir.” Julia hesitated. “Is Jeeves with us?” “Indeed, sir,” the AI intoned.
“This is a matter of world security, Minister,” Julia said.
“Jeeves and I are both fossils. Our security clearances, like my title, are long lapsed.” Never mind that, as far as this world was concerned, Sigmund was the one who had invented security clearances. That he had built from nothing what had been known on his watch as the Ministr y of Defense. Never mind that Julia would have no inkling what a fossil was. Life beyond the single-celled was too recently imported to New Terra to have left fossils. “Whatever this anomaly is, you’ve come to tell me about it. So, tell.”
“Right.” Julia took a deep breath. “Something impossible has happened. You’re familiar with space-time ripples as ships enter and leave hyperspace?”
Sigmund nodded.
“Yesterday, the planetary defense array detected a... big ripple.” “How big?” Sigmund asked.
“That’s the thing, sir. It can’t be that big.”
And so your superiors sent you to see what alternate explanation my devious brain can conjure. “How big did the ripple look to be?” Sigmund persisted. “How many ships?”
“The ripple was reported by every sensor in the array. Saturation strength.”
The array that surrounded New Terra. An array—at least during Sigmund’s tenure in the Ministry—deployed in concentric spheres across vast distances. To saturate all the sensors at once would require an unbelievable number of ships, many emerging almost on top of New Terra.
He tamped down resurgent memories of Pak war fleets. This was no time to get lost in the past.
After detecting ships nearby, the first step in the alert protocol would have been a hyperwave radar sweep. He asked, “And radar showed what?”
“Nothing,” Julia said. “That’s part of what’s odd.”
Because no one had ever found a way to disguise the interaction between a hyperwave and normal matter. That didn’t mean no one ever would. “I imagine the Defense Forces dispatched ships. And found nothing?”
“Right, sir.”
Very puzzling. “Just the one ripple?” Sigmund asked.
“Yes, sir. Whatever emerged from hyperspace didn’t drop back into it. That, or these ships came a great distance through normal space, shielded from our sensors, waiting until they were on top of us before jumping into hyperspace to speed away. Either would explain a single ripple.”
“A huge fleet, after sneaking up on us and shrieking the news of its arrival, continues on its way? I don’t believe that, either.”
“Nor do our analysts.” She hesitated. “They need you at the Ministry to figure it out.”
After the revolution, confusing correlation with causation, the new regime had reached a strange conclusion: that the emergencies from which Sigmund had time and again saved this world he had provoked through his own interstellar meddling. The new government made clear just how unwelcome he was. Now they wanted his help?
Nameless, faceless, they had haunted Sigmund for much of his life, but it was all too clear who thought to manipulate him today. The current minister.
There’s a reason the Defense Forces sent, specifically, you, Captain. The minister believes I can’t say no to you. And he is probably right.
Many of Sigmund’s family had joined the New Terran military, and among them Julia was neither the youngest nor the oldest, the most junior nor the most senior, the least nor the most accomplished. And yet she was special. Sigmund would deny it if asked, but of all his grandchildren, Julia was his favorite—because she was the spitting image of her grandmother.
Tanj, but he missed Penelope! His deaths faded from memory. Never Penny’s. Hers had stuck. He had met her soon after coming to this strange and wondrous world, awakening from his second death—
“Grandpa?” Julia said hesitantly. “At the Ministry, we need some... creative thinking.”
“About what might have tricked the sensors, and how,” Jeeves commented.
“It’s the current theory,” Julia agreed. “That something, or someone, somehow confused our sensors. Only our experts have yet to find evidence of tampering or intrusion.”
Something stirred in the back of Sigmund’s mind. Not quite the old paranoia, but maybe more than the skepticism of age. One could never discount a security breach, but he doubted that a breach explained this big ripple. Anyone who could spoof the planetary defense network would keep that ability secret—until they attacked.
Transparent manipulation be damned, the safety of the world was at stake. “Show me the data.”
“Sorry, sir. That information is only available at the Ministry. Very restricted.”
Except for the security breach the “experts” thought they had. Fools. Sigmund stared out at the desert. The suns had all but set, and a few bright stars managed to show themselves overhead. A thick, inky smear near the western horizon hinted at mountains. “Then take me to the Ministry.” He started walking toward her vehicle.
“Not the flitter, Grandpa.” When he turned back, Julia pointed at the upside-down stepping disc inset in his patio. “You’re needed now.”
As he turned over the disc, Sigmund switched off the self-destruct. Surreptitiously, to be sure, but Jeeves would have seen it through the house security cameras. No need, old friend, to net yourself someplace else.
Sigmund gestured to Julia to step ahead. Seconds after her, flicking across half a world into the security vestibule of the headquarters of the New Terran Defense Forces, he brooded what nightmare this latest astronomical phenomenon portended.
2
An overweight, florid-faced colonel met Sigmund and his granddaughter in the secured teleportation foyer, expediting their way through screening. With a half-dozen armed escorts, they strode deep into the building, past one interior checkpoint after another.
Once you’ve overthrown one government, why wouldn’t you suspect others of plotting to overthrow yours?
The previous government had vanished almost overnight through a self-organizing consensus process Sigmund had never understood and would never accept, but that the native New Terrans somehow considered proper. The transfer of power was more Puppeteer-like than the rebels appeared to recognize, even if the new technocracy had more of a human feel to it.
Sigmund had sworn to uphold the elected government, but when the demonstrations went worldwide, he had ordered his troops to lay down their arms. On his watch New Terrans would never attack their own people.
Or maybe he had rejected violence because, at some level, resistance would have been self-serving. Ultimately, the old government’s downfall was about him. To be rid of all alien “entanglements”—to hide from the galaxy—the people had had to be rid of him. And so, on the heels of |
allow talented high school students to work in real research labs during the summer, but those opportunities are few and far between. In my opinion, the best things that an aspiring teenage scientist can do are: read lots of science magazines, try to visit the labs at local universities, search for summer research experience programs, and do lots of backyard experiments.
Would anyone else care to offer some advice?US dismisses Russian efforts to show due process in tycoon's trial, whose verdict is due today, as 'lipstick on a political pig'
The trial of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky shows the Kremlin preserves a "cynical system where political enemies are eliminated with impunity", US diplomats say in classified cables released by WikiLeaks today.
Attempts by the Russian government to demonstrate the rule of law is being respected during Khodorkovsky's prosecution are "lipstick on a political pig", says a communique to Washington from the US embassy in Moscow in December 2009.
Khodorkovsky, 47, an oil tycoon who was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to eight years in jail for fraud two years later, will appear in court in Moscow today to hear the verdict in his second trial on embezzlement charges. Supporters of the man once Russia's richest say the Kremlin ordered the prosecutions in revenge for his funding of opposition parties.
Khodorkovsky could get up to six more years in jail at the end of his current sentence in October next year, if convicted. His business partner, Platon Lebedev, faces the same punishment.
While US officials have already publicly criticised the trial, which began in March last year, the baldness of the language in the secret cables is striking.
Writing to Washington in December last year, a political officer in the US embassy in Moscow noted that one international legal expert believes the trial judge is trying to give Khodorkovsky's defence lawyers a chance. However, in a withering assessment, the officer adds: "The fact that legal procedures are apparently being meticulously followed in a case whose motivation is clearly political may appear paradoxical.
"It shows the effort that the GOR [government of Russia] is willing to expend in order to save face, in this case by applying a superficial rule-of-law gloss to a cynical system where political enemies are eliminated with impunity."
The diplomat's assessment reaffirms those made in US cables released earlier by WikiLeaks, in which Russia is described as a kleptocratic "mafia state" in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are inextricably linked.
It refers obliquely to a meeting in 2000 when Vladimir Putin, then still president, met Khodorkovksy and 20 other oligarchs and reportedly warned them to stay out of politics in return for their businesses being left in peace.
"There is a widespread understanding," writes the diplomat, "that Khodorkovsky violated the tacit rules of the game: if you keep out of politics, you can line your pockets as much as you desire."
The officer adds: "It is not lost on either elite or mainstream Russians that the GOR has applied a double standard to the illegal activities of 1990s oligarchs; if it were otherwise, virtually every other oligarch would be on trial alongside Khodorkovsky and Lebedev." At his annual TV question and answer session earlier this month, Putin, now prime minister, brushed off criticism off the trial. Russia had "one of the most humane court systems in the world". He added: "It is my conviction that a thief should be in jail."
Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company was confiscated and sold to state-controlled firms after his conviction. He fired back on Friday in a letter to Putin published in a Russian newspaper. He pitied Putin, a "not-young person, so upbeat and so alone before a boundless and remorseless country". The premier, said Khodorkovsky, was helmsman of a galley which "sails right over people's destinies" and "over which, more and more, the citizens of Russia seem to see a black pirate flag flying".
Khodorkovksy also mocked Putin's recent television appearances with his new dog, Buffy. "Love of dogs is the only sincere, good feeling that pierces through the icy armour shell of the 'national symbol' of the beginning of the 2000s," he wrote. "A love of dogs has become a substitute for a love of people."
The verdict in Khodorkovsky's trial was due on 15 December but a note pinned on the door of Moscow's Khamovnichesky court that morning said it had been delayed until tomorrow. Some analysts believe the delay was deliberate, in order to deflect media attention over the holiday period.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are accused of embezzling the entire crude oil production of Yukos over a six-year period.
A source close to Khodorkovsky predicted he "would likely remain in prison as long as the Putin administration is in power,", according to the US cables released today. Putin is widely expected to return as president in 2012 and could serve two more terms, until 2024.
The judge is expected to spend several days reading the verdict.EMI Universal Deal Cleared, Giving One Company Veto Rights On Pretty Much Any New Music Service
from the well-that-could-be-a-problem dept
According to Paul Vidich, a former Warner Music executive who closed the iTunes deal, the pending merger between Universal and EMI could put an end to that state of affairs.
"Without a UMG-EMI license, they won't have a business," said Vidich, referring to new digital startups. "Within the new UMG-EMI there will be only a handful of senior executives who make these key licensing decisions. So this small group will become the gatekeepers for music startups that require these licenses. The psychology, pay packages and strategic interests of these executives will have an outsized impact on diversity and innovation in the entire online music industry."
This isn't a huge surprise, but EU and US regulators both approved Universal Music's deal to buy EMI today. Under the terms from the EU, they will have to sell off some EMI assets, including the iconic Parlophone label. There is a part of me that thinks that the complaints against this deal are a bit overblown, seeing as it's about linking up two dinosaurs who've failed to adapt -- and bringing them together won't fix any of the major problems those two labels face. But there are some very real concerns about how this could impact innovation online. For better or for worse, setting up digital music services today requires doing deals with the major labels. If you're just doing webcasting (i.e., broadcast) there are agreed upon -- but insanely high -- rates you can use (more on that later today). However, if you're doing anything interactive or offering digital downloads, then you have to cut deals.A story earlier this week at the Huffington Post, does a really nice job laying out how this deal effectively gives a few Universal Music execs veto power over any new music startup. Because if you're launching a music service today, you generally want it to offer a lot of popular music, and between Universal Music and EMI, they control a huge portion of that market -- much of it historical back catalog stuff, but also some of the more popular mega-acts today. The HuffPo writeup notes that Steve Jobs played the labels off of each other to get them to sign on to iTunes. But, today, the new UMG could control that process.Remember, Universal is the company whose former CEO, Doug Morris, once gleefully explained how he didn't understand technology and didn't even try to hire someone who did, because he wouldn't know how. Amazingly, his board let him keep his job for many years (he's since moved on to head up Sony Music). Morris' replacement at UMG, Lucian Grainge, has talked about how the CD format is important to the company's future. And he's now basically the guy with veto power over any new music service.That does not bode well for the online digital music marketplace.
Filed Under: consolidation, digital music services, major labels, music
Companies: emi, riaa, universal musicVisitors to the Serpentine Gallery in London were met by an unusual sight at the weekend: students and graduates dressed as Father Christmas, protesting against a gallery advert for unpaid work.
The group of white-bearded protesters held a banner that read: "All we want for xmas is pay." They handed out scrolls to members of the public, which contained the original advertisement, plus the protesters' comments about why they felt the role should be paid. One said: "If you contribute to the running of an organisation, you are entitled to national minimum wage."
Following the protest, the Serpentine Gallery have admitted it is in the wrong, saying: "The points you make are valid and we have listened to your protest. We take our responsibility as employers very seriously, and this advertisement is not in line with our current terms on volunteer placements."
Woody Morris, a fine art and history of art student at Goldsmiths University and a member of campaign group Future Interns, was one of the Santas at the protest. He says: "It was quite funny because it turned out that Saturday was a thing called SantaCon, so the park was just full of Santas.
"We thought it was amazing, because the gallery wouldn't really think anything of seeing us in the outfits.
"The theme worked well because people were more likely to accept the scrolls because we said Merry Christmas to them. We weren't noisy and causing trouble, we were just talking to people, so I think it was a good way to protest."
Morris spoke to gallery-goers about the cause and the reaction was generally supportive, he says.
Photograph: Sara Gharsalli
"Since we have been campaigning against unpaid internships, people have been sending us adverts that they have seen," says Fairooz Aniqa, another member of Future Interns and an organiser of the protest.
"We thought that this was a particularly bad one that seemed like it should be paid because it outlined the role."
As well as the festive protest, the Precarious Workers Brigade, who also campaign against unpaid internships, sent a letter to the Serpentine Gallery explaining why they felt the voluntary role advertised warranted the national minimum wage.
The group says: "It is clear that the job requires previous experience and some expertise in the area. While, as a charity, it is not a legal necessity that you pay what are described as 'volunteers', many in the sector have acknowledged the exploitative implications of taking advantage of this legal loophole and not paying young workers who clearly fulfill necessary, vital and in many cases, formerly paid positions within organisations."
Because many arts organisations are charitable institutions, they can advertise for volunteer roles, but voluntary work comes with an understanding that the hours are flexible and commitment is genuinely voluntary. The government's guide to internships and volunteering outlines these differences, and the Arts Council's guide to internships offers advice for arts organisations on employing interns.
The gallery initially responded to the Precarious Workers Brigade letter by saying: "All volunteers are reimbursed travel and food expenses, volunteer roles require much less commitment than an internship and are not core roles that we would otherwise have in the organisation.
"Often these roles give people the experience they require as part of their personal development. We often take volunteers without previous experience and skills are presented merely as suggestions to candidates."
But in a later response, sent to the Precarious Workers Brigade and Guardian Students, a spokesperson for the Serpentine Gallery said that the advertised role was "not in line with our current terms on volunteer placements".
Morris says: "I've never done an unpaid internship and I feel very lucky to have a paid job at an arts organisation. But I'm still a student, so when I graduate I might feel like I have to do one to get ahead, and it's really hard.
"I feel that no one should ever be expected to work for free. There are certain times when voluntary work is acceptable, but the thing about this job was we felt it specified set hours and tasks."
Future Interns say they will be continuing to put pressure on art galleries and other institutions who advertise for unpaid roles.Sarah Tew/CNET
Limiting the number of potential customers for your latest flagship smartphone may not seem like a smart decision, but for Nokia, it's a "business strategy opportunity."
That's according to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who was justifying his decision to sell the Lumia 1020 as an exclusive product to AT&T. Elop sat down with CNET to talk about exclusivity deals, a more consistent campaign for the Lumia 1020, and making the right bets.
While it's not a shocker that AT&T has an exclusive agreement with Nokia on the Lumia 1020 (AT&T had similar deals with its prior flagship Lumia phones), there was nevertheless some disappointment over the fact that most Americans won't be able to buy the phone.
One person in the audience asked the pointed question of whether the Lumia 1020 would receive better treatment than past product campaigns and called AT&T a "crappy partner" for Nokia.
Elop reiterated during the interview what he said on stage, that less than stellar sales of past Lumia phones in the U.S. wasn't AT&T's problem, it was Nokia's problem.
"It's a Windows Phone challenge," he said. "We need to work twice as hard to get the attention of the consumer and the carriers."
He called the push to get Windows Phone and the relatively weak Nokia brand back into the U.S. market a "boot-strap effort," and complimented AT&T for being supportive at every step.
AT&T told CNET that it would amp up its campaign even further for the Lumia 1020, and Elop elaborated, noting that this time, there would be a consistent message from Nokia, AT&T, and Microsoft. Previously, each partner had their own spin on their promotional efforts. But with the Lumia 1020, all parties will focus on the capabilities of the 41-megapixel camera.
"We've really spent time to get focused on a common set of creative materials and common set of messages," he said. "You've got to get more push behind the things that will really attract the consumer."
Sarah Tew/CNET
The Lumia 1020 is the third smartphone that Nokia has launched in the past few months, following the metal-clad Lumia 925 and tweaked Lumia 928. Nokia is widening its portfolio at a time when other major vendors are slimming down their line-up, with one universal flagship phone across all carriers.
While Nokia would like to create a single universal flagship, the company remains in a challenger position and felt it was a better bet to focus on a single carrier at a time, Elop said.
"We're very much having to make decisions where we place our bets and where we concentrate our resources," he said. "It's more effective to go with a specific partner."
A vast majority of AT&T's smartphone sales are made up of iPhones, which would seem like a terrible place for Nokia. But Elop called AT&T an opportunity because the carrier is willing to bet on different platforms and products in an effort to wean itself off of the iPhone.
Elop noted that Nokia has "flagship" phones at three of the four national U.S. carriers. Verizon Wireless has the Lumia 928, while T-Mobile gets the Lumia 925.
Now playing: Watch this: Nokia unveils Lumia 1020 with 41-megapixel cameraGame Invites:
Only players and casters will be invited to casted games, no extraneous observers. If players choose to invite observers to non-casted games they are welcome to. The reason for this policy is to present a clean professional stream, encourage viewers to watch the stream, and eliminate as much lag and interruption as possible. Once you have finished a match, please wait for the casted match of the current round to finish before beginning your next match OR get permission to begin from the event admin in the chat channel. We would like to be able to show a variety of players, not follow the same player through the bracket. Also, depending on volunteer availability, the casters may need to be acting as administrators and we want to always have a match to present on stream.The U.S. State Department has cited violence by settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank under the heading "terrorist incidents" in its annual Country Report on Terrorism.
The 2011 U.S. Country Report - which profiles terrorist activities around the world - cites seven "2011 terrorist incidents" in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Along with rocket attacks from Gaza, the report identifies three "price tag" incidents - a term which has come to describe, among other things, attacks against Palestinian property in revenge for violence against settlers. The report cites the 2011 vandalism of the Muslim Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem, an arson attack on a Jerusalem mosque in December, and another arson attack on a mosque in the village of Burqa in December.
The report also states that 10 mosques in the West Bank and Jerusalem were vandalized or set on fire in 2011, and that these attacks were believed by Israeli authorities to have been "perpetrated by settlers, up from six such incidents in 2010 and one in 2009."
The report, released July 31, states that GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi has referred to attacks against Palestinians and Palestinian property as terror.
The State Department also refers to the December attack on the Israel Defense Forces Ephraim Brigade Headquarters in the section on "Countering Radicalization and Violent Extremism." It notes that the incident "sparked a public debate in Israel on the phenomena of settler violence" and that "political and security officials pledged to implement several steps to curb and punish these violent attacks."
Meanwhile, on Friday, a U.S. State Department official strongly condemned the firebombing of a Palestinian taxi the day before, which injured six people, including two children. Jewish extremists are suspected of carrying out the attack.
"The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms yesterday's attack on a Palestinian taxi in the West Bank," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Friday. "We extend our deepest sympathies to the victims, among them children, and we hope for their speedy recovery. We note that the government of Israel has also condemned this heinous attack and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice. We look to Israeli law enforcement officials to do so expeditiously. We urge all parties to avoid any actions that could lead to an escalation of violence."
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Friday in a radio interview that settler attacks on Palestinians were taking place "in the shadow of the protection given them by the Israeli occupation army."
Abbas said the IDF could stop the attacks if it wanted to do so. He added that the attacks were "proof of the racist policy that still nestles in the mentality of this army and the settlers."
Following concerns in Israel that the attack would lead to widespread violence in the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bureau said the prime minister's envoy Isaac Molho took the unusual step of telephoning Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to inform them that Netanyahu had instructed security forces to make every effort to arrest the perpetrators. Molho also reportedly told the Palestinian leaders that Netanyahu intended to personally follow up on the victims' medical treatment in Israel.
In previous price tag incidents, including the arson attacks on mosques, Netanyahu made do with public condemnation of the attacks.
A Palestinian mosque vandalized in a 'price-tag' attack in the West Bank village of Jaba, June 19, 2012. Shirat Granot
Palestinian taxi cab that caught fire near Bat Ayin, August, 16, 2012 Israel Police
skip -Iceland Court Orders Visa To Start Processing Wikileaks Payments Again Within Two Weeks
from the economic-censorship dept
It's been about a year since Wikileaks filed its complaint against Visa, Mastercard and Paypal for cutting off all payments to the site following the infamous leak of the State Department cables. Wikileaks saw this is a clear attempt to censor the site using an economic workaround, and a violation of their contract—and now at least one court has agreed. Today Wikileaks announced a significant victory in the case against Visa, with the court giving them two weeks to start processing payments again:
In a case against Valitor, formerly VISA Iceland, Reykjavík District Court just ruled the company had violated contract laws by blocking credit card donations to Wikileaks. After WikiLeaks' publications revealing U.S. war crimes and statecraft in 2010, U.S. financial institutions, including VISA, MasterCard, Bank of America, erected a banking blockade against WikiLeaks wholly outside of any judicial or administrative process. The blockade stripped away over 95% of donations from supporters of WikiLeaks, costing the organization in excess of USD 20M.
The court ruled that the donation gateway should be reopened within 14 days otherwise Valitor will be penalized with a fine of 800 000 ISK daily. WikiLeaks is persuing several actions against the blockade and a European Commission preliminary investigation into the blockade was started last July. A Commission decision on whether to pursue the financial services companies involved in the blockade is expected before the end of August.
This is a big win for Wikileaks and a bad sign for the other companies complicit in the payment blockade. Whatever you may think of Wikileaks, cutting off their access to donations at the payment-processing level is a highly questionable shortcut—and hopefully the courts recognize this in the cases against other payment providers.
Filed Under: iceland, payment blockade, state department cables
Companies: valitor, visa, wikileaksUrgent:
Should U.S. Strike Syria? Vote Here
Former Rep. Ron Paul on Thursday thanked WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for "fighting to increase transparency in our government" and fighting "for the cause of liberty."Paul's praise came during the third and final installment of an interview with Assange on the Ron Paul Channel -- www.ronpaulchannel.com -- the subscription-based Internet channel launched last month by the Texas Republican.Paul concluded the interview with Assange – confined in the Ecuadorean embassy in London -- by directing viewers to the WikiLeaks site where they could donate to Assange's cause.The day after Assange told Paul in the second part of the interview that the United States was taking advantage of the humanitarian crisis in Syria to justify a military strike, Paul took a more personal approach in the final installment, asking about Assange's personal philosophy.The Australian described his political philosophy as a blend of "California libertarianism," Greek political theory, along with thoughts from the Federalist Paper and some naturalist views."I freely admit to borrowing from parts of my political education from different schools of thought and one of those is, roughly speaking, Californian libertarianism and from your Federalist Papers," Assange said.His political and philosophical diversity is reflected in the political party he founded this year and on whose platform he is campaigning in this weekend's Australian elections.The WikiLeaks party "is already the fourth most popular party in Australia and we have a wide variety of people from what are classically known as the right and the left within the party. There are tensions about that and I have to try and resolve those tensions and explain the commonality," Assange said.Born in Australia to a mother who was the daughter of academics and a father who was the son of engineers, Assange says political philosophy was not something which his parents imposed on him."My mother was the daughter of academics. My grandfather left school at age 14 and worked his way up through the Christian education system and to become a very young military intelligence officer in World War II, but my mother was very careful not to bias me," he told Paul. He acknowledged that his family environment was influential, including the divorce of his parents when he was 9.According to Assange, he developed his feelings about the world during a "burst of maturity in adolescence" and by exposing himself to a myriad of political philosophies.Assange said he is hesitant to assign a concrete definition to his beliefs."I have been very careful not to define my political philosophy because those terms tend to trap you into one camp and then opponents of that particular camp try to use it against you," he said.As a consequence of the recent NSA disclosures by Edward Snowden and during the Bradley Manning trial, Assange said that a unique political phenomenon is developing.Assange sees an "extreme center" emerging in the establishment from both sides of the political spectrum that is comprised of people "more concerned about self-promotion, political networking, and creating political dynasties, doing favors for mates" than the issues."They are just working the system," Assange said. "They don't really have any ideas they believe in. The extreme center, which is pushing forward aggressively in a particular direction to promote itself, has led to others feeling like that is not what they want to be involved in. There is now a magnetic force between those on the right and those on the left," Assange said.What unites the two sides is the sense of injustice, he said, adding that the libertarian right views injustice in terms of a lack of freedom."Your liberty can't be deprived from you unless someone else has more power, so there is a commonality between these two sides," Assange said.The WikiLeaks Party was registered in 2013 and is running in three of the five states in Australia. Their political chances in Saturday's election are difficult to quantify due to the complicated nature of Australia's electoral system, but Assange believes the party will garner between 2 percent and 6 percent of the vote. Australians will have 1,717 candidates and more than 50 parties to choose from when they vote on Saturday.An early report on Zika spread in Colombia reveals that close to 12,000 pregnant women have the virus.
In the report released Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, Colombian researchers and scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that as of April, there were 65,726 cases of Zika reported in Colombia, with double the number of infections in women compared to men (this could be due to the fact that more women may be tested due to the risks to pregnancy).
The report also shows that 11,944 pregnant women have been reported to have Zika, with about 1,484 of those women confirmed with specialized laboratory testing.
The researchers looked at a group of close to 2,000 of those pregnant women and report that over 90% were infected during their third trimester, and no infants with birth defects have been identified so far in this group. One of the things scientists are hoping to learn from studies like this is why some women with Zika will give birth to babies with microcephaly and others will not. It’s suspected that the time of infection during pregnancy has a role, and the fact that the women who were infected later in pregnancy had healthy babies could be telling.
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Among cases of microcephaly reported in Colombia so far this year, four babies had laboratory evidence of a Zika virus infection. All of these babies were born to mothers who did not have symptoms and were not under surveillance. Most people with Zika do not have symptoms, which is why U.S. health officials have recommended all pregnant women who have traveled to affected countries—or who have partners who have traveled to affected countries—get tested for the virus.
Nearly 12,000 reported Zika cases among pregnant women and 65,726 cases reported overall is substantial, but the researchers say this is likely an underestimate since the numbers don’t account for people who don’t have symptoms and are not tested.
The study authors note that in 2010, over half of all pregnancies in Colombia were unintended and less than half of sexually active women reported using a condom the last time they had sex, though 61% said they used contraception in general. “Since [Zika] can be transmitted sexually, providers should counsel pregnant women whose male sexual partners are at risk for Zika virus infection about the importance of condom use or abstinence to prevent Zika virus transmission,” the researchers write.
The study authors say the ongoing Zika outbreak is “a major public health threat.” Medical groups and experts are still pushing for Congress to provide adequate funding to respond to the outbreak.
Contact us at [email protected] Korean police have raided the offices of the Korean Esports Association (KeSPA), late on Monday, November 6, following corruption allegations. According to South Korean newspapers “Korea Joongang Daily” and “The Hankyoreh”, prosecutors are investigating funds received by an unnamed former KeSPA president in 2015 from Lotte Homeshopping, a company later involved in two major bribery scandals.
The investigation began after prosecutors were presented with clues that a former KeSPA chairman had received several hundred thousands of dollars from Lotte Homeshopping. This was accompanied by claims that the company lobbied in favor of the same chairman to get him elected.
Prosecutors are also investigating a sponsorship deal between the two parties in 2015, when Lotte Homeshopping sponsored the KeSPA Cup. The deal was worth 300 million won (approximately $270,000 USD), but it is not yet clear whether the deal was signed during or after this specific chairman’s time in office. According to another report, from television network JTBC News, three arrests have been made during the investigation.
KeSPA denies having received money illegally from Lotte Homeshopping, claiming via twitter that everything was part of a legitimate sponsorship deal.
It is not the first time the Lotte Group is involved in a corruption scandal. In 2016, two major scandals shook the conglomerate: In June, several companies of the group were raided, as prosecutors investigated a possible slush fund. The investigation forced Hotel Lotte to abandon an initial public offering and Lotte Chemical Corporation to withdraw from bidding for Axiall Corporation. Just two months later, the police questioned the group’s vice president, Lee In-won, following claims for attempted political bribery. He was later found dead in his house, presumably having committed suicide to avoid arrest.
This scandal follows news last month that KeSPA had been downgraded from an “official member” to “reserved member” of the Integrated Korean Olympic Committee. Just days before the police raided KeSPA’s offices, South Korea saw two of the nation’s esports teams compete in the League of Legends World Championship Finals, and its national team win the Overwatch World Cup.Not long ago an NYU journalism student interviewed me for a class project. His topic was “almost famous people” and he told me I was the ideal subject. While I have a smidgen of fame for my role in helping to unmask serial fabricator Stephen Glass, which led to Steve Zahn portraying me in an indie movie, it’s not like my name lands me a hard-to-get reservation at a hot new restaurant or past a nightclub’s velvet rope. On Wikipedia my entry is a “stub.” My brush with fame does result in the odd email or two when Shattered Glass airs on late-night cable or is shown as a cautionary tale to journalism classes. Sometimes I’m congratulated on my scoop, as if it happened last week. More often a high school or college student researching a paper on ethics requests an interview.
I’ve never met Stephen Glass but over the years have obliquely followed his goings and doings. After The New Republic fired him in 1998, Glass graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law School. He passed the New York State bar exam in 2000 but wasn’t granted a license to practice law because he had committed “acts of moral turpitude.” In 2003 Jann Wenner assigned him an article for Rolling Stone on Canada’s drug laws. Glass also received a $190,000 advance for The Fabulist, a novel about a young journalist caught fabricating stories, and promoted it with a TV blitz, appearing on 60 Minutes and a slew of other news shows. Which prompted Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic’s literary editor, to observe, “Even when it comes to reckoning with his own sins, he is still incapable of nonfiction.”
Despite the excessive promotion the book fared poorly–it sold fewer than 5,000 copies–debunking the notion there’s no such thing as bad publicity. The following year Glass moved to California and passed that state’s bar exam, but in 2009 California bar examiners rejected his application, questioning whether he had truly rehabilitated himself. Around that time Billy Ray, Shattered Glass‘s screenwriter/director, told me he was waiting on line for a movie in Los Angeles when he spotted Glass working as a street performer with Un-Cabaret. Later he took a job at a Beverly Hills law firm as either a paralegal or law clerk, depending on whose account you believe. (I’d ask Glass, but he hasn’t returned my call for this piece.)
Now Glass is in the news again. His battle to join the legal profession has wound through the appeals process, with Glass winning two separate victories: A State Bar Court judge overturned the Committee of Bar Examiners’ decision to block Glass; then a three-judge review panel also decided 2-1 in Glass’s favor. Recently the California Supreme Court opted to hear the case, and a ruling should be forthcoming. Read all the details in a meticulously researched column by Jack Shafer of Reuters.
When I first learned of Glass’s quest to join the legal profession, I thought, Christ, it’s been 13 years. And, since when does lying disqualify someone from being a lawyer? Let the guy earn a living. Leave it to Glass to disgrace himself in one mistrusted profession only to apply to another. (Gallup polls consistently rank reporters and lawyers as only slightly more favorable to car salesmen and members of Congress.) After reading Shafer’s piece, however, I changed my mind. Few words are as dangerous as, “I’m no psychologist, but…” it occurred to me the strategies Glass adopted to fight his ban are eerily similar to the ones I confronted all those years ago.
Travel in my way-back machine to May 1998, when, after three full days of dissecting every word in Glass’s now famous story, “Hack Heaven,” I was interrogating him over the phone along with then-Forbes.com managing editor, Kambiz Foroohar. Every time we questioned another “fact” we could not verify, Glass spun another lie. As I wrote two days later, “It’s tough proving a negative. It is even tougher proving that something or someone does not exist.” And Glass did everything he could to make harder. He concocted phony business cards and voicemails, a fake website for his fake company Jukt Micronics, and faux sources to vouch for his fabricated sources. Instead of coming clean he copped to lesser crimes if he thought it would divert us from learning far worse. After we eviscerated each and every fact in his story he finally admitted to being an egregiously sloppy reporter who didn’t check facts and unintentionally misled readers and editors. He might have been duped, he claimed. Perhaps some malevolent hackers took advantage of him. At the same time New Republic editor Chuck Lane was fending off an insurrection within the magazine, with Glass trying to turn staff against him.ANOTHER night with Taylor! Harry Styles spotted arriving at Swift's hotel for a second consecutive sleepover
They're fast cementing themselves as one of the pop world's hottest young couples, and have even coined a catchy joint moniker - Haylor.
And it would seem Harry Styles and Taylor Swift's fledging romance is going from strength-to-strength as they enjoyed a second consecutive sleepover on Tuesday night.
The One Direction heartthrob was pictured arriving at the 22-year-old singer's hotel at 11pm, just an hour after Taylor had returned from her recording session at New York City's Pier 59 studios.
Scroll down to watch
Sleepover: Harry Styles was spotted arriving at the New York hotel of Taylor Swift for the second consecutive evening at 11pm on Tuesday night
Sheepish? Taylor kept her head down as she signed autographs for fans outside her hotel earlier in the evening
Looking somewhat sheepish as he kept his head down while walking into the hotel, the 18-year-old star was carrying a large overnight bag in preparation for his stay.
Their second consecutive date night would suggest the pop-tastic duo's relationship has come on leaps and bounds in the past few days.
And the pair seem keen to flaunt their new relationship for all to see.
Well-prepared: The 18-year-old heartthrob arrived equipped with a large overnight bag
More than just good friends: harry kept his head down and looked rather sheepish as he made his way into the hotel to meet with his new lady
VIDEO: Sleepover? Harry Styles arrives at Taylor Swift's hotel...
Good night? Taylor Swift and Harry Styles emerged from their Downtown Manhattan hotel separately but just moments apart on Tuesday morning
On Tuesday, the pair emerged from the same hotel just moments apart, dotting the i and crossing the t for the rumour mill on whether they are really a couple.
The couple seemed to be smiling to themselves following their late-night sleepover, which had seen the duo arrive back at their hotel at 4am following One Direction's gig at Madison Square Gardens.
And although he was presumably taking about his gig, Harry seemed to have a whale of a time, tweeting: 'Last night was the best thing I have ever done.'
Confirmation? Harry held on to Taylor's hand as they finally called it a night at 4am and retreated back to her hotel following One Direction's Madison Square Gardens gig on Monday evening
Poll How long do you think 'Haylor' will last? Not long - it's all for show Forever - they're a match made in pop heaven! How long do you think 'Haylor' will last? Not long - it's all for show 27473 votes
Forever - they're a match made in pop heaven! 4556 votes Now share your opinion
Taylor had been at the 2012 Ripple of Hope Awards on Monday evening before rushing to see her new beau at the band's after party, and later heading back to the hotel hand-in-hand in the early hours of the morning.
The rumour mill first went into overdrive when Mario Lopez revealed he saw Harry and Taylor holding hands backstage at the U.S. X Factor last month.
And on Sunday, the happy couple were pictured together for the first time, enjoying a romantic stroll in New York's Central Park.Tue, Sep 8, 2015
(I’m updating this post as folks comment. You can look at the history on github.)
I was chatting on an Xoogler message board the other day and Dennis Ordanov (@daodennis) was asking about the basic moving parts of a production stack. I just started enumerating them from memory and thought it might be a good blog post. So, here is |
will be cast before March 15.
In Florida and beyond, Bush is getting on-the-ground help from Right to Rise, his super PAC, which is sending mailers to frequent absentee voters. "This is a long and expensive process and early voting makes it even harder for candidates with limited resources to compete,” said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the Bush super PAC. "Some candidates will have a hard time living hand to mouth with a condensed calendar and multiple states voting at the same time."
The Rubio-backing Conservative Solutions super PAC is doing no similar work.
The Rubio-Bush match isn’t just a home state fight. It’s neighbor vs. neighbor. They live a five-minute drive apart, the senator in West Miami and the former governor in Coral Gables. So they threaten also to divide up each other’s home-town votes in Miami-Dade, the most-populous county in the state, where Cuban-American Republicans tend to heavily vote by absentee ballot.
Four years ago, the Romney campaign made a strong play for absentee voters in Florida and laid the ground work to blow away rival Newt Gingrich just as he was besting the former Massachusetts governor in South Carolina. The Florida loss precipitated Gingrich’s collapse.
Dan Centinello, Romney’s deputy national political director, said the Romney campaign would “do daily requests in order to obtain the list of all the people who have already voted” early and then “run very thorough voter identification projects on it.”
“This allowed us to know what the current ‘score’ was with a great deal of confidence. It would also allow us to know what our vote goal was on the actual Election Day,” he said.
He called it their “crystal ball” and said it was often more informative than the public polls that get so much media coverage. “In a time where everyone is constantly examining the latest polls, the campaigns are likely far more focused on what the early voting is telling them,” Centinello said.
“The only ones peering into this crystal ball more closely than the campaign staff will be the candidates themselves,” Centinello said.
Early voting can give the most sophisticated and best-funded campaigns an edge, as they can target their voters as roughly two-dozen states open balloting in the coming weeks.
“You can ID early voters,” said Rick Tyler, a spokesman for Ted Cruz. “You know who they are and campaigns, depending on how much money they have — and we have a lot — it’s just common sense to get to [early voters] earlier than you do everyone else.”
Trump, who's not running a traditional campaign, hasn't hired an absentee-ballot guru -- a sign of the confidence of his campaign in his standing in the polls and the survey data showing that Rubio and Bush are cannibalizing one another's voters to Trump's benefit.
In the fluid 2016 presidential primary, many voters are expected to delay casting their ballots (“sit on it” in consultant-speak) so as not to “waste” their vote. The South Carolina primary, debates and March 1 Southeastern states – which all lean heavily Trump and then Cruz – could play a far-larger role on the decisions of Florida and Ohio voters than any mailer, phone call or TV ad.
But for the almost 43,000 voters in Florida, the decision is already clear. They’ve cast their ballots. But for whom? The votes won’t be counted until March 15, and the speculation rages. Because exit polls in New Hampshire and Iowa indicated that Trump was strongly supported by early deciders, there’s a sense among some that he might be winning them in Florida – especially because polls in the state he calls a second home show him with a big lead.
Cruz came in second in January polls, although Rubio moved from third to second in a more-recent survey from Florida Southern College. Bush remains mired in fourth in most surveys.
“If anybody thinks that because they’re quote-unquote native sons, that’s impacting their ballot position in Florida, there’s no data to suggest that,” said one unaligned Florida Republican strategist. “There is no home-state advantage for either one of these guys as it is today.”Assault to retake Iraq’s second largest city expected to begin in April or May according to US official
The operation to retake Iraq’s second largest city from Islamic State militants will likely begin in April or May and will involve about 12 Iraqi brigades, or between 20,000 and 25,000 troops, a senior US military official has said.
Laying out details of the expected Mosul operation for the first time, the official from US Central Command said five Iraqi Army brigades will soon go through coalition training in Iraq to prepare for the mission.
Those five would make up the core fighting force that would launch the attack, but they would be supplemented by three smaller brigades serving as reserve forces, along with three Peshmerga brigades who would contain the Islamic State fighters from the north and west.The Peshmerga are Kurdish forces from northern Iraq.
The official said there also would be a Mosul fighting force, largely made up of former Mosul police and tribal forces, who would have to be ready to go back into the city once the army units clear out the Islamic State fighters.
Included in the force would be a brigade of Iraqi counterterrorism forces who have been trained by US special operations forces. The brigades include roughly 2,000 troops each. The official was not authorised to discuss the operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said the US will provide military support for the operation, including training, air support, intelligence and surveillance. The official said there has been no decision made yet on whether to send in some US ground troops to help call in airstrikes.
Islamic State militants overtook Mosul last June, as the group marched across large sections of Iraq and Syria, sending Iraqi forces fleeing.
At this point, officials estimate there are between 1,000 to 2,000 Islamic State insurgents in the city of Mosul. Military leaders have been talking about retaking the city for some time, but they have said they won’t launch the operation until the Iraqi troops are ready.
The official said they wanted to retake Mosul in the spring, before the summer heat and the holiday month of Ramadan kick in.
“But by the same token, if they’re not ready, if the conditions are not set, if all the equipment they need is not physically there and they (aren’t) trained to a degree in which they will be successful, we have not closed the door on continuing to slide that to the right,” he said.
The official also revealed for the first time that Qatar has agreed to host a training site for coalition forces to train moderate Syrian rebels who would return to Syria to fight the Islamic State forces there. Other sites are in Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.Former Liberal minister Jackie Kelly has referred to the Abbott government as “lying, lying, lying toads” for betraying western Sydney on the Badgerys Creek airport.
Kelly, the Howard government star who resigned from the Liberal party two weeks ago over its failure to reform, has accused her former friend Tony Abbott of treating western Sydney residents “like schmucks” just “so the north shore can get their curfews”. Tony Abbott’s electorate of Warringah is on Sydney’s north shore.
In his first infrastructure statement to parliament this week, Abbott said the decision to go ahead with Badgerys Creek airport was “irrevocable” and would be supported by a range of infrastructure, including roads and rail.
“That’s a crock,” Kelly told Guardian Australia. “They are lying, lying, lying toads.”
“They haven’t planned for it, there is no money on the table … Badgerys Creek will be a 24-hour airport mostly for freight.
“It will put even more trucks on our roads. The north shore can get their curfews but we schmucks in western Sydney don’t deserve caps and curfews. We deserve better representation.”
Kelly said a Badgerys Creek airport would not attract “cheap airfares” because it would mainly cater to freight and so western Sydney residents would still have to trek into Mascot to fly out.
She said she has had many people asking her to run as an independent in the next federal election but she has ruled it out at this stage. However, Kelly committed to helping the No Badgerys Creek Airport group run candidates and a campaign at the federal election, and she believes the group will garner enough support to tip seats away from the government.
Kelly resigned from the party over its failure to implement reforms in the Howard report on party reform, in which John Howard recommended every Liberal party member be allowed to vote for local candidates.
Kelly has not spoken to Abbott since her resignation from the party but said he knows her views because she has been saying it “inside the party” for many years.
“The difference is now I can say it outside the party,” Kelly said.
Abbott, who campaigned on being the “infrastructure prime minister”, told parliament this week the government had begun consulting with the Sydney Airport Group on Badgerys Creek and the construction would begin in 2016. He said an upgrade of Bringelly road and the WestConnex would support the Badgerys Creek airport to give western Sydney the “modern infrastructure it deserves”.
“It’s the centrepiece of our long-term vision for western Sydney – and heeding past lessons, it will be a case of roads first, airport second: the roads will be built before the first plane has landed.”The first big trade of the NHL offseason went down Wednesday afternoon when the Montreal Canadiens parted ways with top prospect Mikhail Sergachev for high-skill winger Jonathan Drouin.
Now that Drouin is a Canadien, is it possible he can be reunited with his former Halifax Mooseheads centreman Nathan MacKinnon?
Galchenyuk on the way out?
Instant analysis from hockey insiders such as Ray Ferraro, Bob McKenzie and Pierre McGuire suggested that Habs are likely to trade Alex Galchenyuk now more-than-ever due to the Canadiens adding another left wing to the organizational depth chart.
There has written many articles suggesting Galchenyuk is a more productive centre than winger but Marc Bergevin said at his end of season press conference that Galchenyuk is currently a winger.
In the case that Bergevin and co. are ready to move Galchenyuk for help at centre they should not hold their cards back and target the heavily rumoured - and openly shopped - Matt Duchene, but instead his Colorado Avalanche teammate and 2013 first-overall pick Nathan MacKinnon.
Can Galchenyuk fetch MacKinnon?
Galchenyuk-for-MacKinnon straight up may sound like an underpayment on the Habs part but what do the stats say?
In almost identical 5v5 minutes played in their career, Galchenyuk holds a very slight edge in all categories except CF%RelTM. Galchenyuk’s relative corsi this season was -3.5 which put him below a positive number for his career. Despite this, he still finished with a higher CF% than MacKinnon whose relative number is more indicative of his team’s weak depth.
This shows that MacKinnon is consistently one of the better forwards on the Avalanche, but it’s hard to compare the two.
Not a lot changes in all situations. Galchenyuk still holds just a slight edge in all categories but his GF% does jump a little bit probably due to the fact he doesn’t play on the penalty kill whereas MacKinnon does.
The pair is seemingly identical and one can argue Galchenyuk’s stronger team has helped him perform slightly better than MacKinnon so it may be better to look at how each is trending in their careers.
Thanks to Own the Puck’s HERO charts, we can compare both players side by side.
The bar graphs tell that Galchenyuk is a better goal scorer at 5v5 despite lesser minutes and MacKinnon does a better job generating shots and suppressing shots per 60 minutes, while slightly ahead in primary assists.
However, if you look at the line graphs you see one player trending up and the other apparently at a stalemate.
Galchenyuk’s points per 60 minutes at 5v5 is still stronger than MacKinnon and likely to rise if he is given more minutes but MacKinnon’s shot impact per 60 – a culmination of shots generated and shots suppressed – is trending upwards at a steady pace. In fact, if that trend continues it would indicate that MacKinnon’s small dip in primary points per 60 should be more of an anomaly due to bad luck than a reflection of his ability.
Should the Habs make an offer?
Galchenyuk is a proven scorer at the NHL level and has done so at an almost elite pace from the centre position. He would only be expected to reach higher point totals with more minutes, and with the addition of Drouin, more depth in the forward pool.
If the Montreal Canadiens really do not believe Galchenyuk is a legitimate centre, they need to fill that hole on the roster.
MacKinnon has not proven to have strong possession numbers or to be a better scorer than Galchenyuk in his young career but his upward trend is real. Galchenyuk is also a bit slower and the Canadiens like to play a fast-paced game more suitable to MacKinnon’s speed.
Not to mention the fact that MacKinnon and Drouin, the newest Hab, have had a lot of success playing together at the Junior level.
Galchenyuk is only one year older than MacKinnon and with the way their careers have played out thus far a one-for-one swap would be a completely lateral, and reasonably fair move... on paper.
However, neither the Canadiens or the Avalanche would see it this way. The NHL is not (and should not be) run on paper alone.
MacKinnon’s name and perceived ceiling have a lot more pull than Galchenyuk so the Canadiens would have to add more pieces to get any deal involving these two done. His value is much higher than Galchenyuk’s. On top of that, MacKinnon has put up most of his numbers at centre, where as Galchenyuk’s future at the spot is questioned.
It was rumoured the Avalanche were looking for an NHL-ready defenceman, a prospect and a first round pick for Matt Duchene at the deadline. Since MacKinnon is six years younger than Duchene it is reasonable to believe that they would want each of those pieces added to a Galchenyuk for MacKinnon swap.
However, because Galchenyuk is a proven scorer at the NHL level, the Canadiens may be able to give lower-tier pieces than previously expected.
Would a four-for-one deal featuring Galchenyuk and MacKinnon be enticing enough for Colorado to allow Montreal to reunite MacKinnon and Drouin? Or, given their almost identical career output to date, would it be worth adding what would need to be added if you are Marc Bergevin? Let us know in the comments!Oil is the world's most heavily traded commodity A rogue trader at a London oil broker caused his employer to lose $10m (£6m) after making unauthorised trades. PVM Oil Futures said it was a "victim of unauthorised trading" on Tuesday, 30 June, and said it was now conducting a full investigation. The rogue trader, believed to be Steve Perkins, has been suspended. PVM said it had informed the Financial Services Authority and the InterContinental Exchange (ICE), the location for much European oil trade. Firms have systems to pick up oddities and anomalies... The question is how fast were they able to get on top of it and deal with it
Nick McGregor, Redmayne Bentley The trades are thought to have caused a jump in the price of Brent crude oil on Tuesday. PVM said it was now conducting business as normal. "As a result of a series of unauthorised trades, substantial volumes of futures contracts were held by PVM. When this was discovered, the positions were closed in an orderly fashion. PVM suffered a loss totalling a little under $10m," the company said in a statement. "There are a range of procedures that are followed to look at trading patterns, price movement and levels of activity," explained David Peniket, the president of ICE Futures Europe, which trades futures and energy and commodity contracts. "It will investigate and follow up, and where appropriate, action will be taken," he added. Rogue trade On Tuesday morning, the price of Brent crude rose about $2 a barrel in the space of an hour, hitting $73.50 a barrel before reversing sharply in volatile trade. In that time, contracts for 16 million barrels of oil changed hands - 32 times the normal level - equivalent to double the daily production of Saudi Arabia. OTHER ROGUE TRADES June 2008 - Morgan Stanley loses £79m after London-based trader Matthew Piper is found to have deliberately mis-priced trades in the credit markets Feb 2008 - Unnamed employee at US trading giant MF Global loses his company more than $140m (£86m) after placing unauthorised bets on the future direction of wheat prices Jan 2008 - Jerome Kerviel costs French bank Societe Generale 4.9bn euros ($6.9bn; £4.2bn) after he makes unauthorised and incorrect bets on market movements By the time PVM sold the futures contracts the trader had bought, the price had fallen, which is why PVM booked losses of $10m, Nick McGregor at Redmayne Bentley told the BBC. "In the very small hours, while volumes are relatively low during Asian trading because most of London is asleep, an awful lot of business went through and as it turns out it all came from the same source," Mr McGregor said. "This all happened within an hour at about two o'clock in the morning, and of course in a thin market at that sort of time, it doesn't take an awful lot to move the price." With volume so thin, the trade stood out, which is why the "rogue trade" has emerged so quickly, he added. "Firms have systems to pick up oddities and anomalies, but of course at two o'clock in the morning, I am sure it rang a little bell. The question is how fast were they able to get on top of it and deal with it," he said. Oil is the world's most heavily traded commodity, with trading centred on the ICE in London and the New York Mercantile Exchange or Nymex. Brokerages like PVM place orders on behalf of large banks and hedge funds. On Friday morning, Brent crude oil hovered above $66 a barrel in light holiday trading.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionA significant reduction in US financial assistance to Ukraine can be perceived as a form of political pressure on Kiev, Russian political scientist Boris Shmelev told Sputnik.
© AFP 2018 / YURIY DYACHYSHYN Why is US Slashing Military Aid to Ukraine?
In an interview with Sputnik, Russian political scientist Boris Shmelev described Washington's decision to considerably cut its financial assistance to Ukraine as a sort of signal to Kiev.
The interview came after the magazine Foreign Policy reported that the administration of US President Donald Trump is considering a proposed project stipulating a reduction in overall foreign financial assistance in fiscal year 2018, including a significant cut in aid to Ukraine.
The news outlet quoted the State Department budget document as saying that Ukraine is facing a 68.8 percent reduction in the US financial aid that had been allocated to it to revive its economy and implement reforms.
Speaking to Sputnik, Boris Shmelev of the Institute of Economics of the of the Russian Academy of Sciences said that such a significant cut in US financial assistance to Kiev once again indicates that Ukraine is not among the current US Administration’s top foreign policy priorities.
In any case, it is too early to speak of the Trump administration finally elaborating its foreign policy concept, according to him.
"However, it seems that from the point of view of this administration, Ukraine and the Ukrainian crisis are Europe's headache. In other words, Washington believes that it is Europe, the EU and Germany in the person of Chancellor Angela Merkel that should deal with resolving the Ukrainian crisis," Shmelev said.
© Sputnik / Alexander Kryazhev The Coal Facts: Kiev's Plan to Import US Anthracite Lacks Economic Justification
He referred to America's "global commitments," such as the Syrian crisis and the situation on the Korean Peninsula, where he said the US is seeking "to show its worth."
He also did not rule out that the reduction in US financial assistance to Ukraine could be seen as a kind of signal to Kiev.
"It is a sort of pressure on Kiev because they demand that the Minsk peace agreements should be implemented. Of course, it is possible to constantly blame Russia for allegedly blocking the implementation of these agreements, but one should keep in mind that Moscow is not a party to the conflict in Ukraine," Shmelev pointed out.
He also drew attention to the fact that as for Europe, it is already tired of the endless Ukrainian crisis and Kiev's inconsistent position on the matter.
He recalled that the situation in Ukraine is expected to top the agenda of talks between Chancellor Angela Merkel and senior Russian officials during her visit to Moscow in early May.
"Of course, it is too early to predict how these talks will wrap up but it's clear already now that Europeans are concerned about and tired of the Ukrainian crisis, which shows no signs of abating. During the talks, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says one thing but under the influence of the [country’s] radical forces does quite the opposite," Shmelev said.
In February 2015, the Kiev forces and supporters of Donbass independence in eastern Ukraine signed a peace agreement in the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
The deal stipulates a full ceasefire, the withdrawal of weapons from the line of contact in Donbass, as well as constitutional reforms that would give special status to the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.
Despite the agreement brokered by the Normandy Four states (Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine), the ceasefire regime is regularly violated, with both sides accusing each other of multiple breaches, undermining the terms of the accord.
Never miss a story again — sign up to our Telegram channel and we'll keep you up to speed!House Republicans will likely meet Tuesday to discuss strategy. | John Shinkle/POLITICO House not moving on debt bill
It will be more of the same this week in the House.
House Republicans have no plans to try to pass a bill to hike the nation’s borrowing limit this week, according to Republican aides.
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Instead, Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) chamber will use the week to continue to pass targeted spending bills in an attempt to reopen parts of the currently shuttered government. Those bills have been rejected by Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama.
Time is running short. The Treasury Department says the debt ceiling must be lifted in the next ten days — the most current projection is Oct. 17. Since taking the majority, Boehner’s House has typically preferred to lay down a legislative marker at the outset of a fight by passing a bill with only Republican votes.
But the House GOP has no plans to pass a bill to lift the borrowing limit this week. When the party last planned to hike the borrowing limit in September, a pocket of House Republicans rejected the package, which was filled with GOP policy goodies. Conservatives wanted to see what — if any — concessions they could win from Democrats in keeping government funded. That dynamic has not changed. Several senior Republicans describe their strategy as a staring contest: they are banking on Obama and Reid eventually entering into some sort of negotiation
This strategy is not without risk.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and other Obama administration officials have warned Republicans of waiting until the deadline to lift the nation’s borrowing cap, arguing that it could rattle global financial markets. If the markets react to a lack of legislative movement in Washington, things could change. Lew is testifying on Capitol Hill this week about the debt cap.
It’s also unclear how Republican lawmakers will react when they return to D.C. this week. The GOP is now moving into the second week of the shutdown with the same message: the White House and Senate Democrats should negotiate. The party is considering several legislative mechanisms to try to lure Democrats into discussions. But polls currently show that the public is siding with Democrats’ tactics in the shutdown
It remains to be seen if that message will be enough to satisfy members of the House Republican Conference. Many are already grumbling about the lack of a clear strategy to open the government, avoid a debt default and extract policy concessions from Obama and Reid.
House Republicans will likely meet Tuesday to discuss strategy.
Republican leadership met Monday to plan, but sources involved and familiar with the meeting say little progress was made. There is still no discussion about trying to pass a so-called clean government-funding bill, without legislative add-ons.
At this point it’s almost inevitable that Washington will have to roll the government-funding debt ceiling fights into one legislative discussion. Boehner wants to craft a large-scale fiscal deal to handle both. The White House seems open to that, but wants Congress to reopen government and lift the debt ceiling before those discussions begin. A short-term continuing resolution to fund the government and debt ceiling bill would face a lot of resistance in the House, aides say.The most recent version of Firefox Nightly, the browser's cutting edge version, highlights the add-ons that are not WebExtensions with the Legacy tag.
One of the concerns that Firefox users who run one or multiple add-ons in the browser have currently is whether their add-ons will make the cut when Firefox 57 comes along.
It is in this version of Firefox, out November 2017, that Mozilla plans to drop support for so-called legacy add-ons.
The move blocks any non-WebExtension add-ons from working in the browser. In fact, users won't be able to install legacy add-ons when Firefox 57 hits, and the add-ons that they had installed before the upgrade to the new version of the browser won't be there anymore after the upgrade.
It is a clear cut that Mozilla plans, one that is welcome by some and disliked by others. For Mozilla, moving Firefox's extensions system to WebExtension exclusively means a reduction in extension caused crashes and performance issues, the freeing up of development time because extension compatibility is less of an issue, and that users won't face that many issues anymore caused by add-ons.
The naysayers of the move point out that Firefox will lose part of its add-on ecosystem, and with it add-ons. Extension won't be as powerful anymore, and are restricted in what they can do as they rely solely on the APIs that Mozilla creates. Some features that legacy add-ons offered are simply not implementable with the new WebExtensions system.
Firefox users who run add-ons currently are also concerned when it comes to the add-ons that they are using in the browser. Will those make the cut, or won't they?
It was quite difficult up until now to come up with an answer. The release of the latest Firefox Nightly version changes that, as legacy add-ons are tagged as that in the browser's add-on manager.
If you want to verify whether your add-ons will make the cut if the cut would happen today, do the following (only in Firefox Nightly currently):
Load about:addons in the Firefox address bar. Firefox should highlight all legacy add-ons right in the interface.
Note: If you run Classic Theme Restorer, or another add-on that modifies the browser UI, you may not see the legacy tag there. You may see it with a click on the more link though.
Click on the "more" link next to an add-on. Firefox displays Legacy next to the add-on if it is a legacy add-on.
Please note that some developers are working on porting their extensions to the WebExtensions system. While these may be listed as legacy currently, they may be released as WebExtensions before the cut so that you may continue using them.
Still, the tagging of add-ons as legacy makes a whole lot of sense. Mozilla should, and probably will, move the tagging to Beta and Stable versions of Firefox in the near future.
Now Read: If Firefox 57 would be released today, these extensions would be compatible
Summary Article Name Firefox Nightly marks Legacy Add-ons Description The most recent version of Firefox Nightly, the browser's cutting edge version, highlights the add-ons that are not WebExtensions with the Legacy tag. Author Martin Brinkmann Publisher Ghacks Technology News Logo
AdvertisementWine enthusiasts are toasting a new state law that will make shopping more convenient starting Monday.
State Liquor Control Board officials said several provisions of the wide-ranging law, known as Act 39, will begin rolling out this week and will continue throughout the fall.
Most noticeable to customers will be expanded Sunday hours coming to some state stores, particularly “premium collection” stores. Many have posted signs in their front windows to inform shoppers of the coming changes.
State law had limited Sunday operating hours to noon to 5 p.m. at 25 percent of the state’s 600 liquor stores. The new law allows for longer Sunday hours at more stores and enables the agency to open stores on holidays.
“If I want a decent bottle of wine at 7 p.m. on a Sunday, I’m out of luck” without this new law, Elisabeth Kurzinski, 59, of Hempfield said as she browsed wines at the state store behind the Westmoreland Mall.
The store is among those touting its new hours, which will expand to 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Customers also will begin to see self-service lottery ticket machines popping up in state stores beginning this week. A list of stores receiving machines was not yet available, officials said.
“By Thanksgiving, we hope to have equipment in over 300 wine and spirits shops,” said Gary Miller, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Lottery.
Shoppers won’t be able to pay for alcohol and lottery tickets in the same transaction. Lottery tickets will be sold from familiar ticket dispensers as well as new touch-screen terminals, Miller said.
“Lately we’ve been in the training phase of training wine and spirits store staff to use lottery sales equipment,” he said.
Also beginning Monday, applications will be accepted for:
• Expanded wine permits that will allow grocery stores and others with restaurant liquor licenses to sell up to four bottles of wine to go. Store owners have been making preparations this summer to re-imagine their cafe spaces to make room for wine alongside shelves of six-packs and coolers of bottled craft beer.
• Casino liquor licenses that, for a $1 million fee, will enable casinos to sell alcohol 24 hours a day. Several casinos throughout the state have balked at the fee and the annual $250,000 renewal charge.
• Direct wine shipment licenses. Any winery in the world can begin applying for a $250 direct shipment license that would allow it to ship up to 36 cases of wine to a customer per year.
Christine Hammond, 60, said that when she moved from West Virginia to Hempfield a decade ago, she was shocked to learn she could not buy wine in Giant Eagle. She said she’s “tickled” to hear supermarkets could soon stock wines.
“This will be so much more convenient,” she said. “It’s just going to be so much easier.”
With more stores selling wine, the LCB will face competition, which means “the consumer ultimately wins,” said Larry Poupard, 56, of Bell Township. “I think it’s a good thing.”
Terri Cofer Beirne, eastern counsel with the Wine Institute, an advocacy group for California wineries, applauded the new direct-shipping license.
Pennsylvania joins 43 other states and the District of Columbia in allowing direct shipment, which has proved to be an important way for wineries to connect with shoppers if they are not large enough to sell in brick-and-mortar stores nationally, Beirne said.
“It’s been a great channel for small wineries to grow their brands,” she said. “I’m hoping — and based on my conversations with the PLCB — they’re trying to make (the process) as generous and uncomplicated as they can.”
Kurzinski said she’s looking forward to no longer lugging cases of wine home for her annual Christmas Eve party.
“I think that will help us, especially at Christmas,” she said of direct shipping. “I want it (to come) right to my door.”
Shawn Kelly, a spokesman for the LCB, said some aspects of the new law, such as customer loyalty and coupon programs, will take more time to implement.
“We understand there is a great deal of interest in many of these changes, and the PLCB is working as quickly and as responsibly as possible,” Kelly said.
Kari Andren is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 724-850-2856 or [email protected] California 13-year-old received detention recently after sharing his lunch with a hungry student.
“I just wanted to give mine to him because I wasn't really that hungry and it was just going to go in the garbage if I didn't eat it," Bradford told the outlet.
He received the detention slip below:
However, according to the outlet, the district bans students from sharing lunch in order to make sure that students with allergies are not exposed to threatening foods. Superintendent of Trinity Alps Unified School District Tom Barnett told the outlet that, “Of course if students are concerned about other students not having enough to eat we would definitely want to consider that, but because of safety and liability we cannot allow students to actually exchange meals.”
Barnett also told The Huffington Post that while he believes many students in the district disregard the policy, “when it comes to our attention, we should follow what our recommended policies are.” However, he said he could not speak to the specific incident involving Bradford for privacy reasons.
On Twitter, users have condemned the district for its policy –- which some said punished a child for his generosity. Others say the child should have followed the school's rules.
There are rules in school. You follow them or face consequences. Kyle Bradford knowingly broke the rule. #parentsfail #idiotparents — Donna (@BerriliciousOne) September 20, 2014
We allow these folks to continue to ruin OUR KIDS AND OUR SCHOOLS. http://t.co/nM9cYZ8yBN — Bob Newbold (@rivercitycowboy) September 19, 2014
Really??? This school is absurd.... http://t.co/G3vmGMQLSd — Wayne Boesiger (@waynebomusic) September 20, 2014
Over on The Stir, Michele Zipp noted that the detention punishment seemed excessive.
“Our little Robin Hood of the cafeteria doesn't deserve to be punished for being kind, for having a heart. That isn't what we should teach our kids,” she wrote.President Trump in an interview broadcast early Tuesday said he can’t take accusations that he is a racist personally and writes them off as “purely politics.”
"I can't [take racist accusations personally]...I have to write it off as purely politics." -@POTUS pic.twitter.com/vxSM1ztsVu — FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) February 28, 2017
“It just seems the other side whenever they are losing badly they always pull out the race card,” Trump said in response to a question on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” about host Jimmy Kimmel’s comments Sunday night at the Academy Awards.
“I’ve watched it for years. I’ve watched it against Ronald Reagan. I’ve watched it against so many other people. And they always like pulling out the race card,” Trump added.
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“The fact is I did pretty well, much better than past people in the Republican Party in the recent election having to do with Hispanics, having to do with African-Americans, did pretty well or I wouldn’t be sitting here. I mean if I didn’t get numbers that were at least as good or better I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
When asked if he takes the attacks personally, Trump responded, “I can’t.”
“I consider it a very serious violation when they say it and I have to write it off as being purely politics.”It's not unusual for fathers to cast a rather long shadow for their sons. That's a notion Steven Borden Jr., a tight end who is trying out for the Chiefs during their three-day rookie minicamp, is familiar with.
Borden is the son of Steven Borden Sr., a professional wrestling legend who is better known by his ring name of “Sting.”
“People usually ask me does that bother you, does that upset you? It's never bothered me,” Borden Jr. said Sunday. “It's actually been one of those things that has pushed me my entire life. You see what your dad has done, you want to beat him out.”
As you might imagine, Borden Jr. that some of his teammates are well aware of the connection.
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“I'm used to it by now,” Borden Jr. said. “You're going to get a couple comments here and there in the locker room. But eventually people just see me as Steven Borden, and that's what it is.”
Borden, who caught four passes for 33 yards as a senior at Kentucky, says his father has been supportive of his football career, which he started pursuing from the age of 8.
“He's always kind of pushed me to do what I want to do, make a name for myself outside of what he's done,” Borden Jr. said. “So that's been the goal my entire life, not really to follow in his footsteps necessarily, but to make my own name... he never really was one of those dads who kind of wanted to push their son into their own deal.”
But if football doesn't work out, would he consider taking a stab at his father's career?
“I always tell people, if one day I'm homeless on the streets, then I might try it,” Borden Jr. said with a laugh.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As President Donald Trump delivered his inaugural address on Capitol Hill in January, his incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn, sitting a few yards away, texted a former business partner that a nuclear power project that would require lifting sanctions on Russia was “good to go,” a senior House Democrat said in a letter released on Wednesday.
FILE PHOTO: Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (Upper L) looks down at a mobile phone as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump arrives for the inauguration ceremonies on the West front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File photo
Quoting a confidential informant, Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote that Alex Copson, the managing partner of ACU Strategic Partners, told the informant that Flynn would see that the sanctions on Moscow were “ripped up.”
In the letter to Representative Trey Gowdy, the panel’s Republican chairman |
for ground cover and soil stabilization near beach areas and other areas subject to erosion. Other uses include paper-making, thatching and weaving into mats and bags. It is used in traditional Chinese medicine.[4]
A number of cultivars have been selected for garden use as ornamental plants, including the red-leaved 'Red Baron', also known as Japanese blood grass.
Young inflorescences and shoots may be eaten cooked, and the roots contain starch and sugars and are therefore easy to chew.[5][6]
It is used as an ingredient in the skincare brand Kiehl's Ultra Facial Cream for its high concentrations of potassium which provides a hydrating effect. Their website also states that indigenous native Australians may have used the plant as a substitute for salt due to its high saline content.[7]
Weed problems [ edit ]
The plant has become naturalized in the Americas, Northern Asia, Europe and Africa in addition to many islands and is listed as an invasive weed in some areas. In the U.S. it survives best in the Southeast (and, according to a 2003 survey, has overtaken more acreage in that region than the notorious kudzu),[8] but has been reported to exist as far north as West Virginia and Oregon. Worldwide it has been observed from 45°N to 45°S. It grows on wet lands, dry lands, areas of high salinity, organic soils, clay soils and sandy soils of pH from 4.0 to 7.5. It prefers full sun but will tolerate some shade. In Florida I. cylindrica is found in areas where the soil has been disturbed, such as roadsides, building sites, timber harvesting areas, and borrow pits. It is able to invade both moist and dry upland pine forests. Once established it often forms dense monocultures.[9]
In addition to outcompeting species for resources, the grass also exhibits allelopathic tendencies. The chemicals it releases as well as the dense mat of vegetation that usually accompanies a cogongrass invasion gives it an advantage over indigenous plants.[10]
It spreads both through small seeds, which are easily carried by the wind, and rhizomes which can be transported by tilling equipment and in soil transport.
In the Southeastern United States, state governments have various eradication efforts in place, and deliberate propagation is prohibited by some authorities.[11] Control is typically by the use of herbicides. Currently, the most effective herbicides used to control growth are glyphosate and imazapyr.[12] Burnoff is seldom successful since the grass burns at a high temperature causing heat damage to trees which would ordinarily be undamaged by a controlled burn and recovers from a burn quickly. Quarantine and extermination of this plant is especially difficult because cogongrass establishes root systems as deep as four feet, and regrowth can be triggered by rhizome segments as small as one inch.[10]
Cogongrass is difficult to contain mainly because it is highly adaptive to harsher environments, establishing itself on soils low in fertility. The grass also can grow on sand and clay, and consumers of it are few. The grass tends to be averse to dense shade, but reports indicate more shade-tolerant strains are developing.[13]
The legume vine Mucuna pruriens is used in the countries of Benin and Vietnam as a biological control for Imperata cylindrica.[14]
Flammability [ edit ]
Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that types of this grass are quite flammable even when apparently green,[15] particularly in Southeast Asian climates. It is not uncommon to see hillsides of cogongrass on fire.[16][17]
A common expression in the Philippines is ningas cogon ('cogon brush fire'). It is a figure of speech for procrastination, specifically people who show a fervent interest in a new project but lose interest quickly, in reference to the propensity of cogongrass to catch fire and burn out quickly.[18]
Phytochemistry [ edit ]
The plant contains the triterpenoids arundoin, cylindrin and fernenol.[19]
Taxonomy [ edit ]
Imperata cylindrica was first described by Linnaeus in 1759 under the basionym Lagurus cylindricus.[20] They were renamed by the French entomologist and botanist Palisot de Beauvois to the current accepted name of Imperata cylindrica.
Synonyms include:[21]
Calamagrostis lagurus (L.) Koeler
Imperata allang Jungh.
Imperata angolensis Fritsch
Imperata arundinacea Cirillo
Imperata dinteri Pilg.
Imperata filifolia Nees ex Steud.
Imperata koenigii (Retz.) P.Beauv.
Imperata laguroides (Pourr.) J.Roux
Imperata latifolia (Hook.f.) L.Liu
Imperata pedicellata Steud.
Imperata praecoquis Honda Imperata robustior A.Chev.
Imperata sieberi Opiz
Imperata thunbergii P.Beauv.
Lagurus cylindricus L.
Saccharum cylindricum (L.) Lam.
Saccharum europeaum Pers.
Saccharum koenigii Retz.
Saccharum laguroides Pourr.
Saccharum sisca Cav.
Saccharum spicatum J.Presl
Saccharum thunbergii Retz.
Common names [ edit ]
Imperata cylindrica on a mountainside in Philippines on a mountainside in Bukidnon
The species is most commonly known in English as "cogongrass",[2] from Spanish cogón, from the Tagalog and Visayan kugon.[22] Other common names in English include kunai grass, blady grass, satintail, spear grass, sword grass, and thatch grass, among other names.[2]When National Signing Day comes along each year, Rice isn't exactly the first school to garner major press attention. "The Harvard of the South" (or Southwest, if you prefer) tends to recruit and lock up its future players on its own terms well in advance of the late signing season push.
Yet this year, Rice got some attention for doing what would be unthinkable at a most schools: It gave a full scholarship to a teenager it knows won't ever play a down for the Owls.
As first reported by KHOU, one of the members of Rice's incoming class of football players is Bryan (Texas) Rudder High defensive end David Wilganowski, a player who first gained major attention in September when he collapsed during a game and required emergency intervention to save his life. After being shocked with an automatic external defibrillator on the field, Wilganowski was flown to Houston, where it was later determined that his heart had given out and he would require a defibrillator to be implanted into his chest.
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That procedure is being credited with saving and stabilizing his life, yet it also profoundly changed it: The chest-bound defibrillator essentially ensured that Wilganowski would never play football again. With the senior already having committed to Rice, it was understandable that he was concerned that he would lose his spot in the school's incoming Class of 2012.
Bryan Rudder defensive end David Wilganowski — Rivals.com
It turns out Wilganowski was wrong to ever doubt Rice at all. The school honored it's scholarship to the teen, a pact that was made official on signing day when Wilganowski officially became a part of the school's football program, albeit knowing that he would take on a different role than he ever imagined on campus next fall.
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"We ask young men to keep their word to us, you know we say we're going to be with them through thick or thin," Rice football coach David Bailiff told KHOU. "I think it's a good practice that you keep your word."
As for Wilganowski, while he may still be getting used to the idea that he'll never again play the sport he loves, he was openly confident that he would play an important part in the team's future during his four-year tenure at the school.
His father, also named David, was even more emphatic about how he felt about the school.
"I'm really happy that Rice honored his commitment," the elder David Wilganowski told KHOU. "God bless Rice."
Want more on the best stories in high school sports? Visit RivalsHigh or connect with Prep Rally on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.Actor James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano in the the hit television series "The Sopranos". The fate of the North Jersey mob boss may have been unclear when hit the series ended last year, but his wardrobe is headed for a certain ending: it's being auctioned for charity. REUTERS/HO/File
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The fate of brutal North Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano may have been unclear when HBO’s mafia drama “The Sopranos” ended last year, but his wardrobe is headed for a certain ending: it’s being auctioned for charity.
James Gandolfini, who played Soprano for six seasons over 8-1/2 years, is selling his personal costume wardrobe in a Christie’s pop culture auction in New York on June 25, with all proceeds going to a charity that helps wounded U.S. troops.
The 24 lots include a bloody outfit worn when Soprano was shot at the beginning of season six by Uncle Junior in a fit of dementia, which is estimated to fetch up to $3,000, and his signature white tank top, light blue striped boxer shorts, striped short robe and leather scuffs that could make $1,500.
Also up for grabs are a selection of costumes worn by other “Sopranos” characters, including Junior Soprano, Paulie Walnuts and A.J. Soprano.
The award-winning HBO series broke new ground for television: portraying a conflicted man who tries to balance family life with his Mafia career.
Reuters/NielsenAfter Macy’s announced today it would shutter 100 stores across the country, San Francisco Business Times has word that the retail giant are in negotiations to sell their Union Square Men’s Store at 120 Stockton.
While the deal is not yet final, the property will reportedly be redeveloped.
"The fact that more and more shopping is done online has affected the overall size required for Macy’s," Jeff Green of Jeff Green Partners, a retail real estate consulting firm, tells Business Times. "Not only are there too many stores in the chain, the stores themselves are too oversized for this changing retail environment."
A photo posted by River Mars (@rivermars) on Dec 20, 2014 at 11:33am PST
Opening in 1974 [correction: 1984], the dimly-lit men’s store stood in the shadow of its larger counterpart, the iconic women’s store directly across the street. (Among other things, the store is noteworthy for the wreath displays in the windows during the holiday season.)
The Stockton Street location has struggled recently, having to compete with online retailers as well as the Central Subway construction brouhaha happening directly outside their entryway doors.
#SanFrancisco #PowellStreet #Macys #architecture #buildings #urbanstreetphotography A photo posted by Tito Vandermeyden (@sfodutch) on Apr 14, 2015 at 9:22am PDT
Macy’s 100 store closures, around fifteen percent of Macy's 675 locations, are the most recent round of shutterings for the company. The major retailer is hoping to turn business around after six consecutive quarters of plummeting sales.
No word yet who plans on buying the Stockton Street property. We’ll update as soon as we know more,The new Diamondbacks uniforms on display during D-backs Celebrity Golf Classic, November 11, 2016, at Whirlwind Golf Club, 5692 W. North Loop Road, Chandler. (Photo: Mark Henle/azcentral sports)
The Diamondbacks unveiled a handful of changes to their uniforms on Friday morning at their celebrity golf tournament in Chandler, tweaks that CEO Derrick Hall said had been in the works since early this season.
The club wore redesigned uniforms this year, their second round of major uniform changes in the franchise’s history. The alternations seen Friday were noticeable, though relatively minor.
The gradient coloration that the team used at the bottom of their pants is gone, and the stripe up the side of the pants now extends to the waist rather than stopping mid-leg. The jersey tops also have more teal around the names and numbers, making them more visible.
YOUR TAKE: Arizona Diamondbacks tweak uniforms
“We were listening to fans and players on the changes they wanted us to make,” Hall said. “We knew about a month into the season that we were going to end up making these changes.”
Hall said the diamond gradient design at the bottom of the pants didn’t look the same on the field as it did during the design phase.
“But once you have it approved and you’re already manufacturing, you’re stuck for the year,” he said. “We wanted to get to this offseason so we could make the changes.”
RELATED: D-Backs' Drury a key topic for front office
Raising awareness
More than a dozen current and former big leaguers attended Paul Goldschmidt’s charity bowling night on Thursday night at Lucky Strike downtown, an event benefiting “Goldy’s Fund 4 Kids,” which supports the Phoenix Children’s Hospital center for cancer and blood disorders.
“Hopefully the PCH will raise a bunch of money, but also awareness so that people will want to donate or volunteer over there or even if it’s not PCH, whatever they’re involved with in their community, that would be my main goal,” Goldschmidt said. “There are so many ways to get involved. If we’re all here helping out our neighbor, helping out our friends, it’s going to be a better place.”
Among those in attendance were current Diamondbacks players David Peralta, Archie Bradley, Nick Ahmed, Tuffy Gosewisch and Robbie Ray, Cubs catcher Miguel Montero, Tigers outfielder Justin Upton, Dodgers pitcher Brandon McCarthy and Rockies shortstop Trevor Story.
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Matt Williams, who was told this week he will not be retained on the coaching staff next year, also participated. He declined to comment on the changes to the coaching staff.
MORE: D-Backs have options with offseason plans
Lovullo’s staff
New manager Torey Lovullo, who also attended Goldschmidt’s event, said Thursday night the club had not yet begun the process of interviewing candidates to fill the vacancies on the coaching staff.
As it stands, Lovullo needs a bench coach, third-base coach, bullpen coach and assistant hitting coach, assuming the same construction of the staff as this year.
Pitching coach Mike Butcher, hitting coach Dave Magadan and first base coach Dave McKay are the only coaches returning from former manager Chip Hale’s staff, according to sources and reports.
Lovullo didn’t want to talk specifics until after he rounds out his staff.
“There’s a group of guys that they are coming back and they will assume the exact roles that they had last year,” he said. “We feel like there’s a lot of familiarity with the players and we like that comfort.”
Reach Piecoro at (602) 444-8680 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @nickpiecoro.Update: Almost 20 years after the cult-favorite show left MTV, the network set a reboot of Daria in motion. Read about it here.
It’s been 20 years since the debut of MTV’s hit Daria, but the sardonic heroine and her crew still feel totally relevant today.
“A lot of the issues and feelings you have in high school are timeless,” says co-creator Susie Lewis, who admits that she’d love to bring Daria back to TV. (We’re game!)
To commemorate the series, Lewis and character designer Karen Disher reimagined their adored cast as they’d be today. (Hint: Daria now has a toilet-trained cat named Godzilla.)
RELATED: Daria: 20 Years Later
“It had been a long time since I watched the show, but this brought back such great memories and reminded me of how much fun it was to create Daria,” says Lewis.
For more revelations from the past four decades of entertainment, visit ew.com/untoldstories.
Check out the video above for a rundown on the Morgendorffers and co.Share. Just over a month until the beloved shooter series returns. Just over a month until the beloved shooter series returns.
Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions will launch on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 on November 25 in North America and November 26 in Europe, with the Xbox 360 and Xbox One global release coming November 26. The PC version is slated to hit North America on November 25.
Activision announced the Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions release date on the company's blog, revealing that the shooter will cost $15 USD on all platforms. Unveiled back in August, Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions will be the first game published under the resurrected Sierra label.
IGN was impressed with Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions at Gamescom, saying that the three levels on display showed off "the core tenants of the series." Stay tuned to IGN for more coverage of the upcoming Sierra shooter.
Exit Theatre Mode
Evan Campbell is a freelance news writer who streams games on his Twitch channel, talks about Nintendo weekly on the NF Show, and chats about movies and TV series on Twitter.Image caption Sarah Brown, wife of former PM Gordon Brown, was one of those affected
Twitter has patched a flaw in its website that was being exploited to pump out pop-up messages and links to porn sites.
Initially, users only had to move their mouse over a message containing a link - not click it - to open it in the browser.
The code was spread by worms, self-replicating, malicious pieces of code.
Thousands of users were caught out by the flaw, including Sarah Brown, the wife of the UK's former Prime Minister.
"This issue is now resolved. We apologise to those who may have encountered it," wrote Bob Lord, security chief at the firm, in a blog post.
"Users may still see strange retweets in their timelines caused by the exploit. However, we are not aware of any issues related to it that would cause harm to computers or their accounts."
The firm said there was no need for users to change their passwords "because user account information was not compromised".
People using the mobile web site or third-party Twitter software - such as Tweetdeck - were unaffected by the bug.
The flaw comes just one week after Twitter rolled out a major redesign of its site.
'No regrets'
The code exploited what is known as a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability, a flaw in a website that can be exploited by relatively simple code.
In the case of the most recent incident, the command - written in a programming language called Javascript - automatically directed users to another website, some of which contained pornography.
The malicious links looked like a block of colour or a random URL that contained the code "onmouseover", which triggered when the cursor hovered over the link.
"Other users took this one step further and added code that caused people to retweet the original Tweet without their knowledge," wrote Mr Lord.
The first self-replicating code, or worm, seems to have been written by a developer called Magnus Holm.
"I simply wanted to exploit the hole without doing any'real' harm," he told BBC News. "It started off as 'ha, no way this is going to work'."
It was only a matter of time before more serious worms started Magnus Holm
He said the flaw had been identified by others and had already been used for other means.
"There were several other tiny hacks using the exploit - I only created the worm," he said.
Mr Holm said he had seen his worm passed around in at least 200,000 messages.
Others soon copied his code using "other nasty or smart tricks" he said, including directing people to porn sites.
"It was only a matter of time before more serious worms started."
A Twitter user called Matsta appeared to have spread one variant. Their account has now been suspended.
Mr Holm said he had no regrets about his actions and was "not sure" whether he would receive a call from Twitter.
It is not the first time the service has suffered an attack.
In April 2009, another worm spread links to a rival site, again showing unwanted messages on infected user accounts.
Graham Cluley, a researcher at security firm Sophos, told BBC News that Twitter needs "much tighter control" over what users can put in a tweet to prevent similar problems in the future.
He also warned users to continue to be on their guard, as once an exploit had been found there would be a raft of hackers looking for new ones or ways to circumvent the patch.
"We've seen it in the past," he said. "When Twitter says they have fixed a flaw, we see a new exploit again and again."Dylann Roof
In an attempt to verify the authenticity of a manifesto that was uncovered Saturday morning on “The Last Rhodesian,” a website owned by Roof, Hatewatch ran the document’s full text through Grammarly, a piece of software with plagiarism detection capabilities.
Despite the fact that only 2% of the document was identified as “unoriginal” by the software, a key 18-word passage in the section labeled “Blacks” bemoaning the alleged appropriation of white culture by the rest of the world, was identified as almost identical to a comment left on an article titled “Former Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt: Sweden Belongs to the Hordes, Not the “Uninteresting” Ethnic Swedes” by the user “AryanBlood1488” at The Daily Stormer.
The Daily Stormer is a neo-Nazi website run by Andrew Anglin that both generates original content and aggregates articles from other white supremacist sites across the Internet. Its comment section is much less moderated than its peer sites and hosts a diverse community of white supremacists from across the extremist spectrum.
In his alleged manifesto, Roof writes, “I mean that our culture has been adopted by everyone in the world. This makes us feel as though our culture isnt [sic] special or unique.”
In an almost verbatim statement at the Daily Stormer on January 31, 2015, “AryanBlood1488” writes, “White culture is World Culture, and by that I don’t mean that our culture is made up of ones from around the world, I mean that our culture has been adopted by everyone in the world. This makes us feel as if it isn’t special, because everyone has adopted it.”
Notably, on another article titled “No Longer Posting Council of Conservative Citizens Articles” published to the Daily Stormer on the same day, “AryanBlood1488” expresses his reverence for the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white nationalist hate group, for “waking him up” to “black on white crime.”
“I have serious, great respect for the CofCC because they are the ones who woke me up to black on white crime in the beginning,” write “AryanBlood1488.” “It was the first site I went to the day that changed my life, the day I decided to type in “black on white crime” into Google.”
Promoting this narrative of “black on white crime” has long been the sole purpose of the CCC’s website, run by Kyle Rogers.
In his alleged manifesto, Roof recounts a similar path of radicalization after becoming fascinated by the high-profile killing of Trayvon Martin. Rogers’s coverage of Martin’s tragic death for the CCC’s website resulted in over 170,000 unique visits to the site in a single day.
“The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words “black on White crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief.”
Now it appears that the CCC’s website may have just been Roof’s first radical step before progressing to more hardline sites like the Daily Stormer.
Other comments from “AryanBlood1488” match the ideological sentiments expressed in Roof’s alleged manifesto where he takes an uncommon ideological position within the spectrum of anti-Semitism: that Jews are white.
“Unlike many White nationalists, I am of the opinion that the majority of American and European jews are White,” reads the manifesto. “In my opinion the issues with jews is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the jewish identity, then they wouldn’t cause much of a problem. The problem is that Jews look White, and in many cases are White, yet they see themselves as minorities.”
The Daily Stormer commenter “AryanBlood1488” makes a strikingly similar point on a September 12, 2014 by Steve Sailer article titled “Ashkenazis: Half Middle Eastern, Half European?”
“The vast majority of European and American Jews are white,” writes “AryanBlood1488.” “I really get sick and tired of reading these absolutely stupid idiotic comments on here saying how Jews have a biological drive to destroy or are a biological parasite, so on and so forth. It’s just so stupid. The Jewish Identity is the problem. If you could destroy their identity and raise them as white, there would be no issue. The problem is that they identify as something “other” but are actually white, and therefore able to infiltrate and subvert. Obviously not all Jews are white, especially many of the Israeli ones, but the majority of European and American ones are white.”
In September of last year, “AryanBlood1488” took to an article on the Daily Stormer titled “James Woods Says Memphis Beating was a Hate Crime, Jew Says Whites Can’t be Victims of Racism” to bemoan the fact that “White people are not allowed to defend themselves.”
“If you do defend yourselves, then you are automatically the aggressor, and may get charged with a hate crime yourself, even though you were defending yourself from a hate crime. Its [sic] pretty sick stuff,” writes “AryanBlood1488.”
In what could retrospectively mark a disturbing moment of foreshadowing, “AryanBlood1488” concludes with the assertion that, “one of white people [sic] strengths is that we dont [sic] see ourselves as victims like all the other races.”(CNN) The two US Navy destroyers involved in deadly collisions in the Pacific this summer both had lengthy records of failure to fulfill key training requirements, according to Government Accountability Office data provided to Congress and obtained by CNN.
The USS Fitzgerald had expired training certification for 10 out of 10 key warfare mission areas in June, and the USS John S. McCain had let its certifications lapse in six out of the 10 mission areas, the data show.
The dismal training record for the two ships sheds new light on one factor that may have contributed to the two collisions with commercial ships in June and August, which killed 17 sailors.
The training records of the McCain and Fitzgerald were worse than the average warship in the Pacific, but they weren't the only ones with training problems. GAO testimony released last week revealed that expired training certifications for the Navy's 11 cruisers and destroyers based in Japan had skyrocketed five-fold from 7% in January 2015 to 37% in June. Two-thirds of the certifications had been expired for at least five months.
The deadly destroyer accidents -- along with two Navy cruiser collisions Pacific earlier this year -- prompted the dismissal of the Navy's 7th Fleet commander Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, as well as multiple reviews of the way the Navy trains, maintains and deploys its fleet that's stretched thin.
A Navy official contested the GAO's training certification data, arguing that the GAO was focused on higher-level warfighting certifications and not the nuts-and-bolts certifications for operating ships where the Pacific fleet's destroyers and cruisers have a better record. There are 22 certifications required for each ship and the GAO only reported on half, the official noted, though they declined to provide the full training records for the USS Fitzgerald and USS McCain, citing the ongoing investigations into the collisions.
Senior Navy officials told lawmakers last week that the service is committed to getting to the root of the issues that have contributed to the spate of collisions.
"We ask the sailors to do an awful lot... and perhaps we've asked them to do too much," Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. William Moran told the House armed services committee at a hearing last week on the collisions. "That's what the comprehensive review will look at."
Moran told lawmakers he had made a "wrong assumption" that forced forward-deployed naval forces in Japan were the most proficient and well-trained because they were operating all the time.
A Pacific Fleet spokeswoman said the Navy will examine all aspects of surface fleet operations with an emphasis on the 7th Fleet as part of the review ordered by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson.
"This will include, but not be limited to, looking at operational tempo, trends in personnel, materiel, maintenance and equipment. It also will include a review of how we train and certify our surface warfare community, including tactical and navigational proficiency," Lt. Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman said in a statement. "It would be premature to comment on any one part of the investigation before it is complete."
Expired training certifications mounted
The GAO examined training records in June for all of the Japan-based destroyers and cruisers, focusing on 10 key warfare training areas. They included air warfare, ballistic missile defense, electronic warfare, fire support, cruise missiles and more.
The USS Fitzgerald had let its training certifications expire for all of them, according to the GAO data.
The Navy's preliminary findings in its Fitzgerald investigation found the crew failed to understand and acknowledge the cargo ship was approaching and failed to take any action necessary to avoid the collision.
The ship's commanding officer, executive officer and senior non-commissioned officer were relieved of their duties following the collision.
The USS McCain's training record was better than the USS Fitzgerald, but the ship was still overdue on a majority of its training certifications.
A source familiar with the training data told CNN that other ships in the Pacific have similar poor training records.
John Pendleton, the GAO's director of defense force structure and readiness issues, testified last week that eight of the 11 destroyers and cruisers in the Pacific, or 73%, had expired training certifications for seamanship and undersea warfare, and 64% had cruise missile and surface warfare certifications that had expired.
The ships' basic certifications were better, Pendleton said, but he noted that seamanship stood out as a problem area.
Moran said that when a ship's certifications expire, the vessel's commanding officer is required to put a plan in place to mitigate risk that must be approved up the chain of command. He also said there have been problems getting officials from the Pacific's Afloat Training Group, which certifies the ships, to conduct certifications due to staffing issues.
"We have allowed our standards of the numbers of certifications... to drop as the number of certification waivers have grown," Moran said. "While not against the rules, they are below the standard that we should accept."
Less training for overseas ships
Rep. Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat, said he was concerned about who was approving the waivers and who ultimately decided that a ship with expired training was fit to deploy.
"The certification process which covers key competencies in seamanship, surface warfare, ballistic missile defense to, name just a few, needs to be reviewed and approved by an accountable decision-maker," he said.
The training issues have been particularly acute for ships based in Japan.
The Navy has moved toward a model of basing ships abroad so they can deploy more quickly and frequently, but that method has come at the cost of training and maintenance, the GAO has warned
The GAO found in past reports that ships based overseas had less time for training and maintenance time compared to ships that call US ports home, and Pendleton testified that ships in Japan had no dedicated training periods at all.
"Their aggressive deployment schedule gave the Navy more presence, it's true. But it came at a cost, including detrimental effects on ship readiness," Pendleton said. "In fact, we were told that the overseas based ships were so busy that they had to train on the margins. Term I'd not heard before. And it was explained to me that meant that they had to squeeze training in when they could."Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.
Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”
The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder’s and Obama’s desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is “ironic” now that they’re so gung-ho on gun control. “It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” Fitton said in a statement. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”
The only justification Holder uses to ask the court to indefinitely delay Judicial Watch’s suit is that there’s another lawsuit ongoing for the same documents – one filed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Judicial Watch has filed a brief opposing the DOJ’s motion to stay.
As the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was voting Holder into contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators by failing to turn over tens of thousands of pages of Fast and Furious documents, Obama asserted the executive privilege over them. The full House of Representatives soon after voted on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt.
There were two parts of the contempt resolution. Holder was, and still is, in both civil and criminal contempt of Congress. The criminal resolution was forwarded to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen-who works for Holder-for prosecution. Despite being technically required by law to bring forth criminal charges against Holder, under orders from Holder’s Department of Justice Machen chose to ignore the resolution.
The second part of the contempt resolution-civil contempt of Congress-allowed House Republicans to hire legal staff to challenge President Obama’s assertion of the executive privilege. That lawsuit remains ongoing despite Holder’s and the DOJ’s attempt to dismiss it and settle it.
It’s unclear what’s in the documents Obama asserted privilege over, but the president’s use of the extraordinary power appears weak. There are two types of presidential executive privilege: the presidential communications privilege and the deliberative process privilege. Use of the presidential communications privilege would require that the president himself or his senior-most advisers were involved in the discussions.
Since the president and his cabinet-level officials continually claim they had no knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious until early 2011 when the information became public-and Holder claims he didn’t read the briefing documents he was sent that outlined the scandal and how guns were walking while the operation was ongoing-Obama says he’s using the less powerful deliberative process privilege.
The reason why Obama’s assertion of that deliberative process privilege over these documents is weak at best is because the Supreme Court has held that such a privilege assertion is invalidated by even the suspicion of government wrongdoing. Obama, Holder, the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and virtually everyone else involved in this scandal have admitted that government wrongdoing actually took place in Operation Fast and Furious.
In Fast and Furious, the ATF “walked” about 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. That means through straw purchasers they allowed sales to happen and didn’t stop the guns from being trafficked even though they had the legal authority to do so and were fully capable of doing so.
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens-estimates put it around at least 300-were killed with these firearms.
The Fast and Furious scandal and more is covered in detail in the New York Times best-selling book Corruption Chronicles.21st Century Fox was back on the defensive Saturday after the New York Times revealed a new sexual harassment settlement involving former Fox News star Bill O’Reilly that was set just a month before the company signed O’Reilly to a lucrative new contract.
O’Reilly was fired by Fox News in April following the Times’ report that he had been involved in settlements of harassment and sexual harassment claims with five women totaling $13 million, dating back to 2002. On Saturday, the Times reported that O’Reilly personally reached a settlement in January with former Fox News legal analyst, Lis Wiehl, for $32 million, a fee far larger than previously disclosed settlements. In February, Fox News set a long-term contract with O’Reilly that included a huge salary boost.
In a lengthy statement, Fox News parent company 21st Century Fox defended the decision despite the company’s awareness of O’Reilly’s personal settlement with Wiehl. Fox emphasized that the new contract gave the company an out if further harassment claims were made against its star anchor. Two months after the contract was inked, O’Reilly was fired amid the firestorm over the Times |
bi spoke lovingly and appreciatively of the Pope's visit. The children's choir sang. The Pope responded eloquently, saying, "Shalom! It is with joy that I come here, just a few hours before the celebration of your Pesach, to express my respect and esteem for the Jewish community in New York City....I find it moving to recall that Jesus, as a young boy, heard the words of Scripture and prayed in a place such as this." Pictures were taken with the Pope and gifts were exchanged by the rabbi and the Pope.
Earlier in the week, I was asked by a reporter how I felt about the Pope's approving a prayer asking for the conversion of the Jewish people to Catholicism. The reporter said that many Jews were upset with the prayer. I said I was not and considered the Catholic desire that we join them in conversion as a compliment. "They love us and they want us even closer" were my words. I also said, "I hope they convert to Judaism. Then, instead of there being only 13 million Jews worldwide, there would be 1 billion 13 million Jews, and that would be very comforting."
There is little chance of either happening. Nevertheless, until the Messiah arrives and leads us all into heaven, we should unite, if not in liturgy and dogma, then in our common goals of love of God, charity and good deeds, as well as standing up to Islamic terrorists who make no bones about their desire to kill the Jews, whom they refer to as the sons of apes and pigs, and the Christians, whom they derisively call Crusaders. Together we can defend ourselves and win in the war against the terrorists who threaten us daily.
Ed Koch is the former Mayor of New York City.Multiple sources (via twitter here, here, and here) indicate that the Bears have been denied the opportunity to talk to Dowell Loggains (picture above, left, short), QB Coach of the Titans, for the Passing Coordinator position. Of particular interest is the last "here", which is Michael C. Wright of ESPN with the following:
Sources said Titans would have granted permission to Loggains only if it was for OC job.
Is this the kind of world shattering news that will send the team spiraling into oblivion? No, but it had been noted that Cutler lobbied heavily for Loggains. Cutler and Loggains know each other from Cutler's Vanderbilt Days.
Is it truly the highway to the Danger Zone? No, but in an era of increasing Bears cronyism, and possibly as a gift for having forced Mike Martz on him, this would have been nice for Jay Cutler.
That said, the name of Jeremy Bates is likely to get bandied about again, as well as probably some others. it shouldn't be a position that's too hard to fill, but it seems like the Bears did their due diligence in trying to get someone for their franchise quarterback.Featured Article, Hometown Heroes, Odd Jobs, People
https://americanprofile.com/articles/illinois-doctor-offers-5-office-visits/
By Marti Attoun
David Mudd Dr. Russell Dohner offers affordable and attentive health care in Rushville, Ill., seeing up to 120 patients a day.
https://americanprofile.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/russell-dohner-illinois-discount-doctor-150x150.jpg
Dr. Russell Dohner, 86, has been on call for 57 years in Rushville, Ill. (pop. 3,192), working seven days a week, seeing up to 120 patients a day and even making house calls.
To top it off, he charges patients only $5 a visit.
“When I first came here, every doctor in town charged $2,” Dohner says. “I didn’t think about changing the price for 30 years.”
When national publicity about his low fee brought the modest doctor unwanted attention in the 1980s, Dohner began charging $3 for a visit and then $5 about 15 years ago.
By 9 a.m. six days a week, his clinic on the town square begins to fill with 50 or more people, enough to keep his fee low, Dohner says. He accepts Medicare, but not private insurance.
Most patients, like Laura Fry, 41, and her daughter, Kayla, 19, know they’ll get their money’s worth from Dohner, who’s provided medical care to five generations of the Fry family.
“He’s so calm and so gentle,” Kayla says. “I’ve never been afraid to see the doctor.”
When she was younger, Kayla proudly received an “award for bravery” certificate from Dohner and redeemed it for an ice cream cone at Moreland & Devitt Drug Store a few doors away. That sweet tradition continues.
Another country doctor inspired Dohner to enter the medical profession. “When I was a little boy, 5 or 6, I had tonsillitis bad and had seizures and my mother would call Dr. Hamilton,” he says. “I thought, ‘I’m going to be just like Dr. Hamilton.’”
After earning a medical degree in 1953 from Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, Dohner opened his office. It looks much the same today with a homey mishmash of chairs, an examination room with knotty-pine walls, and a hallway papered with thank-you cards, letters and snapshots of patients. Dohner writes out medical records by hand on index cards, and receptionist Edith Moore, 84, answers an oft-ringing 1950s rotary dial telephone. She jots the day’s receipts in a tablet.
Most of all, Dohner’s devotion to his patients remains unchanged after more than a half-century of doctoring, says nurse Florence Bottorff, 88, who has worked alongside him since 1958.
“He doesn’t turn anyone away,” Bottorff says.
In case someone needs care, Dohner opens the office for an hour on Sunday mornings before attending services at First United Methodist Church, and he makes house calls as needed.
“People are at home and disabled and you need to look after them,” he says matter-of-factly.
Two calls that Dohner has responded to during the 1960s stand out among thousands of medical emergencies, ranging from ruptured appendixes to snake bites. After a ceiling collapsed in a nearby coal mine, he ventured underground and treated two survivors. He also came to the rescue of a boy who fell in a corn bin.
“All I could see was his head,” Dohner recalls. “I said, ‘the only thing you can do is tear down the bin so the corn will rush out.’ The little boy was fine.”
Though the bachelor doctor doesn’t have children, he has delivered more than 3,500 babies and has his hands full keeping them all in good health.
Rick Bartlett, 48, a pharmacist at Moreland & Devitt is a “Dohner baby,” as are his four children. He remains grateful for Dohner’s healing touch when he was a child.
“My older brother fed me a fishing lure with a treble hook that stuck in my cheek and tongue,” he says. “We didn’t go to the emergency room. We went to Dr. Dohner and he cut it out.”
“His patients are his family,” Bartlett adds. “That’s all Dr. Dohner thinks about—that someone might need him. He’s so unselfish.”In a bid to prevent Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign from being sabotaged by gurgling misogynists, the Republican party have decided to rebrand ‘pregnancy-causing rape’ as a ‘God hug’.
The move comes after both Republican Party Candidate Richard Mourdock and Republican Congressman Todd Akin publicly pledged their support for rapists, on the proviso that they succeed in impregnating their victims.
“Let me be clear,” prophesied Mourdock, “Rape is bad. In fact, not just bad, but really bad, and so are rapists too. I wouldn’t knowingly share a jacuzzi with one, or even invite one to a garden party where U2 were playing. And I hate U2.”
“But if a woman becomes pregnant with the seed of her rapist, then that is God’s will and that’s brilliant. In fact, not just brilliant, but holy too.”
Republican Rape
Amid a national outcry about the comments, the party issued a statement to quell the fires of indignation.
“Whilst we recognise that God’s hugs can take a bit of getting used to, that’s only because they come straight from heaven, and so they’re difficult for us mortals to comprehend,” continued Mourdock.
“We are committed to helping both those blessed with God’s hugs and the God huggers themselves. Because if rapists are giving out gifts from God, then they must be revered, right?”
“If we punish them then we’re saying that gifts from God are a bad thing, and then our heads start to hurt.”
In spite of these reassuring words, some experts stubbornly maintained that Romney was irreparably tarnished by the affair.
“You know all those funny terms for groups of animals, like a parliament of owls and a crash of rhinos?” said linguist and dictionary editor Holly Treebush, “Well, do you want to guess what the official collective noun now is for a group of Republicans?”
“That’s right, it’s a rape of Republicans.”
“I’d love to change it, but, you know, God made me promise not to.”Tuesday, November 10, 2015, may go down in history as one of the most momentous days ever for the beloved '90s cult comedy Mystery Science Theater 3000. Early that morning, series creator Joel Hodgson launched a Kickstarter campaign designed to bring the show back, to the tune of $2 million for three brand new episodes. (Raising $5 million would mean 12 new episodes.)
Fans of the show — which aired 10 seasons on Comedy Central and later Sci-Fi (now Syfy) and featured a beleaguered human and his robot pals mocking some of the worst movies ever made — immediately began tossing their cash at the project, and as of this writing, it's raised just over $1.5 million with nearly a month to go.
Later that same day, home video company Shout Factory, which has been releasing MST3K episodes on home video since its days as an offshoot of Rhino Records and currently airs MST3K episodes on its Shout Factory TV streaming service, announced that it had acquired the series.
The timing was, to put it mildly, a little strange. Shout has recently moved into producing its own content, and even if funding a full season of MST3K might prove too expensive for the fledgling programmer, it still seemed odd that Hodgson made his initial appeal to fans, rather than attempting to find a network or streaming service to air them.
Kickstarter appeals have gone directly to fans before — see also: the Veronica Mars movie — but usually with the promise of a specific studio or network that would produce them. There was no such guarantee here, beyond the thought that Shout would be involved somehow.
Garson Foos, co-founder and president of Shout, told me via email that "Shout! Factory purchased the MST3K IP [intellectual property] from Best Brains for a significant sum and has entered into a new agreement with Joel to produce new episodes. Shout! is not making a profit from the Kickstarter campaign. The raised funds will go toward the production of the new episodes, backer rewards, and cost associated with running the campaign."
But I also hopped on the phone with Hodgson himself to talk about the show's new relationship with Shout, why crowdfunding is the method of choice for bringing back the show, and whether any other members of the original cast will be joining him on the Satellite of Love.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Todd VanDerWerff: What have these couple of weeks entailed as you've been building up to this Kickstarter launch, and how has the aftermath been?
Joel Hodgson: It's been really hectic. I feel really lucky. There are a lot of good people working on the project and helping me out. I'm really happy and pretty amazed at how well it's going.
It's a different way of living. The only analogy I can make is it must be what a telethon is like if you're Jerry Lewis and you have to run the Labor Day Telethon. This is kind of a window into what it must be like.
TV: What made you decide that now is the right time to bring the show back?
JH: It's taken so long. I've been talking with Shout Factory for five years now, and we really earnestly started focusing on it two years ago. Something that was really important to me was to check in with the fans about it and go, "I want to do this, and I want to know if you guys want to help."
Crowdfunding lets fans demand what they want. I saw other cult shows trying to really quickly gather an audience and have this moment.
For some reason, I guess, I just felt like that was a good fit for MST, going back to, "Keep circulating the tapes," and all that stuff. [The fans are] so important to keeping it alive. During times when we couldn't, they kept it going.
TV: Did you go out and look at streaming or cable network partnerships, or did it seem like that sort of approach wouldn't have worked?
JH: This is my own personal interpretation of the situation, but I felt like that wasn't the proper way to start. The proper way was to alert the fans, and if I wouldn't have done that, then there would have been a lot of backtracking and going, "Oh, I'm over here now. We're starting." So I felt like this was the best way to involve them in a really cool way and acknowledge them and how important they are to the show. So far, it's working. They seem to be responding.
TV: Since you launched the Kickstarter campaign, have you received interest from people who would be in a position to put it on their network or streaming service?
JH: Yeah. We're open about that. We've gotten calls. We have tried to structure it so the fans know that the end game is not just so the shows are siloed away in a Mystery Science Theater fan site. We wanted to get out in the wild. We wanted to be in the world again. It's time to see how Mystery Science Theater can function in this world.
TV: Is there a lot of opportunity right now for properties with passionate fan bases that maybe aren't huge but are willing to put their dollars behind stuff?
"We wanted to get out in the wild. We wanted to be in the world again."
JH: [There] seems to be. Just getting to know about Kickstarter and realizing that this is a living catalog, and how amazing that is for people that if they believe in something and they like something, they can actually greenlight something and bring it to life — it's a really amazing time.
It's cool to see what fans say, and they really care about it. Right now, there's this big thing where we can't make offers to the original cast yet. We have to get funded and then go to people. The fans are really concerned about that, like, "What's going to happen? Is Joel doing this without everyone?" We're listening to what they say and letting them know that we intend to do that. We want to invite everybody back.
TV: Have you had contact with the original cast members and people who worked on the show in the '90s? What's their level of interest?
JH: We've been talking to some of them. Not all of them yet. I think as soon as we get to the $2 million, we'll be able to start creating a plan and know more. We'll reach out to all of them, basically. I wanted to wait until I could offer them deals that were as much as they deserve.
TV: How has Shout Factory purchasing the show helped in terms of furthering its future?
JH: I've actually partnered with them, so we're doing it together. They've been big advocates for Mystery Science Theater. The fans really love them. They're quirky enough, and they know as much about the business side of MST as I do about the creative side of it. So it's a really good match. I'm really having a good time working with them right now. So far, so good. It's still the honeymoon period, but I'm really happy with them.
TV: One thing I remember about MST from the '90s is that sometimes it was hard to lock down the rights to the movies you wanted to riff on, especially as the show became more popular. Is that something you anticipate still being a problem?
JH: They turned the prices up as time went on, but it was funny, because a lot of the show was before the age of video. We didn't really think about it in terms of these things living on as DVDs and downloads, so we really just made licenses for broadcast [on television]. I think that's what people think of when they say, "Oh, there's problems."
"Everything was videotaped live, and all the effects were live"
Now if Shout Factory wants to release a DVD or do a download, they have to go in and find the rights and renegotiate them. They've done an amazing job clearing a lot of the library, but there's still a few that just go, "Oh, we don't wanna license it." I think that's where that comes from. But now, it's a little more cut and dried, because we know we want to get the [download and home video] rights.
TV: You've mentioned in other interviews what you've learned from going back and rewatching the show. What have you been most surprised by in going back to look at the show and interacting with people who are still fans of it this long after it aired?
JH: I tried to make it super simple. I think that helped it a lot, as far as it being a unique format of television. We did everything in-camera. Everything was videotaped live, and all the effects were live. It kind of had a feel to people like it was a document of a day, and it really was. It has a very live, crisp feel to it. That's one of the things that I think has helped it travel through time.
The alternative might have been shooting it on film, which we spent a certain amount of time discussing. I think that wouldn't have served it as well, for some reason. There used to be standup comedy specials on film back in the day, and you had to be a really good comic to make it work on film, as opposed to videotape. I think videotape helped.
People's attachment to it is unusual, and I think it's because you're sharing the same screen with people, so the [characters] and the viewers are looking at the same thing. It's really different from most other television. You have the exact same reference point, so because of that, it's a little richer. Lots of people say it anticipated social media for that reason.
TV: One of the things the show struggled with was finding a time slot of two straight hours to air. Is that less of a concern now that you could theoretically just throw it on a streaming service where people can watch it at their leisure?
JH: Yeah! I think that's a really cool thing. What people are discovering are these environments. Like House of Cards, it's an environment you drop into for an hour. It's really dense, and it's really rich, and that's why I think that everybody says there's this golden age of television where these shows have gravity. You want to be immersed in them for a long time if you like that kind of thing. It's almost like the environment is what's winning in television. Sports is an environment. Game of Thrones is an environment. You just like being there. Hopefully, we can create that too.
"Tom Servo will be able to fly around in the theater, and Crow's going to be able to walk and stuff like that"
TV: Do you have all the original sets and things like that?
JH: No. I don't want to recreate the show. It's going to be kind of a reimagining of the Mystery Science Theater world. It'll be slightly different, but it will be built off the narrative where we left off. The Kickstarter costs more upfront because we're paying for those upfront costs — building sets, new costumes,visual development, building models, upgrades to the puppets. Tom Servo will be able to fly around in the theater, and Crow's going to be able to walk and stuff like that. There's all these little neat things.
TV: If you could put one episode of MST into a time capsule, which one would you pick?
JH: I think "Mitchell" works really well. I think that's a really strong one. All our systems were firing that day.
For a Mike episode, I really like "Final Sacrifice." I think that's super strong.
You can watch numerous episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 at Shout Factory TV.Highlights of Georgia gymnastics winning the NCAA Berkeley Regional Championship.
April 5, 2015
Complete Results
BERKELEY, Calif.----The 10th-ranked Georgia gymnastics team scored a 197.025 to win the NCAA Berkeley Regional Saturday at Cal's Haas Pavilion, earning a spot in the 12-team NCAA Championships April 17-19 in Fort Worth, Texas.
This is the 24th NCAA Regional title in Georgia history and the 31st time the Gymdogs have qualified for the national championships. The Gymdogs' 197.025 was the sixth-highest score of any team in the NCAA Regionals on Saturday.
Utah also advanced with a 196.575. Cal placed third with a 196.000, followed by Boise State (195.375), Utah State (195.150) and BYU (194.150).
Georgia (13-10) will compete in the first semifinal session of the NCAA Championships April 17 at 2 p.m. ET. The Gymdogs will be joined by Florida, Stanford, Utah, UCLA and Michigan. The second session includes Oklahoma, Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Nebraska and Oregon State.
"This team has been working incredibly hard the last two weeks," head coach Danna Durante said. "We made some minor adjustments, and we're really excited about what they did today. I'm really proud of them. A lot of people probably didn't know what was going to happen to Georgia, and for us to be able to come in and not only make nationals but win the regional, it speaks very highly to this team and their character and willingness to just keep fighting."
Georgia opened with a bye then started competition on bars in the second rotation. The Gymdogs turned in a meet-high 49.325 behind a pair of 9.9s by Chelsea Davis and Brittany Rogers to end the rotation.
The Gymdogs then went to beam and registered a 48.95. Ashlyn Broussard led the team with a 9.875, while Vivi Babalis and Mary Beth Box had a pair of 9.825s. Georgia led at the halfway point with a 98.275, ahead of Cal's 98.15. Utah was in third with a 97.7.
After a bye in the fourth rotation, Georgia scored a 49.35 on floor led by a career-high 9.9 by Vivi Babalis. UGA had a 147.625 going to the last rotation, the best three-even score of any team.
Georgia used a 49.4 on vault in the final rotation to seal the victory. Davis and Rogers added two more 9.9s, while Brandie Jay and Ashlyn Broussard scored 9.875s.
The top three teams in each semifinal session will advance to the NCAA Super Six April 18 at 7 p.m. ET. The Individual Event Finals are slated for April 19 at 3 p.m.
Team Results
1. Georgia - 197.025 (VT - 49.4, UB - 49.325, BB - 48.95, FX - 49.35)
2. Utah - 196.575 (VT - 49.5, UB - 49.075, BB - 48.625, FX - 49.375)
3. Cal - 196.000 (VT - 49.275, UB - 49.15, BB - 48.7, FX - 48.875)
4. Boise State - 195.375 (VT - 49.2, UB -48.65, BB - 48.45, FX - 49.075)
5. Utah State - 195.150 (VT - 48.9, UB - 48.575, BB - 48.85, FX - 48.825)
6. BYU - 194.150 (VT - 49.025, UB - 48.6, BB - 48.15, FX - 48.375)
Georgia's Individual Results
Vault
Sarah Persinger - 9.75, Gigi Marino - 9.85, Ashlyn Broussard - 9.875, Chelsea Davis - 9.9, Brittany Rogers - 9.9, Brandie Jay - 9.875
Bars
Brandie Jay - 9.825, Natalie Vaculik - 9.8, Rachel Schick - 9.85, Kiera Brown - 9.85, Chelsea Davis - 9.9, Brittany Rogers - 9.9
Beam
Morgan Reynolds - 9.625, Vivi Babalis - 9.825, Brittany Rogers - 9.8, Ashlyn Broussard - 9.875, Mary Beth Box - 9.825, Kiera Brown - 9.15
Floor
Morgan Reynolds - 9.825, Sarah Persinger - 9.875, Gigi Marino - 9.85, Vivi Babalis - 9.9, Mary Beth Box - 9.875, Brandie Jay - 9.85Chip Pickering, chief executive of COMPTEL. (Harry Butler, Nashville, 2014)
As an aide to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Chip Pickering helped draft the first major update to the nation's telecom laws since they were written in 1934. Pickering later became a congressman himself and now leads COMPTEL, a growing association of tech and telecom companies like Google Fiber and Netflix that hope to challenge the dominance of Verizon and AT&T. I sat down with Pickering last week; the following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
What happens to your members and your task in Congress if the Senate flips this fall?
What we've seen is a Republican party — in the 1980s and 1990s that was pro-competition — grow increasingly captured by the incumbents. So we're going to have to remind them of their historical roots and principles. Being on the side of competition really is consistent with their free-market views.
The other political reality is that members of Congress of both parties will operate in what they believe is in their political self-interest. This is one objective of COMPTEL: We have to create a large enough association and a diverse enough group that covers everything from Internet companies to Google Fiber, the new networks to the competitive business providers, to all the wireless companies, to international companies that are new entrants into the American market, to the regional and rural companies that also feel threatened by the very large megacompanies of Comcast, Verizon and AT&T.
That large coalition across all networks, politically, can begin to get Republican and bipartisan support. If you look at "Braveheart," they were going to take on the king, and the only way they could take on the king was to unite the tribes. What COMPTEL's doing is, we're uniting the tribes so we can take on the king.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is getting serious about competition policy. Meanwhile, Congress wants to revise the Telecommunications Act of 1996. To what extent can competition be adequately served by the FCC taking action, versus a Telecom Act rewrite?
We would argue that the '96 act is flexible enough to change the rules. If Wheeler can promote new technologies like Google Fiber and licensed and unlicensed spectrum, we can begin bypassing the bottlenecks or the barriers that create failed or non-functioning markets. The '96 act gives Tom Wheeler all the authority he needs to do all of those things. He can do all those things to achieve competitive objectives without a rewrite. What a rewrite could do though: You do have an FCC structure that is based on the old silos of broadcast, cable, wireless, common carriage — so there could be structural FCC reform that would make it a more modern FCC.
Are we talking about eliminating those silos?
Tom Wheeler, in a speech earlier in the year, talked about 'Do you need the difference between Title II, III and VI' — which is wireline, wireless and cable. Could you be more efficient if you combined them and looked at a smarter way for the FCC to function?
Do you get the sense that that idea is gaining traction?
You could have bipartisan competitive-incumbent consensus around a number of FCC reforms. You could have bipartisan consensus on removal of local barriers to entry, greater access to local infrastructure. [Writing] the '96 act, we tried to do that. Where we never really achieved our objective was in the last-mile local network. If you followed Wheeler's speech at 1776, he said 85 percent of America has a choice of two carriers — at best — at slow speeds [in fixed broadband].
It's kind of ironic; we're 30 years after the breakup of AT&T. For 50 years, from 1934 to 1984, we had one network, one technology — copper — and one phone. Fifty years. We break up AT&T, and within five years, everything is fiber in long distance, the Internet backbone, the whole information-age infrastructure is built in five years.
The '96 act drove down the cost dramatically of connecting wireless to wireline and drove up dramatically consumer use. And in 20 years you get four deployments of major networks in wireless, all because you got competition. Where's the only place you don't have it? It's in the last mile.
With the rewrite, another component that could get broad consensus is video reform. Retrans reform.
We've discussed some of the things you'd want changed about the act. What needs to be preserved?
Competitive interconnection — that you have data roaming between wireless networks, you have the ability of a competitive carrier to connect to an incumbent, at a market rate. You cannot have functioning markets without competitive interconnection. If you have interconnection at monopoly rents versus at market rates, that can be a barrier — here you're getting into the issues a little bit on Netflix and the edge and interconnection. [Large broadband providers are trying to] monetize the interconnection in a way that has never been done in Internet history. It's always been settlement-free and peer-to-peer. [These terms basically mean 'for free.' –Ed.]
So, going back to the act: Maintain competitive interconnection, don't touch open Internet once it's settled, and then the act should be about removing barriers, making the FCC structure modern and smart, and finding new ways of getting new networks out, whether they are wireless or fiber.
Is it going to be a lift to convince lawmakers that certain parts of it should be kept?
The incumbents have been, always will be, from the times of Adam Smith, trying to protect their markets or networks. And the new entrants, the new disruptive models, whether it's Netflix or Google — they will face opposition from the incumbents. The interesting thing is, incumbents will say that they are free-market when they are actually doing everything they can to keep free-market competition from occurring.
It seems like incumbents, by invoking this free-market idea, would be naturally aligned with conservative lawmakers who also promote free-market principles. To what extent can competitive providers pressure lawmakers, particularly Republican members who may feel sympathetic to that argument?
Usually political parties that are in the minority begin representing the new entrants and competitors and the dominant economic incumbents go with whichever party is in power. The incumbents will use whatever language is of the party in power. So when the Democrats had the power, the Bells would say, 'We are the only ones who will give universal, affordable access to the network to all people.' It's a great Democratic principle.
As soon as Republicans came into power, they started saying, 'Do not regulate us. Do not regulate us because we are free-market, and any intervention to make rules is regulation.' Regulation is bad if you're a Republican.
So what is the antidote to that?
The antidote is for — in the [Comcast-Time Warner Cable] merger conditions and in the open Internet and interconnection proceeding, for Wheeler to say, at the edge of the network, you'll have bill-and-keep, or settlement-free.
One of the things economists on the other side say to that is, 'Even if you mandate free peering, that's effectively rate regulation because you're setting the price at zero.'
And they would say monopoly rents can actually drive investment.
So what's—?
Economically, historically, if you have no competition — to divert their return back into their network when they have no competition is against the shareholder interest and a non-market model.
If you have competitors… seven wireless companies led to four generations of deployments; you break up AT&T, and then Sprint builds fiber, MCI builds fiber, AT&T has to build fiber, and in five years you've had the greatest explosion in investment that you've ever had.
So you would point to history.
History shows competition always drives investment, protection always drives investment down. That's what my argument would be. If you allow the terminating monopoly, whether it is Comcast, or AT&T or Verizon, if you allow them to start doing something other than settlement-free, it's a sign of a non-functioning, non-competitive market and you'll eventually stifle the new entrants and the new applications and you'll actually stifle investment as well.
Given your work in drafting the '96 act, is the FCC's effort at preempting state barriers to municipal broadband consistent with the intent of the legislation?
Legally, it could go either way. It's a close call. There are precedents on both sides of the question. One provision of the '96 act was to reform the Public Utility Holding Company Act, PUCA. We reformed that in the '96 act to say utilities — municipal, co-op and investor-owned — could enter into telecommunications. So I think that the intent of the '96 act, by that provision, would favor municipal entry.
Personally, I would prefer to incentivize private investment into local deployments in last-mile and broadband deployments in the local markets. I think it'd be more effective, more efficient.
If the Democrats keep the Senate but Sen. [Jay] Rockefeller is retiring, that makes Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) the chair of the Commerce Committee. What do we know about him?
I think Nelson will be 1) open Internet — he's sent a good letter on that. That'll be off the table. I actually think Nelson would not likely go into a rewrite, and he would defend the authority of the FCC and you would have policy be made by Wheeler both in his proceedings and in the merger conditions.
If [Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.)] is the chair, you'll have a rewrite effort in the House. The Senate will be slower and because of the rules, will be somewhat more balanced or blocked by filibuster, and if they can get over the filibuster, you have Obama waiting to veto. Whatever happens in the next two years will shape some reform and consensus over these issues within the next four years. So it may not happen by 2016, but some reform will likely begin to emerge over the next three to four years.
And all of this effort on the reform will also be intended to either check Tom Wheeler, or protect Tom Wheeler.
The congressional deadlock now seems like one thing that's different from the last time.
We do not currently have a functioning Congress to create functioning markets.
What other conditions are different now that'll have an impact on what a Telecom Act rewrite looks like?
What happened in '96 is that you had a large group of competing interests, each wanting and standing to gain by changing the old monopoly policies. Everyone thought they could compete and gain marketshare, and you could put a large coalition together for change versus the status quo.
[Today, with the exception of Comcast], which is a bit of a hybrid, everyone in the cable industry, telco industry, competitive industry, Internet and the fiber deployers, would want this. This is something that has usually been bipartisan and consensus-driven. You want to modernize it to be broadband-centered and to be better for education and better for healthcare and better for public safety. You can find a bipartisan consensus on that. Everyone thinks the FCC structure is outdated. So you could get consensus around that. These are things that you could, over a process, politically build a large enough coalition that you can isolate the incumbent in a given market and overcome their opposition, and get a pretty big consensus.
And where do the broadcasters fit in in all of this?
The broadcasters, they could be the odd man out in this. A lot depends on what happens in the incentive auction. If the incentive auction doesn't work, the broadcasters are sitting on a lot of spectrum and they're inefficiently using it.
Even if the auction goes well, you still have X number of broadcasters exiting the market, reducing their power.
That's right. The broadcasters' political power is diminishing as the wireless industry and the ones building the new networks need lower-cost content.
Is there anything broadcasters want that they could get out of this process?
Right now you have Reps. [Fred] Upton and [Greg] Walden protecting them. So you have the old — all the old business models being protected now by the Republicans so AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and broadcasters are being protected under the guise of 'free market' when, in reality, it is the age-old protectionism of the incumbents. To protect them from free-market competition.
For the broadcasters a win would be, what — keeping things from running too far? If Walden and Upton are so interested in reform and yet they're big defenders of the broadcasters, how does that square?
Republicans are becoming divided on this issue. The old incumbents think they can get future protections. But the thing is, as you go through a process of a rewrite, that may or may not be true. If Google |
, the series had almost entirely left it behind only a few years later. Yoshi’s Topsy Turvy had a 2D interpretation of the game’s art, and it’s gotten references in a number of Mario spinoffs, but that’s mostly it. The later Yoshi games soon after switched back to the chalky art of Yoshi’s Island, only getting a new style with Yoshi’s Woolly World in 2015. And on the whole, the entire “animal mascot” sub-genre was almost entirely dead halfway through the following console generation, thanks to market saturation, embodying the worst traits of late Nineties game design, and that interest in more “mature” titles being slaked much more easily. After that, the Yoshi games have became respectable but fairly minor successes, never a fixture in the Nintendo empire.
In all of this, Story has largely disappeared into the background; it’s almost more a piece of Nintendo trivia than anything else. And honestly, that’s probably the best place for it. The interesting things it added are still around, but the game itself isn’t. That’s similar to how a lot of that period’s games function, more memorable for the steps they made in this new frontier of the third dimension than as compelling works on their own. And so it stays in that odd cultural limbo, an icon of an era in the history of both Nintendo and gaming as a whole that itself has become forgotten and maligned.Among my many strange, off-putting car fetishes, there’s one that is consistently, creepily powerful: my love for unusual trunks. I’m especially fond of front trunks, or ‘frunks,’ since they tend to be more difficult to pull off well. The Tesla Model 3 has a frunk, and the very nature of that frunk is an important lesson we can all benefit from.
This lesson has to do with Tesla’s claim that the Model 3's trunk is the exact right size for an airline carry-on bag.
Front trunks are usually more difficult to design, because there’s more restrictions on the volume at the front of a car than the rear. Even in cars where the front isn’t jam-packed full of hot, oily engine bits, there’s still suspension and steering equipment, windshield wipers and washer pumps, brake fluid reservoirs, often the battery, and so on. There’s still a bunch of stuff that has to get crammed in there.
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Plus, a front trunk can’t be as tall as a rear one, because you have to, you know, see over it. So, it’s always a challenge, but I really appreciate it when it’s done well.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it was difficult to do well, as in the case of the Corvair or NSU Prinz or Tatra 603 or Renault 10. Sometimes, it seems like it was torture to wring a usable volume from the space, as in the Fiat 126, and often engineers just give up and don’t even try, like in the Tata Nano or the Subaru 360.
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Electric cars are giving front trunks a bit of a rebirth, and on the Tesla Model S, they’ve been very successful. On smaller electric cars, like the BMW i3, while I have to give credit to BMW for providing any storage at all, the actual volume is really pretty damn small, and probably will mostly get used for charger cables and tools and small bags of things you don’t want your friends or family to find.
The new Model 3, though, shows a very different approach to frunking: unlike the Model S or Model X, the smaller Model 3 does not have the volume for a large, multi-purpose frunk. It’s not really big enough to be useful for groceries or full suitcases or anything like that. In fact, it’s already been derided as a ‘glorified glovebox.’
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It’s a pretty small trunk, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a useful volume. What’s important here—and our inspirational trunk lesson of today—is how Tesla’s marketing team recast this small space.
What they did was brilliant, I think, and possibly one of the greatest trunk-volume marketing triumphs ever. Whoever was responsible for writing breathless PR copy about the car must have been a bit stymied at how to talk about the frunk. The Model S and X frunks were easy, large enough to stand on their own simple luggage-swallowing merits, but the Model 3 needed something else.
Whoever realized that the trunk volume is about the same as the size restriction for a carry-on bag deserves a raise.
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The airlines’ generally agreed-upon volume for a carry-on bag, one that will easily fit in that overhead luggage compartment, isn’t big: 22 inches x 14 inches x 9 inches. It’s usable, but not big. Like the Model 3 frunk.
I don’t think the Model 3 frunk was designed to exactly be the right size for a carry-on bag, I think they just squeezed the most volume they could get in there. I think some smart person realized the similarity, and turned a liability into a feature.
Now it’s not just a small trunk, it’s a tool for letting you be sure you won’t have to check a bag. For a lot of people, that’s a really handy thing, and a hell of a lot better than buying one of those airline bag sizers and keeping it in your laundry room. A lucky coincidence and some clever marketing turned that trunk volume from something that would be hidden at the bottom of a spec sheet into a clever feature Tesla could tout.
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That’s why the Model 3 trunk is a marketing triumph: it’s still a small trunk, sure, its use is still limited, absolutely, but that limited use and space was very cleverly tied to a very important other small space, and that turned a small trunk into a very useful tool for many, many people.
So let’s all learn from this trunk, and figure out how to recast our limitations into benefits.
Is there anything trunks can’t teach us?Peter Suber has been a leading advocate for open access since 2001 and has worked full time on issues of open access since 2003. As a professor of philosophy during the early days of the internet, he realized its power and potential as a medium for scholarship. As he writes now, “it was like an asteroid crash, fundamentally changing the environment, challenging dinosaurs to adapt, and challenging all of us to figure out whether we were dinosaurs.” When Suber began putting his writings and course materials online for anyone to use for any purpose, he soon experienced the benefits of that wider exposure. In 2001, he started a newsletter—the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter, which later became the SPARC Open Access Newsletter—in which he explored the implications of open access for research and scholarship. This book offers a selection of some of Suber’s most significant and influential writings on open access from 2002 to 2010.
In these texts, Suber makes the case for open access to research; answers common questions, objections, and misunderstandings; analyzes policy issues; and documents the growth and evolution of open access during its most critical early decade.
Print editions available from MIT Press.I love Wikipedia. It’s a great source for information and anecdotes about just about everything you could imagine. Granted, not all of that information is true, or vaguely accurate, or even spelled correctly. But it’s interesting, and you can learn a lot. NHL teams are no exception, and all 30 have extensive Wikipedia pages that go into exhaustive details about the franchise’s historic highs and lows.
It’s that latter category that can be especially fun. So I spent some time reading through the site’s version of each team’s history and picking out the most ridiculous passages. Here are my selections for the strangest, funniest, or just plain saddest direct quotes from each NHL franchise’s current Wikipedia page.
Anaheim Ducks
Another well known blunder occurred in October 1995 when Wild Wing, attempting to jump through a “wall of fire”, accidentally tripped causing the mascot to land on the fire and set his costume ablaze.
Yes, this is an actual thing that really happened. If you’ve ever wanted to watch footage of a mascot face-planting (beak-planting?) and catching fire, repeatedly, set to the soundtrack of a Beastie Boys song, then you’re in luck.
Arizona Coyotes
The franchise would not win another playoff series for 25 years.
Is that good? I feel like that’s not good.
Boston Bruins
[Frank] Brimsek had an award-winning season, capturing the Vezina and Calder Trophies, becoming the first rookie named to the NHL First All-Star Team, and earning the nickname “Mr. Zero”. The team skating in front of Brimsek included Bill Cowley, [Eddie] Shore, [Dit] Clapper and “Sudden Death” Mel Hill (who scored three overtime goals in one playoff series), together with the “Kraut Line” of center Milt Schmidt, right winger Bobby Bauer and left winger Woody Dumart.
Man, they just don’t make clever hockey nicknames like Mr. Zero and Sudden Death any more. Then again, they don’t make blatantly racist hockey nicknames like the Kraut Line anymore either. Maybe ease up a little there, 1930s Boston.
Buffalo Sabres
During a face-off and through the fog, Sabres center Jim Lorentz spotted a bat flying across the rink, swung at it with his stick, killing it. It was the only time that any player killed an animal during an NHL game.
I’m glad someone took the time to clarify that NHL players killing animals during games is relatively rare. I’m pretty sure that’s in The Code somewhere.
Calgary Flames
Harvey the Hound is the Flames’ mascot. […] Harvey is famous for an incident in January 2003 where he had his tongue ripped out by Edmonton Oilers head coach Craig MacTavish as he was harassing their bench.
This also actually happened. Apparently, being an NHL mascot is a much more dangerous job than you’d think. I wonder if a player has ever killed one during a game.
Carolina Hurricanes
In 2006–07, the Hurricanes finished third in the Southeast and eleventh overall in the Eastern Conference. This finish made them the first champions since the 1938–39 Chicago Black Hawks to have failed to qualify for the playoffs both the seasons before and after their championship season.
Nice try, nefarious Wikipedia vandal, but your made-up “facts” aren’t going to fool any real hockey fans. I mean, really: The 2006 Hurricanes winning the Stanley Cup? As if that ever happened.
Chicago Blackhawks
According to Jim Coleman, sportswriter for the Toronto Globe and Mail, [owner Frederic] McLaughlin felt the ‘Hawks were good enough to finish first. [Coach Pete] Muldoon disagreed, and in a fit of pique, McLaughlin fired him. According to Coleman, Muldoon responded by yelling, “Fire me, Major, and you’ll never finish first. I’ll put a curse on this team that will hoodoo it until the end of time.” The Curse of Muldoon was born — although Coleman admitted years after the fact that he had fabricated the whole incident — and became one of the first widely known sports “curses.”
A quick power ranking of the many things I love about this passage:
5. The use of the phrase “in a fit of pique.”
4. The completely unnecessary scare quotes on “curses.”
3. That the curse applied to regular-season standings and didn’t actually prevent the team from winning multiple Stanley Cups over the next decade. Oops. Always take a minute to think your curses through, spurned NHL coaches!
2. The almost casual mention of the entire thing being completely and totally made up.
1. “Hoodoo it until the end of time.” I have no idea what that even means but I thoroughly enjoyed it and plan to start working it into every conversation I have.
Colorado Avalanche
There were doubts if goalie David Aebischer could perform at the top level the team was used to while having [Patrick] Roy.
I’m not sure that “doubts” is the right word there. There are doubts about the existence of UFOs. There are doubts about the Cubs winning the World Series this year. David Aebischer not being quite as good as Patrick Roy? I think the word you were looking for there was “certainty.”
Columbus Blue Jackets
Jack Johnson, Marián Gáborík, Sergei Bobrovsky, David Vyborny, Ray Whitney, Bryan Berard, Fredrik Modin, Steve Mason, Rick Nash and Sergei Fedorov are some of the more prominent NHL figures to have donned a Columbus jersey.
Whoa, whoa, whoa … both David Vyborny and Fredrik Modin? Come on, Columbus, spread some of the superstar talent around the rest of the league!
(In related news, apparently David Vyborny and Fredrik Modin are Wikipedia editors.)
Dallas Stars
The uniform, which was black with a green bottom and red trim, featured a modern representation of the constellation Taurus topped by a trailing green star with red trail marks. However, fans and critics derided the uniform crest for its resemblance to a uterus, nicknaming it the “Mooterus”.
This is where I’d put some sort of tongue-in-cheek comment, but I honestly don’t have anything that would top “Mooterus.” Let’s move on.
Detroit Red Wings
On April 19, 2008, NHL director of hockey operations Colin Campbell sent a memo to the Detroit Red Wings organization that forbids Zamboni drivers from cleaning up any octopuses thrown onto the ice and that violating the mandate would result in a $10,000 fine. […] In an email to the Detroit Free Press, NHL spokesman Frank Brown justified the ban because “matter flies off the octopus and gets on the ice” when Al Sobotka does it.
Damn it, Al Sobotka, you ruin everything.
(Al Sobotka does not ruin everything. Al Sabotka is a badass.)
Edmonton Oilers
Nelson Riis, the New Democratic Party leader in Canada’s House of Commons, went so far as to ask the government to block the [Wayne Gretzky] trade.
Riis also compared the Oilers without Gretzky to Wheel of Fortune without Vanna White. Canadian politics is weird.
Florida Panthers
On the night of the Panthers’ 1995–96 home opener, a rat scurried across the team’s locker room. [Scott] Mellanby reacted by “one-timing” the rat against the wall, killing it.
Jim Lorentz would just like to clarify that this happened before the game, so his record remains intact. Also, I like how this specifies that Mellanby one-timed the rat. Less-skilled rodent slayers would have stopped and stickhandled the rat before getting the shot off.
Los Angeles Kings
Frustrated by his dealings with the Coliseum Commission, [owner Jack Kent] Cooke said, “I am going to build my own arena…I’ve had enough of this balderdash.”
Whoa there, Jack, let’s not go and say anything we’re going to regret. “Balderdash”? Sounds like somebody may be in a fit of pique.
Minnesota Wild
The questions surrounding the identity of the animal depicted has sparked debate amongst logo enthusiasts […] Some feel as though the form of the animal on the logo is that of a bear, while the majority view it to be a wolverine.
Yeah, I’ve always been a little confused about what the Wild logo is supposed to be, since it’s kind of ambiguous depending on how you … wait a second, “logo enthusiasts”? That’s a thing that exists? And they sit around and debate each other? I bet they’re super fun to hang out with at parties.
Montreal Canadiens
Beginning in the 2004–05 NHL season, the Canadiens adopted Youppi as their official mascot, the first costumed mascot in their long history.
I can’t be the only one who’s now wondering how many naked mascots they’ve had.
Nashville Predators
To go along with the saber-toothed cat mascot, Predators fans proudly use their Fang Fingers during each power play of the game.
Proudly, indeed. For example, here’s a clip of Taylor Swift breaking out the Fang Fingers with what can only be described as unbridled enthusiasm. The clip ends when a concerned passerby hands her a note reading, “You look like an idiot right now.”
New Jersey Devils
“Well, it’s time they got their act together, folks. They’re ruining the whole league. They had better stop running a Mickey Mouse organization and put somebody on ice.”
Everyone’s a critic. Ignore those haters, New Jersey. Just because some random know-nothing wants to weigh in with their two cents doesn’t mean you should … sorry, who was it that said that? Oh. Huh. Yeah, that stings a little bit.
New York Islanders
In July, Newsday exposed [owner John] Spano as a fraud who did not have the assets required to complete the deal. […] He was sentenced to 71 months in prison for bank and wire fraud. The NHL was embarrassed when reports surfaced that it spent less than $1,000 (depending on the source, the league spent either $525 or $750) to check Spano’s background.
Well, wait, which is it? I think we would all agree that a major professional sports league spending $525 to do its due diligence on a new owner would be ridiculous, while ramping that all the way up to $750 seems completely reasonable.
New York Rangers
The first team crest was a horse sketched in blue carrying a cowboy waving a hockey stick aloft …
Hmm. Sounds intriguing, but I’d want to find out what the logo enthusiasts think.
Ottawa Senators
The strategy of aiming low and securing a high draft position did not change.
Good call there — you always want to stick with what’s working. (Coincidentally, “the strategy of aiming low” was also how my wife ended up married to me.)
Also, how is it possible this doesn’t have its own 800-word section? No wonder nobody trusts you, Wikipedia.
Philadelphia Flyers
The Flyers were the first and one of only two NHL teams (the Hartford Whalers being the other) to wear Cooperalls, hockey pants that extend from the waist to the ankles, in 1981–82.
I think I speak for everyone when I say we appreciate the detailed anatomical reference point to explain the difficult concept of “pants.”
Pittsburgh Penguins
Mario Lemieux retires and returns, second bankruptcy (1998–2001)
This is an actual section header that appears on the Penguins’ page. That’s what we’d call an eventful four years. Those seven words literally contain more interesting events than have occurred to the St. Louis Blues in their entire franchise history. It’s also comes dangerously close to being a haiku, so if anyone wants to just go ahead and fix that, the rest of us won’t stop you.
San Jose Sharks
Over 5,000 potential names were submitted by mail for the new team. While the first-place finisher was “Blades,” the Gunds were concerned about the name’s potentially negative association with weapons, and went with the runner-up, “Sharks.”
Yes, good call there. You wouldn’t want to name your team after something that frequently kills people.
St. Louis Blues
The Blues are the oldest NHL team never to have won the Stanley Cup.
While true, it’s worth noting that this sentence appears in the page’s opening paragraph. It shows up before we even get to the table of contents. That’s pretty much the equivalent of hitting somebody in the face with a folding chair before the bell rings.
Tampa Bay Lightning
Rumors abounded as early as the team’s second season that the Lightning were on the brink of bankruptcy and that the team was part of a money laundering scheme for the yakuza (Japanese crime families). Its scouting operation consisted of Tony Esposito and several satellite dishes.
Tony Esposito and Several Satellite Dishes would be a good name for a band.
Toronto Maple Leafs
When it was obvious that the Arenas would not be able to finish the season, the NHL agreed to let the team halt operations on February 20, 1919 and proceed directly to the playoffs.
Wait … is that still an option? Can you still just shut down your season in mid-February and go straight to the playoffs? Because this would have been good information to have over the past few years in Toronto.
Vancouver Canucks
The team has gone through thirteen different logo and jersey changes in its history.
And thus begins a roughly 800-word section that details each and every one. I’m not exaggerating when I say it may well be the most depressing section of any Wikipedia page ever created. I strongly suggest setting aside the time to read the whole thing, but here are some of the highlights:
• The description of one early design as looking like “a punch in the eye.”
• A later design that was referred to as both the “waffle iron” and the “plate of spaghetti.”
• The design they had to stop making “because jersey-maker CCM no longer produced the required hues.” In other words, the Vancouver Canucks once had to change their uniform because the colors they were using ceased to exist. That’s generally a sign you’ve made a design error somewhere along the way.
Winnipeg Jets
On October 7, 2011, True North announced they had recalled their former mascot Mick E. Moose from the AHL.
Sadly, Mick E. Moose was immediately claimed on re-entry waivers by the Nashville Predators and was never seen again.
Washington Capitals
The Capitals’ inaugural season was dreadful, even by expansion standards. They finished with far and away the worst record in the league at 8–67–5. […] Coach Jim Anderson said, “I’d rather find out my wife was cheating on me than keep losing like this. At least I could tell my wife to cut it out.”
All things considered, Jim Anderson takes his wife’s hypothetical infidelity pretty darn well. She’s out there breaking her most sacred marriage vows, and all he does is drop his Dave Coulier impression on her. That’s remarkable restraint. Most guys in that situation would probably hoodoo it until the end of time.The Finnish government is assessing the effects of the country’s possible NATO membership, Yle broadcasting company reported, citing Foreign Ministry sources in Helsinki.
The work is being done in connection with the preparation of a report on Finnish foreign and security policy.
The Ministry has appointed a group of four experts to carry out the assessment, expected to be available in the spring of 2016.
Johan Bäckman, a leading Finnish rights activist and social scientist, said that despite the official viewpoint, ordinary Finns are not particularly happy about the prospect of joining NATO.
“Why did they set up this group in the first place? I think the government bent under the pressure of the Americans and their friends here in Finland. And still, even though Finland, like many other countries, is now cooperating with NATO, the whole idea is not very popular among our people,” Bäckman told Radio Sputnik.
He added that, according to the latest polls, a mere 27 percent of Finns favored NATO membership, while the rest said they did not like the idea.
Even some members of the team assessing the risks of the neutral Finland joining the North Atlantic Alliance, including René Nyberg, Finland’s onetime ambassador in Russia and Germany, have already said that Finland would be better off staying out of NATO.
Johan Bäckman said he was confident that Finland would not give up its neutral status.
“This country has a good and constructive policy of neutrality. I am sure that that it will never become a NATO member and I think that simply bringing this matter up is totally absurd,” he emphasized.Browser maker Opera plans to move to using the WebKit engine, as well as Chromium, for “most” upcoming versions of browsers for smartphones and computers this year. Its first WebKit product is likely to be a smartphone browser for Android — due to be previewed at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona later this month — with desktop and other products following.
The initial shift is aimed at increasing its competitiveness on Android and iOS, it said:
To provide a leading browser on Android and iOS, this year Opera will make a gradual transition to the WebKit engine, as well as Chromium, for most of its upcoming versions of browsers for smartphones and computers.
Opera added that working with the open source communities to “further improve” WebKit and Chromium makes more sense than continuing to develop its our own rendering engine.
“The WebKit engine is already very good, and we aim to take part in making it even better. It supports the standards we care about, and it has the performance we need,” said Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie in a statement, adding: “Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects, and we have already submitted our first set of patches: to improve multi-column layout.”
Writing on the Opera developer blog, Bruce Lawson said moving to using WebKit and Chromium elements, plus V8 for JavaScript, will also help Opera improve compatibility with mobile websites: “Consumers will initially notice better site compatibility, especially with mobile-facing sites — many of which have only been tested in WebKit browsers,” he wrote.
On the question of why Opera is switching to WebKit, Lawson said the web is a very different place to when Opera started out in 1995, competing with Netscape and Internet Explorer. Then it was necessary to build its own rendering engine to — in his words — “drive web standards, and thus the web forward”. Today, says Lawson, the web has a worthy, interoperable standard in HTML5.
“The WebKit project now has the kind of standards support that we could only dream of when our work began,” he added.
Opera’s shift to WebKit is not a huge surprise — the company showed off a WebKit-powered mobile browser called Ice last month. Ice is part of its experimentation with WebKit, it said today, revealing it has “several” R&D projects in the works. “The shift to WebKit means more of our resources can be dedicated to developing new features and the user-friendly solutions,” added Wium Lie.
Also today, Opera announced it’s clocked up 300 million users across all its browser products — on mobiles, tablets, TVs and computers.
Commenting in a press release, Opera Software CEO, Lars Boilesen, said that in the run up to 300 million users the company experienced “the fastest acceleration in user growth” it has ever seen. “Now, we are shifting into the next gear to claim a bigger piece of the pie in the smartphone market,” he added.Singaporean blogger activist Amos Yee has pleaded guilty to more charges, according to his personal Facebook page. In a short update on on Wednesday, he wrote: “Came back from court, pleaded guilty to all charges for ‘intending to wound religious feelings,’ going to jail in a few weeks.”
He pleaded guilty to three charges of “wounding religious feelings” and two charges of failing to report to police summons in late August.
Yee faced eight charges – two for failing to report for investigations and six for intending to wound the feelings of Christians or Muslims.
Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times reported that each charge carries a maximum penalty of three years in jail and a fine.
The controversial blogger frequently posts videos critical of the government and the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP.) He was convicted in May 2015 of offending the sentiments of Christians in a video comparing Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan-yew with Jesus Christ. He was also convicted for posting an obscene doctored image of Lee and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in a sexual position.File picture shows a fighter of the Islamic State holding an IS flag and a weapon on a street in Mosul June 23, 2014. Police said some Malaysians, supported by IS, are engaging in 'jihad' in Myanmar. —Reuters pic
MELAKA, Sept 17 — The police have confirmed that some Malaysians, supported by the Islamic State (IS) militant group, are in the midst of engaging in ‘jihad’ in Myanmar to fight against the Myanmar Government for the oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority community in Rakhine State.
Bukit Aman Special Branch Counter-Terrorism Division (E8) Assistant Director Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay said the Rohingya issue was seen as the key weapon used by the IS to influence and recruit new members to engage in terrorism.
He said the widespread sharing of images of oppressed Rohingya people in the region on social media was to evoke sympathy and help the group (IS) to lure new members.
“Moreover, we do have intelligence information on the possibility of Indonesians involved in militant activities in their country,” he told reporters after the launch of the ‘ISIS Threat to Youths Awareness Seminar’ here today.
The event was officiated by Melaka Chief Minister Datuk Seri Idris Haron. Also present was State Youth and Heritage Development Deputy Exco Datuk Norpipah Abdol.
Commenting further, Ayob Khan said Myanmar’s proximity to Malaysia pushed IS militants to act in Rakhine. Myanmar is closer to Malaysia than Syria and the southern Philippines where the conflict is ongoing, and now another option for ‘jihad’ is Rakhine.
Although the recruiting of terrorists to Rakhine was still new, they were gathering information on the matter, including the detention of a 38-year-old man from Melaka on September 10, he said.
Based on intelligence information, the suspect, a cendol seller, was nabbed on suspicion of actively promoting the IS militancy by printing and distributing the group’s flag as well as planning to join the IS in the Philippines and Rakhine.
In a related development, Ayob Khan said the recruitment of new members was still ongoing despite the head of IS in Southeast Asia, Muhamad Wanndy Mohamad Jedi, from Melaka, having been killed in a drone attack in Raqaa, Syria at the end of April.
He said four Malaysians were still in Syria, who were believed to be actively recruiting Malaysians and were always looking for opportunities and space to attack if security slackened.
Meanwhile, Idris said all Village Development and Security Committees and local authorities in the state were urged to monitor developments in their area to curb the spread of any IS militant activity.
In the meantime, he said there were more than three reports on activities involving doubtful religious speakers and the case was handed over to the Melaka Islamic Religious Council and the Islamic Religious Department of Melaka for further action. — BernamaIf you’re a car guy, you already know Singer Vehicle Design. You know their penchant for restoring and refurbishing Porsche 911s — specifically 1990 to 1994, 964-era vehicles — to optimized, air-cooled perfection. You know exactly how desirable every machine they work on turns out.
But you probably still haven’t seen a Singer-restored Porsche quite like this one. Commissioned by Pfaff Auto, this 1991 964 underwent as gorgeous and thorough a refurbishment as we’ve ever seen. With a gleaming Albert Blue exterior complemented by Blood Red stripes and lettering, truly stunning custom tartan weave sport seats in the interior, and a 4.0-litre, 6-speed engine tucked in the rear, it’s that rarest kind of automobile that you wish you could stare at googly-eyed from the outside and drive like a speed demon from within all at once.Rick Bayless Moves into Former Salud Tequila Lounge View Full Caption
WICKER PARK — Famed celebrity chef Rick Bayless will open a restaurant in Wicker Park, the local alderman said Monday.
Ald. Joe Moreno (1st) tweeted out the confirmation.
"I'm excited to confirm this rumor is true...New Rick Bayless Restaurant Coming," Moreno said on Twitter.
The alderman included a link to the food blog Eater, which said Bayless was opening a new eatery, and mentioned the old Salud Tequila Lounge space in Wicker Park as one of the possible locations in the city.
On the southeast corner of Honore Street and Milwaukee Avenue, Salud Tequila, at 1471 N. Milwaukee Ave., closed in February.
The building is owned by Newcastle Limited, which recently purchased several other Milwaukee Avenue buildings on the 1400 and 1500 block of the busy street, packed with retail shops, restaurants and bars.
Bayless, 59, who stars in the PBS show "Mexico — One Plate a Time," is best known locally for his Frontera Grill and Topolombampo Mexican restaurants.
On a more local level, Bayless, a Bucktown resident, often shops at the Sunday Wicker Park Farmers Market and has been known to share his "phenomenal haul" of food finds on Twitter, where the chef has more than 333,000 followers.
Late Monday, news of Bayless' entry into Wicker Park was well-received by workers and owners of local restaurants and shops.
Directly across the street from the shuttered Salud storefront, Bongo Room's self-described "cook and sometimes chef" Martin Sanchez, 39, said he was "very happy" about Bayless' new restaurant.
Bongo Room, a famed brunch spot at 1470 N. Milwaukee Ave. is known for its long lines, but Sanchez predicted Bayless would "bring even more people" to the busy stretch of street, about one block south of the Milwaukee, Damen and North avenues intersection.
"It will be very good for business and will help to draw more people to the area," Sanchez said.
Rita Alexander, manager of High Noon Saloon at 1560 N. Milwaukee Ave, said she read the news on Eater.com.
"It's exciting, a good addition to the neighborhood. Anytime a new spot opens, more people come [to Wicker Park], more people check it out, it's good for everyone," Alexander said.
Norm Levin, owner of Sewing Gold at 1511 N. Milwaukee Ave., a sewing machine shop in Wicker Park, said the addition of Bayless will be an "upgrade to the neighborhood bar none."
"He's internationally known," Levin said of Bayless.
David Ginople, owner of store B vintage at 1472 N. Milwaukee Ave., directly across from the future Bayless restaurant, said he was "delighted" by the news.
"A world class chef has chosen our neighborhood," Ginople said.
The Wicker Park restaurant will be Bayless' first new standalone Chicago venture since Xoco in 2009, Eater reports.
A spokeswoman for Bayless was unable to be immediately reached for comment.Image copyright AFP Image caption Corruption in the Iraqi military is said to have helped Islamic State make gains in the country
Corruption in the defence sector poses a huge risk to the security and stability of countries in the Middle East and North Africa, watchdog Transparency International says.
A report by the group highlights secret defence budgets and poor oversight of militaries as particularly problematic.
The region has some of the fastest growing defence budgets in the world.
The report says defence corruption has also fuelled the rise of extremist groups such as Islamic State (IS).
The release of the report comes amid several conflicts in the region, including the fight against IS in Syria and Iraq, the Syrian civil war, fighting between militias in Libya and an air campaign by a Saudi-led coalition against Shia rebels in Yemen.
"Corruption has fuelled political unrest, extremism, and formed a narrative for violent extremist groups," Transparency International's Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index says.
'Sustainable security'
The report examined 17 countries from Morocco to Iran, that have spent a total of more than $135bn (£88bn) on their militaries. Israel and the Palestinian territories were not included.
The report says most of the countries it studied - excluding Jordan and Tunisia - provided no detailed information about military spending.
The details of Egypt's defence budget of $4.4bn are a state secret, with the military maintaining its own bank accounts and acting without oversight.
The Saudi government meanwhile uses arms purchases to seal alliances, buying similar weapons systems from different nations.
The report concludes:
Many countries in the region - even those with seemingly well-funded militaries - may be more fragile than they appear, because rising defence budgets "are not being spent on arms and equipment that actually meet countries' strategic security needs".
Corruption is an enabler of conflict, as it contributes to arms proliferation and the infiltration of organised crime into the security sector
Corruption reduces the extent to which a state is deemed trustworthy and legitimate by the public, which in turn endangers long-term stability and can contribute to the rise of extremist groups
The report also says that states that export weapons to the region should beware of the growing risk of arms proliferation and conflicts there.
"Governments in the region and their international allies should prioritise the creation of accountable defence institutions... in order to achieve sustainable security," the report says.India's Ravindra Jadeja edged out Bangladesh's Shakib Al Hasan to become top-ranked Test all-rounder as per the latest ICC rankings. Jadeja's knock of 70 not out and a seven-wicket haul during the second Test against Sri Lanka at Colombo have seen him dethrone Shakib to take the top position among all-rounders for the first time. The top-ranked Test bowler Jadeja has also gained nine places to reach 51st rank among the batsmen.
Jadeja has 438 points, while his team-mate Ravichandran Ashwin is on third position with 418 points.
Here are the top five all-rounders:
Ravindra Jadeja (India) 438 points
Shakib Al Hasan (Bangladesh) 431 points
Ravichandran Ashwin (India) 418 points
Moeen Ali (England) 409 points
Ben Stokes (England) 360 points
India batsmen Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane have also earned notable improvements after their centuries in the Colombo Test. Pujara's 133-run knock in his 50th Test has helped him to a career-high 888 points and third position while Rahane has moved from 11th to fifth position with a score of 132.
Pace bowlers Mohammad Shami (up three places to 20th) and Umesh Yadav (up three places to 22nd) have made notable gains.
India rode on a superb bowling performance and finished the second Test with a day to spare, trouncing Sri Lanka by an innings and 53 runs to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-Test series.
Jadeja had figures of 5/152 while Ashwin returned 2/132 while medium-pacer Hardik Pandya also claimed two wickets.
Jadeja received the man of the match award for his seven-wicket |
’s ethics commission for violating state campaign finance laws.
D) A blow to Scarcelli’s once-bright political future — despite her continued insistence that she knew nothing about the Cutler Files before its launch.
(This even as her husband and Bailey, who worked for her through June’s primary and went on to advise independent gubernatorial candidate Shawn Moody, were hatching the site right under her nose.)
E) Proof positive that, as Bailey himself has long advised his many and varied clients, the longer you hide from a burning controversy, the worse you’re going to get burned.
Much has been said about exactly what the Cutler Files was before the site was abruptly taken down in late October.
To this day, Bailey and Rhoads insist it was an honest expose of questions surrounding Cutler’s pre-politics career as a high-priced international attorney.
Also to this day, what’s left of Camp Cutler argues that the Cutler Files was an anonymous smear campaign that has no place in Maine politics past, present or future.
But in the end, this messy story won’t be remembered as a tit-for-tat battle over Cutler’s campaign biography. Rather, it’s become a cautionary tale about credibility — or, alas, the loss thereof.
Bailey, in an interview with myself and another reporter last fall, was asked flat-out if he was involved in the Cutler Files.
“What do you mean ‘involved?’” he replied.
“Did you create the site or did you have any hand in the site?”
“No, no,” Bailey said. “I’m not responsible for the site.”
Uh-huh.
Then there’s Rhoads, who told this newspaper in an e-mail in late October: “I can unequivocally state that I am not the author, owner or creator of the Cutler Files, nor did I post any information on it or any other website. … I don’t know why my name is being brought into this. It’s pure rumor.”
Uh-huh.
Now anyone who’s watched Bailey build his Savvy Inc. into a premier public relations operation knows his first rule of crisis management: Disclose what you did, acknowledge any misstatements or mistakes, take your lumps and then — and only then — move on.
It’s good advice — and now that they’re both officially out there for all the world to see, Bailey and Rhoads would do well to follow it.
Yet even as Rhoads dropped the other shoe Thursday and finally admitted that he mined the Internet for “much of the information” that made its way onto the Cutler Files, both he and Bailey refused to say flat-out that they had lied.
Insisted Bailey, “I didn’t feel I was responsible for the site. (Beyond that) I don’t really want to get into it.”
And Rhoads, asked in an interview if he’d like to take another whack at his 3-month-old e-mail denial, replied, “I do believe (that statement) was accurate … Dennis controlled the site — I didn’t create it. I didn’t own it. I didn’t have access to it.”
Parse away, gentlemen, parse away.
As for Scarcelli, the road to political success after finishing third in June’s four-way primary now includes a new obstacle: Convince Maine voters that while she knew her husband was noodling around Google in search of anything labeled “Cutler,” she hadn’t a clue that Rhoads and Bailey were in full cyber-attack mode.
(Upon hearing about the site around Labor Day, Scarcelli said in a prepared statement Thursday, “I indicated that I was disappointed in their actions and thought they should take down the site.” It stayed up — at least for another six weeks or so.)
So now what?
Bailey said he has no doubt that he’ll survive this professionally — most of the people he sees on the street, he said, ask him why everyone’s making such a big deal out of the whole mess in the first place.
“I’ll put my reputation up against anyone’s,” Bailey said. “This is not going to be engraved on my tombstone.”
Rhoads, who received no sanction from the ethics commission and was hardly a public figure before now, can at least focus his fence-mending on … an extra-big bouquet of flowers come Valentine’s Day?
And Scarcelli?
“I hope people will judge me by my campaign,” she said. “Judge me based on what I did — not what others have done.”
The final bow on this protracted piece of political theater? That goes to Ted O’Meara, who managed Cutler’s campaign and knew long before most who was behind the Cutler Files.
Contacted after Rhoads came out from behind the transparent curtain Thursday, O’Meara said all his side ever wanted was to show that the Cutler Files never was, as it claimed, the work of “a group of researchers, writers and journalists” intent on educating a clueless electorate.
“There’s no victory here,” O’Meara said. “It never should have happened.”
Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at:
[email protected]
ShareTest Your Knowledge - and learn some interesting things along the way.
"Derring-do" is a quirky holdover from Middle English that came to occupy its present place in the language by a series of mistakes and misunderstandings. In Middle English, "dorring don" meant simply "daring to do." For example, Geoffrey Chaucer used "dorring don" around 1374 when he described a knight "daring to do" brave deeds. The phrase was misprinted as "derrynge do" in a 16th-century edition of a 15th-century work by poet John Lydgate, and Edmund Spenser took it up from there, assuming it was meant as a substantive or noun phrase. (A glossary to Spenser's work defined it as "manhood and chevalrie.") Sir Walter Scott and others in the 19th century got the phrase from Spenser and brought it into modern use.
Examples
In a spectacular feat of derring-do, the stuntman leaped from the overpass and landed on top of the train as it passed below.
"It's a bit of a letdown when, near its end, the book reverts to more conventional Bond-style derring-do, as our hero struggles to recapture the warheads and save Isabella from the villains…." - From a book review by Patrick Anderson in The Washington Post, January 16, 2012Donald Trump won't be sworn into office for another 48 hours, and at least one Democratic congressman has already seen enough.
In a discussion with "Young Turks" reporter Eric Byler at the Bowie State University health care rally this weekend, newly elected Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, revealed that one of his first orders of business will be impeaching the president-elect.
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"Right now it looks pretty obvious that he's on a collision course with the Emoluments Clause," he noted. "He has refused to divest himself of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of business interests he has around the world doing business with foreign governments."
As Raskin rightly observes, the Emoluments Clause is designed to inoculate the executive office from corrupting foreign influences.
"It says that no elected official, either member of Congress or the president of the United States, can accept a gift, an emolument or any payment at all from a foreign government," Raskin continuted. "He [Trump] just simply refuses to accept that reality. So if he goes into office and he refuses to divest himself, the moment that the first conflict comes up, that's going to look like an impeachable offense."
Raskin knows what he's talking about. In addition to representing Maryland's eighth congressional district, he is a constitutional law and legislation professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and the director of the university's Program on Law and Government Leadership. He is also a major proponent of the national popular vote agreement discussed at the House Judiciary Committee's forum, "The Electoral College and the Future of American Democracy," which took place four weeks after Trump's election.
"The reason that we have a constitution of the United States is because we believe in the rule of law, and it's not all about what [Trump] thinks he can get away with, with the 36 or 38 percent of the people who support him," Raskin observed. "The vast majority of people don't support [Trump] but even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference if he's violating the constitution of the United States."
In the meantime, Raskin aims to hold Trump accountable for his health care-related campaign promises.
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"[Trump] has said several times in questions about health care that we need health care for everybody," Raskin told rally goers.
"Look it up. He has said that we need a universal plan."By Sam Smith
It really still is early in the NBA season. It’s just the first week of December. Fred Hoiberg hasn’t even picked out his Christmas gifts for media members. Dwyane Wade hasn’t selected a restaurant for Christmas Eve dinner with Pat Riley. Jimmy Butler hasn’t decided if he’ll host the Oscars.
The Bulls haven’t done great of late, losing three straight and six of nine to fall back to 11-10, in the midst of nine teams separated by two and a half games between third and 11th in the Eastern Conference. Though it’s been arguably the team’s most difficult stretch of the season, a six-game road trip leaking into the team’s only four games in five nights stretch of the season.
“What we have is what we have,” said Wade. “We’ve won 11; we have enough to win. We just have to get to where we are playing more consistent.”
But as the Bulls Thursday in the 8:30 p.m. national TNT game prepare for face to streaking San Antonio Spurs, 18-4 and 13-0 on the road, these next few weeks for the Bulls are setting up as if not a season make-or-break, perhaps a defining period for the fate of the team this season.
That’s because after the hectic first six weeks, the Bulls have a dominant home schedule for the next month and an unusual period in the next almost three weeks of basically not being out of town at all.
“We have a lot of home games coming up, have to do a better job of coming out with energy and playing at home,” said Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg. “We’ll be in Chicago 15 of the next 16 days; nine of our remaining 13 (in December) are in Chicago and we have to do a good job of coming out and setting the tone in our home building. We have to protect our home court. If we do that we’ll be fine; the big thing now is to stay together, keep fighting, keep playing for each other and go out and play with confidence.”
There’s a possibility Doug McDermott, who has missed the last nine games with a concussion, could return Thursday in the Pau Gasol gala homecoming. Michael Carter-Williams remains out at least a few more weeks. Depth production has been an issue for the team recently, though the trends of late have been pointing downward during the more rigorous schedule period.
The Bulls have dropped to last in three-point shooting, which is not unexpected, especially with McDermott out so long. More worrisome, they fell to 26th in defending the three and 14th overall in defensive field goal percentage. Their rebounding has been keeping them above.500 at second in the league. But assists have fallen to 24th, points are down to 18th and turnovers have increased, the differential now 17th in the league. It’s pointing toward factors for a.500 season.
Which is why this next stretch of games to balance off the difficult first six weeks may be so vital.
“The toughest part where you have a new team coming together and you depend on young guys, it’s that consistency,” Wade reiterated. “The good teams figure it out earlier than not; if we don’t figure it out, we’ll be.500 all year. If we do, we’ll take some games and go over. The coaches have done a good job preparing us; they’ve done their job. It’s on us as players. Whoever comes in the game play their part, play their role, understand the game plan, tendencies and all these things. (If) we don’t do that, we are failing each other. It’s our job as leaders to continue to stay on guys that don’t do that and vice versa to point that out as well; that’s a winning team.”
There obviously have been myriad uncertainties with this Bulls team given the additions of Wade and Rajon Rondo, nine new players, numerous young players trying to establish themselves and find roles. There was an encouraging start, a little setback and then the promising road trip that receded in the wake of the home losses to the Lakers and Portland.
Wade isn’t one to worry. He is the sage of the group, the comforting force. He’s the flight attendant on the airplane in turbulence. If he’s not panicking, you can relax some. He’s the shelter in the storm. His behavior and reactions are the signals to others. He’s not despairing.
“I’ve been in this league 14 years; I’ve seen everything,” Wade said. “I’m good; nothing is going to get me down from that standpoint. Do I like losing? No. Do I understand the process? Yes. Do I want to fast track it? Yes. Do I want to see us play more consistent? Yes. But we can’t rush. It’s going to happen in its own time and happen if this team can do it; the games are going to show who and what we are going to be. We can’t hit a stumbling block and get to the record I want; we have to go through the process.”
So Wade understands the highs and lows, the uncertain starts, the defensive lapses, the kids’ inconsistencies, the injuries.
To the credit of the team, and which probably has a lot to do with Wade and Butler, this has been a Bulls team that doesn’t give up or give in. They’ve had their share of games falling behind. But they come back and compete. They just haven’t always had enough.
Butler is even in the MVP discussion, averaging 26 points, 6.6 rebounds and 4.1 assists. But his minutes also have been creeping up amidst the weaknesses in other areas and injuries. He’s moved into the top 10 for the first time in minutes per game at 36.2 League leader Anthony Davis is at 38. Wade is averaging a strong 19.8 points per game in 31 minutes with 4.2 rebounds and 3.3 assists. Taj Gibson is averaging 12 points and eight rebounds, but no one other than McDermott is in double figures and McDermott has missed more than half the games.
Though the area Wade is concerned is at home, where the Bulls are just 5-3. Their 6-7 road record is more encouraging, in a sense, since Wade’s general formula for success is a.500 road record and then playing well at home. If achieved, he says it means a 50-win season, which means top four in the Eastern Conference.
But the Bulls came home from the road trip and lost to Western Conference teams playing about.500 overall and with losing road records.
“We just have to play better in certain games,” Wade said late Tuesday night in Auburn Hills. “Not saying you want to lose, but there are certain games you understand there is a possibility (of losing). What hurt to me was the Lakers game at home, Portland game at home. You have to win those kinds of games. I can understand the Dallas loss. I can understand this (Detroit) loss.
“Those (home games) are the ones that hurt more,” Wade added. “But you are not going to get out of the slump just because you want to. There are a lot of teams going through slumps now. We have to get out of it with our play, play better for longer stretches.”
The opportunity is there. Six of the next seven games are at home. Three of those six teams have losing records; two others now are one above.500. The Bulls play the neighboring Bucks, against whom they’ll likely compete for a playoff spot, three times this month, two in the United Center. Of the 13 remaining games this month, only three are against teams more than one game above.500, two with the Spurs starting Thursday in Chicago and then the Spurs Christmas Day in San Antonio. The Bulls should know a lot more about who they are in the next few weeks.Daily Headlines AUTHORITIES BATTLE POT HARVEST IN KENTUCKY by Chris Kenning Louisville Courier-Journal, (Source:Cincinnati Enquirer)
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Kentucky
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BARBOURVILLE, Ky -- Deep in the Appalachian woods, Kentucky State Police Trooper Dewayne Holden's Humvee struggled up what once was an old logging trail.
As his three-truck convoy stopped at a clearing atop a 3,000-foot ridge, Holden grabbed a machete and joined eight other armed troopers and National Guardsmen, hiking toward a hill under some power lines.
But the pot growers had beaten them to the prize: Gone were the 40 to 50 marijuana plants worth as much as $100,000 that Holden spotted from a helicopter more than a week earlier. Only six spindly plants and some fresh ATV tracks were left.
[Remainder snipped]
Share This Article Pubdate: Thu, 11 Oct 2007
Source: Cincinnati Enquirer (OH)
Copyright: 2007 The Cincinnati Enquirer
Contact: http://enquirer.com/editor/letters.html
Website: http://enquirer.com/today/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/86
Author: Chris Kenning Louisville Courier-Journal
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)Zack And Miri Make A Porno Rated NC-17 By Josh Tyler Random Article Blend Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Last month star Seth Rogen went on the record and said the MPAA was giving them trouble with some of the sex stuff in the film. Well now it’s not just rumoring, Zack and Miri has been officially hit with the NC-17 kiss of death.
It was the guys at Kevin’s own site Zack and Miri Make a Porno as “Rating: NC-17”. Reason for the rating? As expected, “Rated NC-17 for some graphic sexuality.” Gee, thanks MPAA. As if we couldn’t figure that out from the title. I’m sure people everywhere were planning to take their kids.
Though I think we’d all rather see the NC-17 cut and watch the movie as its director originally intended it to be seen, slapping any movie with an NC-17 spells box office doom. Not because people won’t show up to see it, but because most major theaters will refuse to carry it, thus taking away our right to choose whether or not we want it in front of our eyes. The really frustrating thing in this particular case is that if any filmmaker has the kind of audience necessary to blow up the stigma attached to an NC-17, it’s Kevin Smith. Heck, an NC-17 rating might even help his ticket sales… his crowd is going to be there money in hand regardless. Sadly if it’s not playing, they’re powerless to support it.
Don’t worry though, the fight’s not over for Kevin Smith’s Porno. Under the movie’s rating on the MPAA site, there’s a little note which reads: “Pending Appeal”. That means they’re fighting the rating, and there’s still reason to think this thing will eventually get the R it needs to show up in a theater near you. Of course who knows what sort of cuts Kevin will have to make to his film in order to achieve that. When the MPAA gets involved with what you’ll be allowed to see, there’s always a depressing chance that one of the casualties of their interference could be the movie’s funniest scene. I guess there’s always DVD. It's no secret that director Kevin Smith has been having a rough time in getting an R-rating for his new comedy. Last month star Seth Rogen went on the record and said the MPAA was giving them trouble with some of the sex stuff in the film. Well now it’s not just rumoring,has been officially hit with the NC-17 kiss of death.It was the guys at Kevin’s own site NewsAskew who first uncovered it. A search on the MPPA’s official site listsas “Rating: NC-17”. Reason for the rating? As expected, “Rated NC-17 for some graphic sexuality.” Gee, thanks MPAA. As if we couldn’t figure that out from the title. I’m sure people everywhere were planning to take their kids.Though I think we’d all rather see the NC-17 cut and watch the movie as its director originally intended it to be seen, slapping any movie with an NC-17 spells box office doom. Not because people won’t show up to see it, but because most major theaters will refuse to carry it, thus taking away our right to choose whether or not we want it in front of our eyes. The really frustrating thing in this particular case is that if any filmmaker has the kind of audience necessary to blow up the stigma attached to an NC-17, it’s Kevin Smith. Heck, an NC-17 rating might even help his ticket sales… his crowd is going to be there money in hand regardless. Sadly if it’s not playing, they’re powerless to support it.Don’t worry though, the fight’s not over for Kevin Smith’s. Under the movie’s rating on the MPAA site, there’s a little note which reads: “Pending Appeal”. That means they’re fighting the rating, and there’s still reason to think this thing will eventually get the R it needs to show up in a theater near you. Of course who knows what sort of cuts Kevin will have to make to his film in order to achieve that. When the MPAA gets involved with what you’ll be allowed to see, there’s always a depressing chance that one of the casualties of their interference could be the movie’s funniest scene. I guess there’s always DVD. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topChristian Brochet, a retired 77-year-old engineer from the town of Brétigny-sur-Orge, where last week's fatal crash took place, wrote to France's national rail operator SNCF almost three years ago, warning them that track conditions at the local train station could cause a “catastrophe", French daily Le Parisien revealed on Thursday.
SNCF responded three months later reassuring Brochet; “There is no safety risk.”
In the letter, dated November 25th 2010 and shown to French daily Le Parisien on Thursday, Brochet writes: “The other day, to my astonishment, I noticed 36 faults with the binding of the track closest to me,” referring to track 2, which is next to track 1, where Friday’s derailment took place.
The former engineer also pointed out that on a 100-metre stretch of the track, a few dozen large bolts, which fix the rail to the sleepers, were loose, broken, or missing.
“This track is largely used by RER trains that don’t pass through the station too quickly, but high-speed trains do also use it,” he added.
“So – where is the maintenance that should ensure good service and safety? What I saw was only a small section of the track. What am I to think about the rest of the network?” Brochet asked.
No maintenance fault
Le Parisien reports that three months later, on February 15th 2011, SNCF responded in a letter to Brochet in which they dismissed his safety fears.
“I have to assure you there is no maintenance fault in this area,” the rail provider wrote.
“Its condition is known to us, has been monitored, and conforms to all standards. There is no safety risk,” the letter claimed, before stating, however, that "works were planned to restore the effectiveness of connections".
Shocked by the response of SNCF, Brochet sent a follow-up letter on February 25, 2011 warning the rail provider, in chillingly prescient terms, what might happen.
“The absence of screwed-in connections that I observed constitutes a serious error and could lead to a catastrophe,” he wrote in his second letter.
'It doesn't take an expert to notice a missing screw'
As Brochet had feared, that catastrophe occurred, albeit on a different track, at Brétigny-sur-Orge, on July 12th, when a train travelling from Paris to Limoges derailed on track 1, killing six people, including a couple aged in their 80s, and injuring dozens more.
The next day, SNCF chief Guillaume Pépy said the accident had been caused by a connecting bar that had come loose at a rail switch at the station. Pierre Izard, the SNCF's general manager for infrastructure said the joint bar "broke away, it became detached and came out of its housing." Speaking to Le Parisien on Thursday, Brochet insisted his judgement was accurate at the time, pointing out that he himself had run a business in the Paris region for years, producing metal parts for use by SNCF.
“I know off by heart every element that makes up a train track,” he added.
“SNCF’s letter proves they knew the track was in a bad state. The lack of maintenance was as plain as the nose on your face,” said Brochet.
“It doesn’t take an expert to see that a screw is missing,” he added
'Regulations scrupulously followed'
A spokesman for SNCF declined to comment to The Local on Thursday, but a separate spokesman told Le Parisien that the number of faulty attachments noticed by Brochet in 2010 wasn’t enough to justify taking immediate action.
“There are 666 of these attachments along the length of track 2 at Brétigny,” said the spokesman.
“Christian Brochet saw 36 that he considers faulty. So that gives us 11 percent faulty equipment. The standards clearly state that immediate intervention is required when 30 percent of attachments are observed to be faulty,” the spokesman added.
“The regulations, therefore, were scrupulously respected,” he concluded.Clive Palmer testifies on nephew's disappearance, 'has memory loss due to morphine'
Updated
An ill-looking and out-of-breath Clive Palmer has told a court he paid for two luxury cruises for his nephew Clive Mensink, who has an outstanding warrant for his arrest for failing to appear over Queensland Nickel's collapse.
Key points: Mr Palmer clutches sick bag, breathes heavily during Federal Court evidence
Tells court he funded luxury cruises for nephew, Clive Mensink, wanted for questioning
Also sent Mr Mensink $10,000 while overseas in "entitlements" from Queensland Nickel
Mr Palmer was ordered to give evidence on Wednesday in the Federal Court after a no-show sick day on Tuesday.
He hobbled into court clutching a sick bag, with a breathing apparatus, pillow and blanket in tow.
Before proceedings began, the former MP lay on a couch outside the courtroom, using the breathing device.
He is recovering from pancreatitis and is on a morphine-based medication, which he said made him lose his memory.
His barrister, Andrew Boe, told the court his client ingested painkillers this morning and had been on them for several days.
Mr Boe said it could be difficult for Mr Palmer to give an accurate account because of the pain medication and did not want to be "accused of unwittingly giving false evidence".
Mensink'met with Palmer's father-in-law in Bulgaria'
Lawyers for the special purpose liquidators of Queensland Nickel called on Mr Palmer to hand over details of all recent communication with his nephew and former Queensland Nickel director Mr Mensink.
Mr Mensink is on an extended overseas holiday and has repeatedly failed to appear in court.
Mr Palmer said he spoke with his nephew while Mr Mensink was in the Caribbean on a cruise last year.
He said Mr Mensink was dissatisfied with how he was being treated in Australia and was contemplating not returning home.
The court also heard Mr Palmer's Australian-based Bulgarian father-in-law "coincidently" bumped into Mr Mensink twice overseas, once on a cruise and once in the Bulgarian capital Sofia in February.
The court heard Mr Palmer had armed his father-in-law for the chance meeting with $60,000 for Mr Mensink, which he described as part of $200,000 worth of entitlements for working for him.
However, Mr Mensink only received $10,000 of the cash, the court was told.
'I'm drugged with morphine'
Outside court on Wednesday, Mr Palmer said he urged Mr Mensink to see a doctor and talk about his problems and "then come back to Australia".
Mr Palmer also took the opportunity to explain he had been in "great pain" and mentioned his memory problems.
"I'm taking morphine and it's extraordinary that someone on narcotics can be required to give evidence," he said.
"I can't remember my Amex PIN number for example, so this is just confirmation that this is a political witch-hunt."
Mr Palmer said he was physically unwell and was in a "great deal of pain this morning".
"I can't remember some things because of the morphine, like not to do with this, Mensink, but just some things, I forgot my daughter's middle name for example," he said.
"I'm trying to be as helpful as I can in the circumstances, I'm drugged with morphine."
Mr Palmer due to reappear
Justice John Dowsett told Mr Palmer's lawyer his client "may have to refrain" from taking the morphine he is on so he can give coherent evidence at his next appearance, due next week.
"I am not going to tell him not to take it," he said.
"But it is going to have to be done, not necessarily today.
"Is he not able to ration himself?"
Justice Dowsett added he would "accept he would try and abstain he if could".
Mr Palmer, the former owner of Queensland Nickel, left the court looking a little less pale saying he would try to reappear if he was well enough.
Queensland Nickel collapsed last year with $300 million in debt, leaving 800 people out of work.
Topics: courts-and-trials, law-crime-and-justice, clive-palmer, company-news, business-economics-and-finance, australia, qld, brisbane-4000, townsville-4810
First postedThe Los Angeles City Council is trying to rectify that and has asked the public works staff and city attorney to figure out how to make that happen by the end of this month. Farmers markets serving the public, especially those operating on public land or in the public right of way, really should serve all of the public. And although it would be preferable for city leaders to persuade markets to accept EBT rather than coercing them to do so, a mandate along those lines would nevertheless seem to benefit everyone.
While accepting EBT does require extra effort, the operating costs are negligible. The state provides the electronic card readers, and even pays for wireless access if needed. And accepting EBT wouldn't reduce the vendors' profits, given that an EBT dollar has the same value as a dollar bill.
Market managers may have to work a little harder because they typically would be the ones to operate the EBT card reader, hand out scrip to spend at the booths and reimburse the vendors. But if the result is more customers, that's a problem most businesses wouldn't mind having. And it's not as if farmers markets are regulatory-free zones. Operators must obtain permits and vendors must be certified as real farmers selling produce grown in state.The Supreme Court of Canada says an Alberta woman cannot sue the province’s energy regulator as part of her claim that hydraulic fracturing so badly contaminated her well that the water can be set on fire.
Jessica Ernst began legal action against the regulator and Calgary-based energy company Encana in 2007 and later amended her statement of claim to include Alberta Environment.
She alleges that fracking on her land northeast of Calgary released hazardous amounts of methane and other chemicals into her well and that her concerns were not properly investigated.
Ernst claims the regulator breached her constitutional right to free speech.
The Alberta courts turned down a provincial attempt to be struck from the case but exempted Alberta’s energy regulator, citing immunity provisions in provincial law.
The Supreme Court agreed last year to hear Ernst’s plea to include the regulator, but ruled against her Friday.As President Obama goes to Capitol Hill for his State of the Union address he is telling the world he is fed up with Congress — the paralysis and the GOP obstruction — but his anger is secondary to signs that he is a demoralized lame duck.
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In his recent, lengthy interview with the New Yorker magazine, the president comes across as passive in the face of his difficulties with the hyper-partisan Congress. He is portrayed as a politician who dislikes mixing with members of Congress, twisting arms, offering favors or pulling federal aid to move his congressional agenda.
The president all but confirms this sad-eyed portrait when he is quoted as saying that after five years in the White House he feels as helpless as a “relay swimmer in a river full of rapids and that river is history.” Poor Barack.
Later he continues his “one man in a little boat lost in the endless sea” analogy by saying he has tried to move forward but he is thwarted by having to “take into account winds and currents and occasionally the lack of any wind, so that you’re just sitting there for awhile and sometimes you’re being blown all over the place.”
That sounds like he is talking about his dealings with Congress.
Robert Caro, the historian best known for his multi-volume biography of President Johnson, enters the magazine story in a telling encounter with Obama. Caro’s books feature stories of Johnson both as senator and president using pressure tactics to get legislation through Congress in the face of large forces swirling around him, from racial segregation to a distant, unpopular war.
After sensing Obama being cool toward him, Caro feels he has to apologize to the current Democrat in the White House for inviting comparisons of Obama’s governing style to Johnson’s overbearing but winning tactics.
To Americans who have twice elected him as president — especially voters on the left who hunger for a fighter to take on the Tea Party extremists on the right — the headline out of the story is that the president is a frustrated man.
What happened to the inspirational candidate of 2008 who confidently told people that history will record his victorious run for president as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal?”
Where is the fighter who proudly stood up to divisive forces opposed to a liberal on healthcare and said he won the election?
There is no answer from the president these days other than pointing to harsh treatment at the hands of Republicans.
But there is a chance for success on Capitol Hill if the president gets back in the game.
Remember, Mr. President, Congress and especially congressional Republicans have far lower approval ratings than you do.
On issues from income inequality to immigration reform and reasonable limits on the sale of guns — the bold progressive reforms the president laid out in his second inaugural address and his 2013 State of the Union — the Democrat has strong public support in polls, including agreement from a majority of Republicans.
Yes, the president faces relentless obstructionism from Republicans in Congress. They’ve presented him with a record number of filibusters and displayed outright refusal to negotiate, much less compromise on the issues.
Backing down, pleading for mercy from the Tea Party caucus, will do nothing to advance his political agenda. The way to win is to get busy, get angry and show some grit.
As William Galston of the Brookings Institution wrote in a column in the Wall Street Journal last week, there are several policy proposals on key issues now sitting in Congress that provide the president with the opportunity to pass legislation with bipartisan majorities. Those issues include a public-private partnership for rebuilding infrastructure (which would self-evidently also create jobs), reform of the tax code and comprehensive immigration reform.
On all those issues, there are some Republicans willing to work with him.
Why not get off the mat and fight, shame politicians who refuse to consider good ideas by calling them out, and let voters know some Republicans are more concerned with being the darling of right-wing talk show hosts than with doing what is right for the nation?
Get up and say that out loud.
Get up and say that all the critics who complain about big government are ignoring that the government today has the fewest employees in nearly half a century even though the nation is a third bigger; tell the critics that government spending as a percentage of the economy is near the lowest it has been under any president in the last 30 years; speak with pride about the drive to give every American decent healthcare.
Look, if his opponents are going to hate him for being a successful liberal in two presidential elections, Obama might as well use his powerful pulpit to put up a good fight for what most Americans believe needs to be done.
My dad trained professional fighters. He liked to tell them fear is like fire. It can burn your house down, but if you take control it can keep you warm, cook your food and show you the way to victory.
Time to start your fire, Mr. President.
Juan Williams is an author and political analyst for Fox News Channel.Wellington Phoenix head coach Ernie Merrick is taking a positive approach to the prospect of losing Nathan Burns to China.
Wellington Phoenix head coach Ernie Merrick is taking a positive approach to the prospect of losing Nathan Burns to China.
While Merrick would obviously prefer to keep the A-League’s leading goal scorer, he was upbeat when quizzed by reporters after a training session at Newtown Park today.
Merrick said he was pleased that people were taking notice of his players, though he was disappointed at the way some journalists were presenting the situation.
“It is a credit to this club that we have had several players spoken about recently with interest from Africa, Europe and Asia,” Merrick said.
“We are now producing players other clubs are interested in so we are obviously doing something right.
“What is disappointing is the way the articles in Australia have been written.
“Neither of the journalists concerned have spoken to our club or Nathan about the situation, and there are so many inaccuracies in them it is incredible.
“What is really disappointing from Nathan’s point of view, and I have spoken to him about it, is that people have put words in his mouth about out clauses and him |
their most un-Guardiola game ever with three at the back, a robust counter-attack, and Arjen Robben as a second central striker.
Whether Guardiola secures a second double in three years or not doesn't really have much material bearing on the way he'll be regarded in Germany in years to come. His work at Bayern will remain "incomplete," as author Ronald Reng put it succinctly, successful on most levels bar the winning of the Champions League.
Pep Guardiola's tenure began vs. Dortmund and will end vs. Dortmund. But the context has changed dramatically.
Ironically, the finality of that verdict also offers some respite: all those who have insisted that domestic trophies were irrelevant as a measure of his coaching skills can't now turn around and claim that his legacy hinges on beating Dortmund for a second time in the Olympic Stadium. (Or maybe they can, irrespective of that twisted logic. The past few days have shown that there's still a strong appetite for diminishing his record and footballing ideas even as attitudes have already begun to soften in Munich and developed towards a slightly deeper appreciation of his achievements.)
It was interesting to hear club boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge remind the manager at the championship party banquet on Saturday that the double was considered "very important in Germany -- you know that!" It's almost as if he was somehow worried that his outgoing manager wouldn't really care anymore. It's impossible to imagine that the 45-year-old won't be his usual, ambitious self in the German capital, pitting his wits against Tuchel, the emerging "German Guardiola." Rummenigge was playing to the gallery a little bit, but probably also keen to shake manager out of his melancholic state of mind.
Guardiola's doubters, especially those who haven't seen much of Bayern beyond the Champions League, will not be placated by one more honour. On the contrary, the game on Saturday only serves to crystallise the essential dilemma he's come up against throughout his first spell as a coach outside Spain: The better Bayern play against the second-best team of the Bundesliga, the less it will be appreciated and the less he will be appreciated. He's had to live with that curious form of public non-recognition and make do with the more important, if largely invisible, admiration from his players and superiors instead.
"Guardiola has left his mark on the Bundesliga," Bundestrainer Joachim Löw told Suddeutsche Zeitung on Friday. He undeniably left his mark on the national team, too, by improving the Bayern players' positional understanding and tactical versatility. Regretfully, he never communicated his footballing philosophy at any depth outside the dressing room. His ideas will continue to effect the way the game is being played in Germany for years to come but only indirectly, as an echo through the deeds of Tuchel and through former players who might turn into coaches or TV analysts. The high priest of control football will depart without leaving any scripture behind.
For German football, that's ultimately much more disappointing than Bayern's underachievement in Europe. All neutrals can do is to sit back and watch the best manager of his generation on his last day in the office. To him, the trip to Berlin will be little more than a pit stop on his way to Manchester City, where the work of making another side into a Guardiola team will soon start, all over again.
Raphael Honigstein is ESPN FC's German football expert and a regular guest on ESPN FC TV. He also writes for the Guardian. Twitter: @honigstein.Yesterday, we told you about a new Kickstarter campaign that intends to put 245 pieces by Frédéric Chopin into the public domain. The campaign is being spearheaded by Musopen.org, a non-profit located a few miles up the road from us, in Palo Alto, CA. Operating since 2005 (a year before we took flight), Musopen provides free public domain scores and a library of recordings by classical composers that you'll want to check out.
The library is best accessed via this page where you can browse recordings organized by composer, performer, instrument, form, and time period As you'll see, Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart -- they're all there. So is Debussy, Ravel and Copland, not to mention another 140+ composers.
Music can be streamed online for free. But if you become a registered user for the site, you can download 5 tracks per day in standard audio quality. Or, if you pay $55 per year, you can enjoy unlimited downloads in high quality audio. Paying members help sustain the site, and they also get to help determine what music will be made available online in the future. Have more questions? Check out Musopen's FAQ.
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85,000 Classical Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web
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The Open Goldberg Variations: J.S. Bach’s Masterpiece Free to DownloadGENEVA (Reuters) - Up to 700,000 Syrian refugees may flee abroad by the end of the year, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday, almost four times its previous forecast for the exodus from the deepening crisis.
Syrian refugees are seen as U.N.-Arab League peace envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi (not pictured) visits their camp in the Turkish border town of Altinozu in Hatay province September 18, 2012. REUTERS/Adem Altan/Pool
About 294,000 refugees fleeing 18 months of conflict in Syria have already crossed into four neighboring countries - Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey - or await registration there, it said.
“This is a significant outflow taking place, 100,000 people in August, 60,000 in September and at the moment 2,000 or 3,000 per day or night,” Panos Moumtzis, regional refugee coordinator for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, told a news briefing.
“For example, Zaaatri camp, which is a town, did not exist until 30 days ago, it was a piece of desert basically,” he said.
The UNHCR’s previous forecast - of 185,000 refugees - was surpassed in August. It had been made in June.
The uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, which erupted in March last year, has become an armed insurgency in which activists say 30,000 people have been killed.
Bombardment and heavier fighting between government forces and militants is forcing Syrians to flee hot spots across the country, Moumtzis said. Many cross borders with only the clothes on their backs after a perilous journey through frontlines.
“These are families, women and children who escaped Homs, Hama, Deraa, Idlib, Aleppo who have come out with traumatic experiences and have told us they have fled,” Moumtzis said.
“We have been overwhelmed with catching up basically, because every week we have another 15,000 to 20,000 who have arrived.”
Other Syrians, who fled the uprising early on, now find they have depleted their resources and are registering as refugees.
RACE AHEAD OF WINTER
U.N. aid agencies and humanitarian partners issued a funding appeal of $487.9 million to try to meet growing needs before a bitter winter sets in.
They are struggling to provide winterized tents, caravans, blankets, clothing, and food for up to 700,000 refugees expected to be staying in camps or as guests in host communities.
Turkey, which currently hosts 87,774 refugees in 13 camps is building three more camps, while most of the 94,716 refugees in Jordan are staying with host families, apart from 31,000 housed at the Za’atri camp.
Lebanon does not have any camps but is hosting 78,452. Most of the 33,063 in Iraq are in a single camp in the north.
“We are running against time with winter coming,” said Edward Kallon of the World Food Programme (WFP), the U.N. agency which aims to provide hot meals or other rations to nearly 200,000 Syrian refugees this month and roughly double that by year-end.
Women and children make up about 75 percent of the refugee population, and education and health care are priorities.
“Over half of the refugee population are under 18 and a fifth are under five and these are always the most vulnerable,” said Dermot Carty, Deputy Director of Emergency Programmes at the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“Schooling continues to be a problem,” he said.
About 5,000-6,000 Syrians have reached other parts of north Africa, mainly Egypt, while some 15,000 refugees have turned up in Europe, including in Cyprus and Greece, according to the UNHCR.
The agency forecast that Jordan could host 250,000 by the end of the year, Lebanon 120,000, Turkey 280,000 and Iraq 60,000.
Moumtzis paid tribute to Syria’s neighbours for keeping their borders open but said donors needed to share the financial burden of caring for the refugees.
“The most important thing for all of us is to make sure they are in a safe place,” he said.Case to determine whether taxi app drivers get improved rights such as guaranteed minimum wage and holiday pay
Uber to take appeal over ruling on drivers' status to UK supreme court
Uber plans to appeal to the UK’s supreme court against a ruling that drivers should be classed as workers, setting the scene for a landmark legal battle with major implications for the gig economy.
The taxi app lost a tribunal case brought by two drivers last year and tasted defeat for a second time earlier this month when the employment appeal tribunal (EAT) upheld the original decision.
Uber hopes the supreme court will grant it permission to leapfrog the court of appeal and take its case directly to the highest court in the country as soon as February.
“We have this afternoon requested permission to appeal directly to the supreme court in order that this case can be resolved sooner rather than later,” said a spokesperson.
The case will determine whether Uber’s drivers should be treated as workers, a status conferring improved rights such as guaranteed minimum wage and holiday pay.
It could also have ramifications for a host of gig economy firms, which operate by inviting workers to accept small jobs at short notice, often via smartphone apps.
The gig economy has proved to be a battleground for disputes involving firms such as takeaway company Deliveroo and courier firm CitySprint. Its emergence also prompted a full-blown government review into modern employment practices, led by Matthew Taylor, a former adviser to Tony Blair.
Uber is understood to be hopeful that the supreme court will agree to hear its arguments directly before or after a similar case involving Pimlico Plumbers, which is due to begin in February 2018.
The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), which is backing the two former Uber drivers at the heart of the case, said it was confident of victory.
“It is unfortunate that rather than focusing on how to give its drivers a guaranteed minimum wage and paid holidays, Uber is instead choosing to waste everyone’s time by appealing once more,” said the IWGB general secretary, Dr Jason Moyer-Lee.
“The IWGB has already beaten Uber at the employment appeal tribunal and we are more than ready to beat them again.”
Yaseen Aslam, one of the two drivers who brought the original case, said: “As the holiday season approaches, drivers should be looking forward to the security of a guaranteed minimum wage and holiday pay. Instead, they now face many more months of poverty, stress and uncertainty, while Uber profits at their expense.”
The case hinges on the employment status of Uber drivers, who the taxi app claims are self-employed contractors. Uber says the majority of its 50,000 drivers prefer their self-employed status, pointing out that the two drivers who brought the case no longer drive for the company.
The IWGB has said that being granted “worker” status would mean drivers would still be technically self-employed, but would also enjoy greater protections.
Lawyers for Uber are expected to tell the supreme court that the EAT’s ruling last month relied on misunderstandings of how Uber drivers interact with passengers.
They will argue that the EAT erred in its understanding of whether drivers are obliged to log in to the app or to accept a certain percentage of passenger requests.
The legal tussle is unfolding against the backdrop of a decision by Transport for London to revoke Uber’s licence, pending an appeal that the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has said could take years to resolve.CLOSE Incredible images of people selflessly helping each other after the devastating flooding in Houston. Humankind
Men are the stronger sex, and crises such as these offer men the opportunity to put their strength in service of others.
Houston SWAT officer Daryl Hudeck rescues Catherine Pham in Houston on Aug. 27, 2017. (Photo11: David J. Phillip, AP)
Chivalry lives.
In a viral photo from the Associated Press, a woman is pictured cradling her baby as a man carries them both to safety amid the Hurricane Harvey floods. While the image is quaint, it has a thoroughly modern feel. She has a topknot, leggings and Hunter rain boots.
She could be me.
The image has become iconic of the still unfolding disaster, a photographic balm on a nation still wounded deeply from the vitriolic events at Charlottesville and elsewhere. Thousands upon thousands have shared the image on social media, many adding the phrase, “This is America.”
But the picture has also sparked jokes about “toxic masculinity” as some sarcastically remind others of the reality that in a crisis such as this, it is typically strong men pulling terrified victims from danger.
This is no time for jokes or sarcasm. The picture however, is a reminder of the reality that men and women are different, and that those differences can serve society for the better.
More: Dear Texas, how many times do we have to rebuild the same house? (You're next Florida)
More: Hurricane Harvey brings a world of hurt, and not just in Houston: Cancer patient
Men are the stronger sex, and crises such as these offer men the opportunity to put their strength in service of others. Moments such as this give even the most ordinary of men the chance to become valorous, to become heroes. In one of the most touching hurricane images I have seen, a man in a soiled shirt and sweats clutches the hood of a sinking car and peers inside for victims to save. He’s no brawny SWAT officer like the man in the AP photo, but he’s every bit as heroic.
But the AP photo also captures the sacrifice that women make. Connie Pham heroically gave up her body in order to bring new life into the world. No doubt she put her own safety at risk to stay behind with a vulnerable child. Escaping a flood of Biblical proportions is quite a bit harder to do with a 13-month-old in tow. In the picture, she grasps her baby with an intensity familiar to any mother.
Indeed, as some have pointed out, the scene captured in the photo is almost reminiscent of the Nativity. Silent masculine strength, maternal beauty and innocence.
It's also reminiscent of another national incident from earlier this year when a male United passenger who became known to the nation as the “second row guy” stood up to a gruff flight attendant hitting a sobbing mother in the face with her stroller.
Again, she could be me.
The video went equally viral, spawning article upon article praising the man’s heroism, simply for trying to protect a woman. A mom.
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media
More: Hurricane Harvey's lesson? Texans, Americans are fundamentally good: Voices
The reality is that our culture is hungry for chivalry. But chivalry demands as a starting point an understanding that women are deserving of it. And that requires acknowledging that women are different. It requires a celebration of their differences, particularly those that enable them to bring the next generation of life into the world.
The AP photo is important. In it, the man and woman each do something the other cannot. They are co-equal contributors who in their own way have given of themselves so that someone more vulnerable might live. And all of this points towards what’s at the center of the photo, a child. Men and women are different, and we help each other be our best selves by helping direct our focus towards those who are more vulnerable.
It's just one picture, and yet it's so much more. It's the inarguable reminder when things get real, and get real fast, we men and women are very much not the same. And yet we love it. We love it, because when men and women work together, unthreatened by those differences, it is a beautiful sight to behold.
McGuire is a Senior Fellow with The Catholic Association, and the author of Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female.
You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to [email protected].
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2iKbzOlCTV Ottawa
The number of cars parking in accessible spots without a permit is on the rise. New numbers from the city of Ottawa show a slight bump in tickets issued in 2015 over 2014.
Bylaw officers issued 2,278 tickets in 2015, up from just over 2,200 in 2014. Hot spots included College Square, the Walmart at Train Yards, and the Nepean Sportsplex. Just a few years ago the number of tickets was in the low 1,000s.
Gisele Bouvier, an activist with Ottawa ACORN, told CTV Ottawa it's unforgiveable for people without a permit to be parking in accessible spots.
"It makes life more difficult," she said. "It's also insulting to them to have able-bodied people taking their spot and sort of pushing them aside."
Accessible spots are built closer to a building's entrance to help people get to where they are going in a safe, and more manageable manner. The spots are also larger, and often grouped together for added safety.
93-year-old John Newell, an Air Force veteran, relies on his accessible parking permit to get around smoothly.
"I have a bad back. I have a bad neck. I have a bad knee that's about one year from giving up," he said.
However, Newell and his wife, Lois, said they often find people without a permit parking in the reserved spots.
"They just dash into the store and hope they don't get caught," said Lois Newell.
The fine for parking in an accessible spot without a permit is $450. Last year's fines resulted in an estimated $1 million dollars in revenue for the city of Ottawa.
Councillor Mark Taylor launched a study around accessible parking permits in 2012 after it was discovered people were creating false permits to evade tickets. He said the study found there are an adequate number of parking spots for the hundreds of thousands of Ottawa residents with permits. Taylor said the study also revealed the vast majority of permits are legitimate.
Taylor attributed the increase in 2015 to two factors: greater enforcement on behalf of bylaw and greater awareness.
"It was a topic of conversation a couple of years ago and I think that spurred people to say when I see something I am going to call bylaw," Taylor said.
As demand for accessible permits grows, Taylor said it might be time for the city to look at ways of expanding accessible parking. According to the city of Ottawa's website, public spaces with more than 20 parking spots are only required to have one accessible spot.
"We realize there is going to be more and more of a call for disabled spaces in the future, so I think there is a call to be looking at expanding the accessible spaces" Taylor said.
Social media, including Facebook pages and specially designed apps, have made it easier for drivers to virtually shame and report others who are parking illegally. Anyone who wants to report a driver can call 3-1-1.
It is unclear how many of the tickets issued last year were fought in court and or paid in full.
So, what were the ticketing hotspots in 2015?'I never used to understand how a woman could leave her baby wrapped up in a carrier bag outside a hospital,” novelist Helen Walsh tells me over a cup of coffee in central Liverpool. “Then I had Leo.”
“For the first nine months, it felt as if I was being kept continually awake. I was shattered. I now know the extreme effects of sleep deprivation, and why it was used as a weapon of torture on prisoners of war.”
The lack of sleep started with a long labour that kept her up for three nights. On the ward after the birth, she begged to be allowed to sleep, to be moved away from the din of crying babies. Sleeplessness drastically lowered her mood. “The depression was black, malevolent and unremitting. When one of the midwives saw me coming out of the shower sobbing, she just looked at me in a 'you’re not the first, love, pull yourself together’ kind of way.”
In Walsh’s third novel Go to Sleep, her protagonist Rachel Massey becomes pregnant after a “knee-trembler with an old flame”. She dares not tell her parents, but she knows that she wants to keep this child, even if it means going it alone. “I will be the best mother a child could ever have,” she pledges.
But nothing can prepare her for that twilight zone into which post-natal sleep deprivation sucks unsuspecting first-time mothers. Rachel does not sleep from the day Bean is born and breastfeeding is difficult. He won’t sleep, so she walks the streets of Liverpool day and night. Three months down the line, she is hallucinating and imagining she has drowned her baby.
For Walsh, 35 and living on the Wirra in Cheshire the fear was not only that she would harm Leo, but that someone else was already doing so. “When Leo was four months old, someone put nails in his cot, or so I thought.” The “nails” were, in fact, pieces of black fluff. She hallucinated: one day, breastfeeding her son, she looked down and saw not a suckling infant but a black cat. She became obsessive. “I checked Leo’s temperature constantly, I scrubbed the floors and surfaces – the threat of superbugs was everywhere.”
Meanwhile, Leo cried and fed. Like his mother, he barely slept. “He was such an unhappy baby,” says Walsh. “He was on the breast for hours. You couldn’t lie him down or he would projectile vomit. I’d take him out in his pram. I’d walk for five hours at a time, sometimes through the night.”
Unlike her heroine Rachel, who had no help, Walsh has a supportive husband – novelist Kevin Sampson – and equally supportive mother, a former nurse. “I was lucky. Kevin was a hands-on dad, and we had scores of people in uniform coming to the house. But no one could work out why Leo was so fractious.”
Eventually, a paediatrician diagnosed gastroesophageal reflux, suffered by more than half of all babies during the first three months of life. It causes them to regurgitate their food, leading to pain, vomiting and irritability. It persisted until he was nine months old.
Walsh says she became suicidal but kept quiet, fearful of being hospitalised. Life went on – until she went to a baby clinic and broke down. Her GP referred her to a psychiatrist.
Her psychiatrist diagnosed post-natal psychosis, the most severe form of post-partum depression affecting one in 1,000 women, according to the Psychiatry Research Trust. It had been triggered by severe sleep deprivation and was responsible for the hallucinations and disturbed thoughts. Her psychiatrist talked through various options, including medication and ECT (electroconvulsive therapy). But she had one simple treatment up her sleeve first.
“She told me to leave Leo with Kevin, go to my mum’s and take a sleeping tablet. I did, and slept for 12 hours. It was amazing. The world shifted on its axis, and motherhood turned out to be every bit as magical as my pre-natal fantasies supposed.”
Walsh also gave up breastfeeding, something which saddened her but which meant Kevin and her mother could share the night feed. “From then on, I would take a sleeping tablet once or twice a week – no more than that, I didn’t want to be conked out all the time – and go to stay at my mum’s. I did this for nearly two years.”
At nine months, Leo finally started to sleep through the night. When he was a year old, Walsh asked to be sterilised, terrified of feeling the same way again. Not without cause: the relapse rate in postnatal psychosis is almost 50 per cent in subsequent pregnancies. Her GP talked her out of it.
“I now have my son to consider,” says Walsh. “I couldn’t bear to be depressed or suicidal around him, and for him to be aware of it.”
Who can blame her, now that she’s living the motherhood idyll? “I didn’t bond with Leo on impact, but when I did I was in love. I still am.”
'Go to Sleep’ by Helen Walsh (Canongate) is available from Telegraph Books at £11.99 + £1.25 p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk The Association for Post-Natal Illness, 020 7386 0868, www.apni.orgManfred's character is standing still in the virtual world of the 2014 sci-fi online multiplayer game WildStar Online. Manfred, the real life person behind the character, is typing commands into a debugger. In a few seconds of what seems to be an extremely easy hack, Manfred's virtual currency skyrockets up to more than 18,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 18 quintillion.
I'm watching this hack in a demo video recorded by Manfred as I stand next to him in a Las Vegas bar on Thursday. Manfred, who asked me not to reveal his real name, says he has been hacking several video games for 20 years, making a real-life living by using hacks like the one I just witnessed. His modus operandi has changed slightly from game to game, but, in essence, it consisted of tricking games into giving him items or currency he doesn't have a right to have. He would then sell those items and currency to other players (for real money) or wholesales them to online gray markets, such as the Internet Game Exchange, that then would sell those goods to individual players.
At the current exchange rate, Manfred estimates he has $397 trillion worth of WildStar gold. This is obviously an outlandish number, but, essentially, his income was only limited by the real-life market for the in-game currency.
"The best hacks are the invisible ones because you change the rules without anyone knowing what's going on."
When I spoke to Manfred ahead of his talk at the Def Con hacking conference, he said he wanted to go in, give his demo, and go out "as a ghost," never to be seen or heard from again. He said he wanted to be "invisible," just like he's been for the past two decades. He said he's found more than 100 publicly unknown vulnerabilities in more than 20 online video games, making hacking and trading virtual goods into his full time job.
Unlike most video game hackers, Manfred didn't cheat to gain an advantage over his opponents. He hacked games because he made it his living.
"The best hacks are the invisible ones because you change the rules without anyone knowing what's going on," Manfred told me. "When hacking online games, the main goal is to be invisible. You don't want to disrupt the players, you don't want the game company to find out about your hacks. You don't even want them to know that what you're doing is possible."
Read more: The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack
On Saturday, Manfred came out of the shadows and told his story for the first time during his talk. Initially, his plan was to hack WildStar Online in front of the audience, abusing undisclosed vulnerabilities, or zero-days, without having his talk recorded. The conference organizers, however, told him that all talks have to be recorded, and so he didn't do the hack live—much to the audience's chagrin.
Starting with Ultima Online, one of the first online massive multiplayer games, Manfred said he's been finding ways to hack the games in order to amass either virtual currency or goods that he would then sell wholesale first on eBay, and then later on Chinese online marketplaces.
Manfred, who declined to tell me or the audience how much money he made throughout his career, said he wasn't cheating to beat other players anymore. Instead, he sees himself as providing a service: Offering in-app purchases before in-app purchases were a thing.
"I don't like to call them hacks," Manfred told me, laughing. "It's more like finding unintended features in the protocol."
A screenshot of WildStar. Image: NCSOFT
The First Hack
Everything started in 1997, when he was playing Ultima Online. At the time, Manfred said, he had only a dial-up connection, and was routinely killed in fights by players with better broadband speeds. To compensate, he said, he found ways to cheat by hacking the game.
On a boring day, he discovered a bug that would change the course of his life. In Ultima Online there was a pre-set, finite number of houses that could be created within the game, so they were a scarce resource. Manfred says he found a way to delete people's houses and take over their lots, allowing him to build more houses than he normally would be able to.
One day, Manfred told me, he had the idea of putting an Ultima Online castle on eBay to see if someone would buy it. He ended up selling it for almost $2,000, he said (Manfred says he's sold around 100 houses since then for an average price of around $2,000.)
"Hey this is real money!" Manfred recalls thinking. "That pretty much paid for my college. I pretty much sold houses and castles from Ultima Online for three or four years."
A screenshot of Manfred, who's the character wearing all purple, playing Ultima Online after he stole a house. (Image: Manfred)
But Ultima Online was just the beginning. In the two decades since, Manfred says he found ways to hack and profit off of several games: Lineage 2, Shadowbane, Final Fantasy XI, Dark Age of Camelot, Lord of The Rings Online, RIFT, Age of Conan, Star Wars New Republic, Guild Wars 2, and others.
"I was a wholesale supplier on the backend for majority of these games," Manfred says.
In Dark Age of Camelot, for example, Manfred says he found an exploit that allowed him to log out and log in again without the game noticing, allowing essentially to clone his own character and valuable items over and over.
"I could just create as much money as I wanted. This was invisible to other players and the game company," Manfred says. "It was a revenue stream for twelve years."
"I don't like to call them hacks. It's more like finding unintended features in the protocol."
Most of the time, the hacks went largely unnoticed. The one exception was Shadowbane. That game, Manfred says, was so easy to hack—hackers could just send the game's servers whatever data they wanted and the game trusted it—that the chaos created by him and other hackers was reported in a Wired story in 2003.
"That was my last malicious hack," Manfred said. "Then I went totally underground and made sure my hacks weren't noticed by anybody."
Manfred says he is likely the only person who's been living off hacking games for so long. But there's a lot of other people who hack with the goal to cheat and win games. And there are probably others who do it for the money like he used to, given that some of the bugs he took advantage of were relatively easy to find for motivated hackers.
It's a "wild west," right now, he said. "There's a lot of money to be made, and there's a lot of people doing this every day."
And it's not just individual hackers. In 2011, a group of hackers got arrested in South Korea and were accused of working to hack video games and generate revenue for the North Korean government. The South Korean police said at the time that the team of hackers made $6 million in two years.
Coming Out for the Common Good
For Manfred, coming out now is a chance to show the world that video games need to take security more seriously. Most of the hacks he did over 20 years, he said, relied on very similar bugs.
"It's kinda like groundhog day, you play a game, you find some exploits, you get banned and then you move on to the next game," Manfred said during his talk.
Manfred says he's now done hacking video games. He quit last year and got a job at a consulting firm.
"It's been a good living," he told me. But he quit because the business model of video games has changed. Now that many companies make money using in-game purchases, he doesn't think it's fair to compete with their economic strategies.
"I wasn't comfortable doing what I was doing," he says.
Hacking WildStar Online on stage was going to be Manfred's last video game hack. But he decided against doing it. After the talk, Manfred told me he's going to report the flaw to NCSOFT, the maker of WildStar Online, and help get it fixed.
Video game hacking might still be a wild west, as he puts it, but Manfred is riding his horse into the sunset.
Got a tip? You can contact this reporter securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, OTR chat at [email protected], or email [email protected]
Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.Google is kicking off the week by revamping the look of its "Play" family of app icons. That includes the Play Store, Play Music, and anything else that starts with "Play." The look is much more consistent, but I imagine the redesign will be rather divisive. I mean, isn't everything?
You'll probably see the Play Store icon most, and it's changed the least. It's brighter, and the little folded handle is flat now. The others use the play arrow with a unique icon on top. Google hasn't announced any other changes to the Play apps, just new icons.
The blog post says the new icons will come to all apps in the next few weeks. That probably means new APKs will show up soon as part of a slow rollout. We'll have the APKs when that happens, of course.Jonney Shih Shows New Asus Tablet, Ultrabook at AsiaD
Little known outside of Asia a few years ago, Asus burst onto the scene with its Eee PC, the product that ushered in the era of the netbook.
With netbooks losing popularity in favor of tablets, Asus has responded with the Eee Pad, its own line of tablets that includes a convertible model with an optional keyboard dock. Asus is just one of many players in the space, though, and doesn’t have that first-mover advantage.
Chairman Johnny Shih is joining Walt Mossberg onstage at AsiaD to talk tablets, laptops and more.
9:07 am: Jonney’s on stage with the company’s new Ultrabook. “As you can see, it is very thin,” Shih said. Walt notes it is a good response to the MacBook Air.
Even with such thinness, we didn’t compromise the performance, Shih said, noting it has an Intel core i7, a next-generation solid-state drive and USB 3.0
It weighs 1.2 kilograms, Shih said. Siri tells me that equals 2.65 pounds.
“Talk to me about laptops versus tablets, Walt says. “What’s going on in the industry?”
Shih talks about the role of ubiquitous cloud computing. That means different kinds of screens, all connected to information.
9:15 am: Where are you putting your bets, Walt asks. Tablets? PCs?
“We believe that we have to bet on both,” Shih said.
There are places for tablets, such as on the couch or in bed, but there are other times when a keyboard is needed. The company has models with plug-in keyboards and slide-out keyboards. But the boundaries between smartphones, laptops and notebooks are blurring, he said.
Netbooks are evolving, too, Shih said, and they, too, will be thinner and more cloud-connected.
9:21 am: “The laptop side also has to respond to this tablet trend,” Shih said.
Shih said Asus is trying other things to make its laptops stand out, such as Bang & Olufsen sound in its Ultrabook.
9:24 am: Moving to Android, Walt asks what is holding things back on the tablet side.
“We still think there is a great opportunity there,” Shih said. He still hopes to sell two million this year, with the Eee Pad Transformer.
“I still believe Android is improving very fast.”
9:26 am: Shih also teases that he has some “top secret” gear in his briefcase that he is going to show in a bit.
9:27 am: What about Ice Cream Sandwich? Will it be on tablets by the end of the year?
“Maybe earlier than that,” Shih said.
9:27 am: It’s briefcase time.
Shih pulls out what looks like a new tablet.
9:28 am: 8.3-milimeter thin 10-inch screen. It’s the next generation of the Transformer with its plug-in keyboard.
9:29 am: It will have Nvidia’s quad-core processor.
9:31 am: USB, mini-HDMI ports.
When will this come out?
Shih said folks will have to wait until the formal announcement on Nov. 9.
“Today is only for a sneak preview,” he said.
“I thought you were giving these away to everyone,” Walt quipped.
9:35 am: The Verge’s Joanna Stern asks about another device Asus has talked about — the Padfone, a combination phone |
, but it’s a shame the test footage has never been released!
The Empire Strikes Back
For a production which followed A New Hope, involving an entire Cantina of bizarre alien creatures, its sequel tried some ‘interesting’ methods to bring Yoda to life. The wizened 900-year-old mentor at the heart of Empire went through a design evolution. Named “ Buffy” in the scripts first draft (by Leigh Brackett) and later “Minch Yoda”, early concept designs imagined a bearded gnome-like figure in a pointed hat.
To realise a plausible Jedi Master, George Lucas deemed early animatronics inadequate. Instead, he opted to try a monkey kitted out with a mask and Yoda’s famous cane. Detailed in JW Rinzler’s The Making of The Empire Strikes Back, the monkey was trained to hold the cane but was more intent on running around and pulling off its mask. After failing a screen-test, a member of the crew, who worked on Kubrick’s 2001 ape scenes, said “the monkey’s just going to pull off the mask over and over again. It’s never going to work.”
This prompted Lucas and director Irvin Kershner to re-think, opting for a blend of animatronics and puppetry created by Stuart Freeborn. The eventual puppet was given a face partially based on Freeborn himself, but to add a sense of innate intelligence Yoda was given the eye shape of Einstein. The character of Yoda wouldn’t also be complete without the work Franz Oz, puppeteer and voice of the famous Jedi master.
Gremlins
Creature and make-up effects supremo Chris Walas wrote his first reaction to Gremlins by scrawling the word “HA!” on the front page of the script, explaining in an interview to Empire “I didn’t think it could be done, the technology didn’t exist”. This ambitious story of ghoulish monsters that cause havoc in small town America, originated from a Christopher Columbus script, later known for films such as the Goonies and Mrs Doubtfire his script was quite dark, calling for the Gremlins to remove the mothers head and roll it down the stairs and kill the family dog!
Once the tone was lightened, the question for director Joe Dante was still how to make these small creatures, he told Empire “First we talked about stop-motion. Then realised we’d still be shooting if we did that. And at one point someone, I hope it wasn’t me, suggested we try monkeys in Gremlin suits”. A test was quickly arranged in which a Rhesus monkey was kitted out in a Gremlin headpiece. However, it came to a sticky end, as the monkey proceeded to “careen around the editing room, pooping on everything in terror”.
Chris Walas was sent back to the drawing board, ultimately using animatronic puppets for Gizmo and the maniacal gremlins. As Dante recalled in an interview “We managed to figure out enough ways to cheat so that we could make Gizmo look real. We knew there was no way he was going to walk. So we figured the hero could carry him around in a backpack, and he could stick his head out”. Simple tricks often are the most effective.
Alien 3
Alien 3 is a film synonymous with behind the scenes trouble, a production that famously chewed up and spat out a slew of attached writers and directors before settling with David Fincher. The film planned a different take on the now famous Xenomorph, with alien inheriting some characteristics of its original host. The script called for an alien to have gestated inside an Ox (This was changed to a dog, except in the Assembly cut). Instead of the usual bipedal aliens, Alien 3s Xenomorph would need to walk on all fours.
Fincher wanted to shoot the new-born beast making a quick exit on all fours. Previously the monster had been a man in a suit, but this new challenge left effects artists puzzling about how to achieve the speed and movement required. Someone then had the bright idea of using a dog. A whippet was dressed in a Xenomorph suit at a screen test and shot running away down a corridor. No surprises for guessing that it was a failure, not only would the dog not wear a mask but it moved, well like a dog.
It proved too funny to be taken seriously, replaced instead by a more convincing (but less mobile) rod puppet. The movement of the alien was replaced by employing a point of view shot of it running away, meaning no need to create any effect at all.
It’s too easy to look back at some of these stories and laugh, now that CGI has given filmmakers limitless possibilities to create practically anything. This doesn’t give the creature effects artists their due, throughout the time before CGI they continued to conjure remarkable creatures through pioneering animatronics, ingenious puppetry and simple in camera trickery. It’s no wonder then, that part of the evolution of these effects was that any idea was trialled, even if it involved an animal. We can be glad these screen tests failed, now only for the amazing effects we ended up with but for the welfare of the animals as well.Trading Monero is not that dissimilar to trading let’s say Bitcoin. The field of cryptocurrencies is developing rapidly and different cryptos and tokens are popping up left, right and centre. Thanks to ICO sales as well, it may seem difficult to keep track of what is what anymore. If you are mining Monero, you will need to find a way of turning it into profits. You can of course just use Monero if that works for you, but at this point, it is still not that widely accepted.
Monero, however, has been around for a while now and is increasing in popularity very fast. The price of Monero has gone up over 500% from the start of 2017. As trading is mainly affected by the psychology of the traders, the more the price rises, the higher demand it creates. This then turns into a feedback loop, pushing the price up even more.
What is Monero?
Before we get into the trading, let’s quickly go over what Monero is and what it is all about.
Monero (XMR) is an open-source cryptocurrency that is privacy-oriented. Its core idea was to solve a problem that Bitcoin deliberately did not. Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous which means that even though your name is not linked to the transactions, all of your movements on the blockchain can be traced.
Monero is based on the CryptoNote protocol, hence it is not a derivative of Bitcoin. Similarly to Bitcoin, CryptoNote currencies use a public address that consists of pseudorandom numbers and letters that are derived from user’s public keys. Addresses serve as users’ public ID. However, unlike Bitcoin, CryptoNote transactions hide the connection between the sender’s and the receiver’s addresses using ring signatures.
What is the point of this and why is true anonymity at the core of Monero?
One of the two core team members of Monero that has decided to reveal his identity explained this pretty well at one of his talks in Coinfest 2015, Tallinn. He explained that nowadays it is not safe to reveal how much money you have. Yes, Bitcoin is great and has brought a new sense of transparency to the world. However, if you don’t know exactly what you are doing, it is very easy for a tech-savvy person to trace on the blockchain how much money you have sent and where.
If for example, you have at some point sent money in Bitcoin to your neighbour and you’ve done it from the same address that you regularly use to receive and send funds, he can very easily work out how much money you may have on your wallet. Not trying to say that using Bitcoin is as sinister as that, but this is his reasoning behind it and yes, it does kind of make sense.
It is still transparent in the sense that no coin can be sent twice causing the double spend problem. But on the other hand, you can be sure that your transactions are private.
How to Trade Monero
Just like most other cryptocurrencies, Monero is very volatile. It has seen a huge jump in price this year — just over 500%. One tactic is to hold some amount long term, assuming that the price will go up even further. If we compare the rise in the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum to Monero, one would assume that there is still room for the price to grow a lot further.
The other tactic is to day trade on the short-term price movements. This would need a bit more insight into trading. As cryptocurrencies are still in their infancy, they do not act quite as predictably as let’s say ForEx. You can still look at the price movements and predict where it may go next.
Some of the tactics are:
Support and resistance levels
As prices tend to move in waves according to where traders have set their buy and sell orders, it almost always seems to appear to move in a price corridor. What does this mean? Price tends to bounce back from the same levels until it breaks through. The “floor” is called support and the “ceiling” resistance. Once the price breaks through either of these levels, it is assumed that the price will continue to rise or drop even more depending on which way it is going.
Support and resistance is a commonly used tactic by new and also more experienced traders. Why is this? Because collectively people act in a rather predictable way. If the price is heading up and has broken the previous level of resistance, we assume that it will go up more. This will make people buy more and it acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Same happens when the price drops below the level of support.
How do I know where these support and resistance levels are? There are no “set levels” for these. But you can visually determine them this way — find a level where the price has bounced back 3x or more. You can see this more clearly when zooming out a longer time period on price charts.
Arbitrage
This is another way of making profits trading cryptocurrencies. This means not exactly getting profits from the price changing but reaping profits from price differences on different exchanges. If you find a few places where the prices differ, you can then keep buying from an exchange that has a lower price and selling on the one where it is higher. For example, you could turn Monero into Bitcoin and then make your profits go even further by selling Bitcoin at a markup on a Bitcoin marketplace.
To conclude
There are multiple ways how to make money with cryptocurrencies like Monero. If you have a miner, it is a good idea to connect to a mining pool to get higher rewards on your computational power. Once you are getting a constant supply of Monero mined, you can then choose what tactic you would like to go with. Go long and wait for the prices to go up exponentially, day trade to create more Monero out of the amount you had initially or just sell for immediate profits at market price.
Hope you liked these tips on trading. Let us know what you think in the comments.
Disclaimer: Any type of trading is risky and may result in losing some or all of your funds. This is not investment advice.
View the original article here: Medium.comI write this so that, years down the road, I can remember my exact state of mind when making this choice that had a bearing on how I choose to lead my life. It’s arguably the most monumental decision I’ve had to make in my brief 19 years of existence. This is a raw, honest, reflective account that is ultimately personal. I don’t intend to extol or belittle, but to interrogate and ask questions. It’s important not to accept easy answers.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
What is a life worth living?
The question haunted me in the empty dining room. My table was a realm of spilling notes, mockingly optimistic highlighters, and the ticking tension of dwindling hours. But this revision orbit was like a vacuum in time — it balanced on the pinpoint of desire for straight As but easily took over my life; yet, it was peripheral to all achievements and sufferings of mankind. My stress levels had overshot the mark and I was suddenly aware of how laughably trivial this entire endeavor was.
Exam revision was at once obsessive yet alienating.
I was having a crisis, in the twilight weeks of September 2016, right before my Preliminary Exams.
I had questioned myself on what I wanted to do with my life at many junctures. But the answer I had gripped tightly in my hand for years now paled in the face of an expanding abyss of disillusionment.
I want to give back to my country by joining the civil service.
My mind clamored for some sort of meaning behind that. Something, anything that could put all the opportunities and insights my education has given me, this having of knowledge, all the ceaseless striving to wield it, and this grueling pre-‘A Levels’ period in perspective. It rang hollow.
***
YES
To be very honest, my dreams have taken strange turns and detours and roundabouts.
I wanted to be a writer for years, before deciding to be a lawyer when I was 11.
Sometime in my secondary school years, before I knew it, my dreams had shifted in one direction — to be a civil servant, specifically, a foreign service officer. In retrospect, it was so widely endorsed by everyone who heard that I never bothered to think too hard about it.
I had a lot of other dreams that ebbed and flowed over the years. To excavate the stories of obscured histories and marginalized peoples, to question assumptions and drive action with cultural understanding, to be a cartographer of the heart… These dreams were nebulous, without the reassuring sturdiness of an occupationally safe and established aspiration.
The society feeds us words through which we filter our beliefs and experiences. Cloaked in those other dreams, I had felt insecure and adrift. Saying the two words “civil servant” offered a resounding sense of certainty, backed by societal endorsement and centuries of veneration for entering the government that is rooted in the Asian psyche. The nugget of truth in the age-old adage handed down to my young mind was powerful — Confucius had said, “A good scholar becomes an official（学而优则仕）.” How could he be wrong?
***
MAYBE
I received a thick package in the mail on a warm February morning this year.
Thank you for applying for a PSC scholarship and for considering a career in the Singapore Public Service. I’m pleased to inform you that the PSC has decided to offer you a scholarship. Congratulations!
A yes was lingering at the brink of my mind.
I thought about what will probably be a sufficiently fulfilling career in the Public Service, playing a part in protecting, building and advancing the potential of this magical country that has given me so much. I thought about what everyone, most of all my parents, expected me to be. I thought about my hefty college tuition fees that the scholarship would cover and the calculated comfort of a firm 6-year job offer.
I thought and thought and thought.
***
NO
It is dangerous to avoid difficult questions or even answerless ones.
What is a life worth living? Right now, I say this: a life worth living is a well-examined one. That means to interrogate and to interpret my motivations behind every choice and what I truly want from life. To ask, self-aware, why this, but not that? To seek to not lose sight of what gives me meaning.
I had thought very carefully about the prospect of a 6-year bond in the Public Service, or what might even turn into decades there. My thoughts had unwittingly crept towards the whimsical idea of writing a novel in my free time, in anticipation of one day when I would finally have the money or the opportunity to delve wholeheartedly into creating creative content.
Why this winding, circuitous path filled with digressions towards my keenest dream?
Let me admit this: I was cowardly. I wanted to leave as many doors opened as possible — to have the financial security of a formulaic career while dabbling in the unpredictable. I did not want to break free from the habitual momentum of being on a smooth-sailing path that will lead me to conventionally defined success. Call me risk-averse or afraid of failure. All these labels were spot-on.
It was very telling by the direction of my thoughts that I sought to postpone my dreams of writing and that I saw a public service career as a safety net that might enable my dream, not as a true calling.
After all these reflections, my true ambition did not grow more apparent to me. But being painfully honest with myself revealed to me that right now it for sure was not the public service.
On 28 April 2017, I replied to the secretariat. I decided not to take up the PSC scholarship.
***
There is nothing wrong with the first part of this sentence:
I want to give back to my country
It is most admirable and also what I aspire to do. The logical extension of this is to then ask: How can I create the most value for the society?
In an ever-changing world, there exists a limitless array of callings for each of us.
But, why is it that most of us, by a certain age, begin to subconsciously gravitate towards one rote path? Why is the widespread mentality that we can only give back to the country if we are in the civil service?
I do deeply admire those working in the civil service who find it their true calling in life. But I wonder how many have lost sight of their true ambitions, trapped by their yearnings for what is financially secure and what society deems prestigious. And I do also ponder about those, bound to the words they signed on a page at 19, who feel their dreams slowly die in the claustrophobia of bureaucracy and who, in their thirties, settle with resignation and listen to their souls heave a sigh at the opportunities that they are too tired to fight for. What we do inevitably alters the fabric of who we are — we are the sum total of our choices; every choice to postpone a dream might just mean that you drift further apart from it.
Interestingly, one argument that won my parents over was the fact that Singaporeans are the only ones who are confronted by an abundance of safe, prestigious options. It’s not like every other 18 or 19-year-old in the world doesn’t face immense uncertainty in life. The existence of lucrative government scholarships in Singapore has fostered a unique situation: many Singaporean youths are fearful of taking a less trodden path. An unprecedented number of top students choose to be civil servants when they could have become entrepreneurs, artists, mathematicians, scientists, writers, innovators, public intellectuals in civil society and whatnot.
Nowhere else in the world do other youths our age have such an option of immense security. So, how can Singaporean youths be less risk-averse when the opportunity cost of risk-taking is so big?
I admit that uncertainty is daunting, but it is the inescapable truth of life. We all constantly face the looming void of blank, unwritten next chapters.
But uncertainty also means freedom. Freedom to not have your life figured out at the age of 19, freedom to explore every dimension of you, freedom to mold your sense of purpose with the pressing challenges of our era, freedom to experiment with failure and learn how to not fear it, freedom to shape the trajectory of life with all the new possibilities that you could not have known of at 19.
Freedom to combine what you love to do with giving back to society.
Freedom to see the world as a young idealistic mind, to stand independent, grow informed, and to have both the wisdom and the ability to choose. Come back to join the public service after you’ve seen more of the world, understood more of yourself and know that it is your calling.
Value this freedom. It’s quite underrated in our society. Many things in life are far more important than a sense of security. Value the promise of uncertainty over the comforts of the predetermined.
Such is life: I don’t know what’s next, when it ends, or what it means. So I choose to tread the path that leads directly to my yet unarticulated dream — I will likely stumble, pick myself up once, twice, again and again, but I keep in heart a powerful reminder: the shortest distance between me and my dream is reliably a straight line, not a constantly deviating path. So, I embrace the autonomy I now have, and boldly, foolishly move forward with faith.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. The Road Not Taken by Robert FrostNorman Finkelstein and I have argued in emails about awful stuff Hamas did or didn’t do during the ’08-09 war. I say they used human shields, Finkelstein says there’s no evidence of this in the human-rights reports. Though yes, he says, the reports show that they carried out revenge killings of collaborators.
Last week Finkelstein and I had a meal with a third friend and Finkelstein told some stories about his mother and father in the Warsaw Ghetto. I’d known that his parents were concentration camp survivors, I didn’t know they were in the Warsaw Ghetto. I said, How do you feel when I say that Gaza reminds me of what I learned about the Warsaw Ghetto as a boy?
Finkelstein said, I don’t really have a problem with it. My mother never said, "Do not compare." She always told about her experience not to keep it hers, but to embrace others with her suffering. She didn’t see it as the unique property of the Jews.
That said, Finkelstein went on, I don’t know that you have to compare Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. It is its own situation, and its own horror. Why not talk about each thing in its own right?
We asked how Finkelstein had learned about his parents’ experience, and he said it was when he was 8 and 9. The Holocaust was being explored in popular works, and his mother brought them home in the stack of books she got every week from the library in Brooklyn. Leon Uris’s Mila-18, John Hersey’s The Wall.
Finkelstein looked up from the books to his prim mother, not believing she had been in such a place.
He related some of the shocking stories. People dug catacombs to hide in with their bare hands. No one had implements. There were bodies littering the streets, and no one had anything to eat. Anyone who had a gun used it. The Jewish police were the worst collaborators. Some brought the Nazis to their own parents. When the head of the Jewish police was killed by the Jewish resistance, a sign was put next to him: “He lived like a dog, he died like a dog.”
It is for this reason, Finkelstein said, that when I hear stories about desperate or vicious behavior in Gaza, I am loath to judge the resistance.
And he gave me a look.
[I would urge all readers to read the first chapter of Finkelstein’s own memoir, Haunted House]On Wednesday, January 20, in a federal courthouse in San Francisco, plaintiffs in the Perry vs. Schwarzenegger trial challenging the legality of California’s Proposition 8 introduced two documents (over strenuous objections from the defense) indicating close but cautious coordination between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Yes on 8 campaign.
The documents, according to plaintiffs’ witness Gary Segura, a professor of political science at Stanford University, indicated a desire on the part of the Church to create “plausible deniability or respectable distance between the church organization per se and the actual campaign.”
Segura’s words soon rippled across the gay blogosphere, as trial watchers from The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan to Julia Rosen of the California-based Courage Campaign latched onto the phrase “plausible deniability” as an “explosive” indictment of the Mormon Church’s allegedly behind-the-scenes relationship to the Proposition 8 campaign.
But to Mormons in California (both those who supported the Yes on 8 campaign and those who opposed it), the relationship between the church and the Proposition 8 campaign has always been undeniable.
Mormons Account for 75% of Donations
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has stated in its official news releases that it acted as part of a “coalition” of faith groups supporting Proposition 8, which amended the California State Consitution to eliminate civil marriage rights for gays and lesbians.
Says Laura Compton, spokesperson for Mormonsformarriage.com: “I’ve always said that it’s a coalition and the Mormons are Goliath.”
Documents compiled by Mormon supporters of same-sex marriage—including campaign time lines and donor profiles—show that LDS Church ecclesiastical structures, resources, and relationships were fully mobilized to generate the majority of volunteers and donations for the Yes on 8 campaign, even as Church members were coached to handle their Mormonism carefully in campaign contributions and activities.
There was nothing plausibly deniable about the Church’s relationship to the Proposition 8 campaign when, in Sunday meetings on June 29, 2008, a letter from Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Thomas Monson was read over the pulpit of every Mormon congregation in California urging Church members to “do all you can” to support the ballot measure.
Early donations from Mormons were solicited in July, when letters read in Sunday meetings of men’s and women’s church auxiliaries conveyed a $10 million fundraising goal for July and August and instructed Church members to donate exclusively to protectmarriage.com. Donors were asked to identify their home congregation on donation forms, according to campaign observers, so that Mormon congregations could track their progress towards meeting fundraising targets set for each congregation based on their ability to pay as assessed from records of church offerings.
The Church-coordinated fundraising drive intensified in late August, when select LDS Church members identified as potential large donors were invited to participate in conference calls with members of the Quorum of the Seventy, a high-ranking Church leadership body. (Mormon Yes on 8 campaign observers believe that tithing records were used to identify call participants.) On the conference calls, high-ranking church leaders encouraged potential large donors to individually contribute $25,000 to protectmarriage.com.
That’s when Nadine Hansen, a Mormon veteran of the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment, initiated an effort to document the extent of Mormon funding for the Yes on 8 campaign. During the ERA campaign, Mormon feminist Sonia Johnson had shared with Hansen fundraising disclosure sheets from an anti-ERA group that had raised money in California. Using church directories, Hansen was then able to identify “all but one or two” of the ERA donors as Mormon. Sensing that the Church was pressing ERA-era strategies into service once again, she prepared to undertake the same donor-identification project for Proposition 8 at the Web site mormonsfor8.com.
In early September, a surge of $25,000 donations began to appear in campaign finance records compiled by the California Secretary of State. Hansen and a crew of Mormon supporters of same-sex marriage began to comb large donor records to identify Mormon Church members. By Election Day, mormonsfor8.com volunteers had successfully identified more than 50% of the large donors as members of the LDS Church. “And we know that we did not identify all of the Mormon donors,” Hansen relates. “You can see that in some places virtually all the money that came in came from Mormons. It’s a safe bet to say that Mormons contributed over half the money. It might be as high as 75%.”
Don’t Dress Like a Missionary
Mobilizing highly centralized and hierarchical ecclesiastical structures, Mormons also contributed as much as 80-90% of the volunteer labor for the campaign.
Implementation of a statewide grassroots volunteer structure began in late July, with volunteers coordinated through geographically-organized Mormon ecclesiastical units called “wards” and “stakes.” Church members received “callings,” or ecclesiastical assignments understood by orthodox church members to be divinely inspired, from their local church leaders to serve as regional (or “stake”-level) directors and zip code (or “ward”-level) supervisors for grassroots campaigning. One LDS zipcode supervisor reported that the Mormon Church was “the only member of the Protect Marriage coalition” to participate in the Yes on 8 ground campaign.
On August 16, the Yes on 8 ground-campaign began its voter-identification phase, with a reported 15,000–30,000 Mormon precinct walkers knocking doors each weekend in August to identify “yes,” “soft yes,” “undecided,” “soft no,” and “no” voters and to commit “yes” voters to display “Yes on 8” lawn signs. The door-to-door voter identification campaign continued through September.
Mormon volunteers were coached to avoid disclosing their ties to the LDS Church. “When we went to our training meetings, they said, don’t bring up the fact that you’re Mormon. Don’t wear white shirts and ties; don’t look like missionaries. When you go out [canvassing], bring a non-member friend. When you’re calling people, don’t say I’m a Mormon,” says Laura Compton.
On October 8, LDS Church members in California attended a special meeting broadcast from Salt Lake City by satellite to wards and stakes throughout California and to BYU students with California ties. Encouraging Church members to think of the satellite broadcast as though they were “sitting in [a] living room having a confidential talk,” high-ranking LDS Church officials, members of the Quorum of the Twelve and the Quorum of the Seventy, introduced Church members to the final voter persuasion and get-out-the-vote “phases” of the campaign, asking members to use social networking technology to “go viral” with their support for Proposition 8 and commit four hours each week to the ground and phone campaign.
A primary source of Mormon messaging during the Proposition 8 campaign was the anonymously-authored “Six Consequences if Prop 8 Fails” document, which went viral across Mormon social networks after its introduction by email in mid-August and was utilized as a training document and handout in the Mormon-coordinated ground campaign. The document alleged that the legalization of same-sex marriage would eventuate in the teaching of same-sex marriage in public schools and the elimination of religious freedoms. Mormon legal scholar Morris Thurston described this as “untrue” and “misleading” and urged the LDS Church to discontinue its further dissemination.
Even as some Mormons urged the LDS Church to dissociate itself from questionable tactics of the Yes on 8 campaign, the profound connection between the Church and the campaign was obvious to insiders. As Laura Compton of mormonsformarriage.com relates, “Anybody who was part of the process knew exactly where they were getting their marching orders from.”
Highly centralized and hierarchical LDS institutional structures, widespread experience with door-to-door proselytizing, disciplined messaging among former missionaries, and extensive social networks that facilitated viral messaging, combined with a religious and cultural tradition that assigns enormous value to obedience to church authorities, service, discipline, and sacrifice to create a potent political force that was no secret to those within the culture.
According to Laura Compton, the LDS Church provided the “backbone of leadership, flesh of volunteers, blood of money” for the Yes on 8 campaign. “When there’s a natural disaster, Mormons are among the first to mobilize with resources and volunteers, and they get a lot done very fast. This time they applied their talents to what they perceived to be a political disaster. They’re good at mobilizing and they work hard.”
Still, Compton and other Mormon observers of the Proposition 8 campaign continue to wonder why the Church has been reticent to acknowledge the extent of its influence.
“They did not want to be outed,” Hansen relates. “And yet they were with ones with all the organizational skills. And whether its because [the Church] is concerned about tax-exempt status or they want to avoid bad publicity… they want to do it and not have anyone know they do it at the same time.”
One cultural factor contributing to this apparent two-mindedness is the continuing insularity of Mormon culture. Mormon studies scholars suggest that Mormons living outside of Utah (like other minorities) have developed a “divided sense of self” and a related tendency to adopt a self-monitored or “coded” form of speech with outsiders.
Hansen recalls this same insider-outsider mentality from the political struggle over the Equal Rights Amendment, recalling that a man from her Mormon ward “called me, upset because I had written this letter to the editor… ‘You’re making the Church look bad,’ he said. But I said, ‘I’m not making the Church look bad. I’m telling what the Church is doing. If it looks bad, it’s because it is bad.’”Electric vehicles promise to free us from our dependence on gasoline, but there’s a catch: most models can’t travel as far as their internal-combustion counterparts without recharging. As a result, whenever widespread adoption of electrics comes up, the conversation almost always turns to “range anxiety.”
New research suggests the concern is overblown. By analyzing people’s driving habits across the country, Jessika Trancik at MIT and colleagues found that currently available electric cars could replace 87 percent of the personal vehicles on the road and still get us where we need to go (and back again). Assuming battery technology improves in line with government estimates, by 2020 up to 98 percent of vehicles could be replaced.
You don’t have to pony up for a Tesla, either. In their analysis, the team used performance metrics for the Nissan Leaf, which starts around $29,000. According to the researchers, the Leaf’s range averages 74 miles per charge, which includes a buffer of 10 percent of charge left in the battery, though that depends on things like whether you often drive in heavy traffic and how hard you tend to lean on the accelerator.
The researchers’ model used self-reported data on how Americans travel, taken from the 2009 National Household Travel Survey. They paired that with GPS data from car trips around the country, as well as fuel economy data, and air temperature readings. The model assumed that people only recharged their cars overnight.
Replacing 87 percent of vehicles with Nissan Leafs would, predictably, have a huge impact on fuel consumption. The researchers say it would slash our national gas-guzzling habit by 61 percent and have a dramatic impact on carbon emissions. If batteries improve in line with expectations laid out by the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E agency, those numbers would increase to 98 percent replacement, which would account for 88 percent of our gasoline consumption.
Perhaps most interesting is the high potential for replacement across a wide variation in climate, urban planning, and population. Sprawling Houston, for example, has the potential for 88 percent replacement, compared with 87 percent in New York City. Even in rural settings, the model indicates that 81 percent of vehicles could be replaced.
The researchers are currently working on getting the model into the hands of consumers to help them make more informed decisions about whether an electric car can meet their needs, either overall or on a particular day of driving.
“It’s taking the approach of empowering people with information, which often today they don’t have,” Trancik says. “These changes can happen from the ground. And I think the area of personal transportation is just so exciting for that reason, because private citizens can really make a difference today.”
Getting electric cars widely adopted still presents challenges. The biggest is dealing with the remaining 13 percent of cars making trips that are too long for today’s electric vehicles. People need to have a convenient alternative on their “high-energy days,” Trancik says, or they will never purchase an electric vehicle. Sharing of gas-powered vehicles is one potential solution, and down the road, quick-charging stations or battery swapping may become more realistic options.
Installing overnight charging stations at home can also be logistically difficult. Robert Green, a computer scientist at Bowling Green State University who studies electric cars and power system reliability, points out that we must consider how the charging demands of more electric cars will affect the power grid. He considers the newer, more complex data set used by the model to be the study’s biggest contribution. “Better data gives you a more accurate picture of what life with electric vehicles looks like,” he says.
“Every time I see a paper like this, the major takeaway is Hey, you don’t actually to be scared about these—the math works out,” he says. “But there is that issue when you are driving long-haul or vacation or whatever it happens to be.”We're still selling this classic Adafruit case for those who specifically want it but we suggest checking out our brand new case, easier to use, and much more durable as well. All for a lower price, check it out!
Keep your Raspberry Pi® computer safe and sound in this lovely clear acrylic enclosure. We designed this case to be beautiful, easy to assemble and perfect for any use (but especially for those who want to tinker!) This enclosure is not compatible with the Raspberry Pi Model B+ nor the Pi 2!
The case comes as 6 pieces that snap together, made of crystal-clear acrylic. This ingenious design has no screws or standoffs and there are cute little feet cut into the sides so that it stands up above your desk. There are engraved labels on all the connector slots. You can use all of the connectors on the edges of the Pi: HDMI, Audio, Video, SD slot, micro USB power, Ethernet and the two USB ports. We also added a slot so that you can connect a 26-pin IDC cable to the GPIO breakout pins on the Pi and pass it though the case. For more advanced hacking, the enclosure is designed so that you can remove the top piece and plug any sort of cables you wish into the breakouts in the middle. The case is airy enough that no additional vents or cooling is required - we tested the enclosed Pi over a 24 hour period at full load with no significant increase in temperature.
Be sure to check out more of our awesome Raspberry Pi accessories including:
This product comes with the 6 acrylic pieces. Raspberry Pi computer is not included. No other cables or connectors or accessories are included.
Click here for assembly instructions
Note: The Raspberry Pi does not have mounting holes, so this case has a small amount of wiggle room to accommodate the Pi and to account for small variations in plastic thickness.
What is the Raspberry Pi®? A low-cost ARM GNU/Linux box.
The Raspberry Pi® is a single-board computer developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intention of stimulating the teaching of basic computer science in schools. The design is based on a Broadcom BCM2835 system on a chip (SoC), which includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz processor, VideoCore IV GPU, and 256 megabytes of RAM. The design does not include a built-in hard disk or solid-state drive, instead relying on an SD card for booting and long-term storage. The Foundation plans to support Fedora Linux as the initial |
entered the fray, publishing a series of articles highly critical of the Prime Minsiter, drawing attention to everything from his recycling habits to his use of tax payer funds to pay for pistachio ice cream.
"Many observers characterized the elections as a contest between Israel Hayom and its owner, Sheldon Adelson, on the one hand, and Yedioth Ahronoth and its owner, Arnon Mozes, on the other," said the report.
The report also noted that "after national elections in March, Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to serve as communications minister himself, giving him control over the regulation of various segments of the market."
Israel Hayom was not the only Israeli publication to be singled out in the Freedom House report. The Ynet news site, sister to the Yedioth Ahronoth, is using an increasing amount "unmarked advertising and branded content," said the report.
Furthermore, "some private outlets are highly partisan in their news coverage, and broadcast stations have regularly faced instances of political pressure in recent years," said the report.
The report also addressed Israeli media as a whole, and difficulties imposed on news outlets and journalists. It says that while "press freedom is generally respected" in Israel, "due to ongoing conflicts with Palestinian groups and neighboring countries, media outlets are subject to military censorship and gag orders, and journalists often face travel restrictions."
Another subject of concern, according to the report, is the "financial viability of private print and broadcast outlets," as "economic pressures have undermined the sustainability of key outlets in recent years, threatening long-term media pluralism."
In the overall freedom of the press global ranking, Israel placed 65th out of 199 countries and territories, but placed first when evaluating countries solely in the Middle East and North Africa. In the report Norway was declared the country with the freest press and North Korea placed last. The West Bank and Gaza placed 179th on the list.Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
A report has criticised police over their response after an escaped prisoner who previously killed a gay man was found drinking in a gay bar earlier this year.
Phillip Westwater, dubbed the “Black Dog Strangler”, was arrested at a gay bar in Newcastle in January, having spent 12 hours on the run.
Westwater, who also used the alias Philip Whiteman, was detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act in 1989 following a pub fight in which he left a gay drinker paralysed after slashing him across the throat.
He then strangled gay patient Derek Williams at Ashworth Hospital, Liverpool, with his dressing gown cord after becoming convinced that his victim had turned him into a dog.
Northumbria’s Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Vera Baird said in a report police were “lulled away from recognising Westwater’s status as an escapee” as they often received reports of voluntary patients going missing.
It was three hours before his status was changed to “unlawfully at large”, but even then no risk assessment was done and no photograph was released until about 10 hours after he had fled.
The report said: “It is of note that he, the killer of one gay man and who had slashed another’s throat in licensed premises, was found drinking in company, in a renowned gay bar.
“It seems likely that had the police not been lulled away from recognising Westwater’s status as an escapee, a timely risk assessment would have led to circulation of fuller information including a photograph and perhaps to his earlier recapture.”
In a statement Northumbria Police admitted it had failed to fully protect the public.
It said: “The safety nets that are in place to ensure that such a risk to the public is identified and managed with the right level of response did not work.
“Every aspect of this response has been examined in detail.
“Our action plan absolutely addresses each and every one of the points raised in both our internal review and the subsequent Police and Crime Commissioner’s report.
“We will continue to work with our partners to deliver this.”Read it and weep optimists. A month ago the "green shoots" narrative was everywhere. Those "green shoots" have been eaten by the panda, and squashed flat by speculators in resources. It is time for Congress to wake up, and smell the depression. The only post-war downturns comparable to this one in severity are the 1948-49 recession, which was thought of as "mild" because it was compared at the time to the Great Depression, the 1937 Recession, and the Demobilization Recession.
It is useful to compare the present downturn with the 1948 recession because there are parallels in the numbers, both here and abroad. First, both were driven by money drying up: personal consumption rose in the 1948 recession; what dried up was private investment and inventories: they fell by 14.7% and 12.6% in 1949 respectively, but then bounced back by 21% and 13.7%. That’s what a crisis of confidence looks like. The 1948-49 recession was a test of what was then called "The New Economy:" driven by consumer demand, automatic stabilization, internal combustion engines, and a population spreading out through the country. The present downturn is the failure of that economy, now 60 years old, in the face of changing circumstances.
But in 1949, investment was internal; foreign capital was not driving the US economy anymore. In 2009, foreign capital is our life blood. This is why protecting the financial players, the banks and insurance companies, dominates all else in Congress and the current administration. The major argument among serious people is how, exactly, to keep the large pools of money flowing. The 1949 recession was, essentially, the coming of age of an era of consumer demand, which the 2000’s killed by stressing it beyond its means.
The problem now is an effect which has been in place since 2004. Everyone knows that any recovery led by US consumer spending, or Chinese infrastructure spending, goes through a few places, such as oil. Money is now parked in those places: credit, resources, and oil. Prices are higher and so bid-up, that a single rogue trader can spike the price of a benchmark grade of crude. The internal control of investment and the deep pool of pent-up demand that kicked the "Free World" out of the post-war funk is now reversed. Demand is sated, or over-supplied, and the money is not coming from inside, but outside, of the developed world’s economic structure.
The "global imbalances" are not between exporting and importing countries; but between countries that spread their demand through the society, and those who keep it tightly locked in the top. As the United States has borrowed more and more money from such countries, it has become more and more like them economically. Bad money drives out good money, and bad markets drive out good markets.
The pressures this creates, in, for example, Iran, are building up. It is not possible for China, Saudi Arabia, and other under-developed nations to withhold the fruits of global growth from their populations forever. At the same time, it is not possible for the US to consume more than it produces forever. The question has been how to manage this transition. And, as yet, there is not the political courage to accept the answers.
Consider one of the key changes: carbon dioxide emissions, and the decarbonization of the global economy. The US is putting forward a cap and trade scheme which is really protectionism in drag: the permits are being given away, and yet the US is hoping to impose a carbon tariff. While in theory, this is not against the WTO’s rules; in practice the carbonizing nation of China, is going to object. Tariffs have an attraction because they are unilaterally enforceable, they protect domestic industry, and they raise revenue without directly taxing individuals. They also allow the US to export carbon creating capital and goods without fear of a general tax on carbon, as the Keynes-Pigou-Tobin route would take, and without taxing flows of capital, which are part of the financial play. In short, they fall on production, not on finance; and they can be imposed, rather than negotiated. The problem, of course, is that WTO’s environmental exception is hard to hit, and China can fight the tariffs, or impose its own, anytime it desires to do so.
Until this kind of logjam, where what needs to be done cannot be done because of the pre-eminence of keeping the financial system above and outside of the law, is broken, the present economic stop and start will continue: long hiring depressions, followed by larger and larger downturns, that return back to full employment more and more slowly. This is because oil, the driver of the old "New Economy," is getting ever scarcer; and global warming is creating ever larger and more measurable effects. Sheep getting smaller on a remote Scottish island are going to be the least of our worries soon.
The "You Are Here" sign should tell people that we can’t afford the next downturn to be larger than this one. But unless political will develops, that is exactly where we are headed.SANAA (Reuters) - Yemeni Shi’ite Muslim Houthi fighters backed by government forces drove the local wing of al Qaeda from one of its last strongholds in central Yemen on Friday in intense fighting that killed at least 35 people, tribal sources said.
The Houthis’ Ansarullah movement has become the main political force in Western-allied Yemen since capturing Sanaa in September and then pushing south and west into the Sunni Muslim heartland of al-Bayda province, where Ansar al-Sharia has allied itself with local tribes.
Yemen has been in turmoil since 2011, to the dismay of neighboring Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, and of the Western powers who want to prevent instability in the Arabian peninsula threatening their crude supplies or giving al Qaeda a base for overseas attacks.
Tribal sources said the Houthis had met stiff resistance as they pushed towards the village of Khobza district using Katuysha rockets and heavy artillery.
They said at least 25 Houthis and 10 Ansar al-Sharia and tribal fighters had died in the fighting, which began on Thursday afternoon. Ansar al-Sharia and its allies withdrew to Yakla district, on the border with Maarib province.
The fighting has given Yemen’s strife a sectarian slant as Sunni tribes have lined up with Ansar al-Sharia, the local affiliate of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which views Shi’ites such as the Houthis as heretics.
On Thursday, the Houthis, who had for years complained of discrimination against their northern homeland, endorsed a new government in Sanaa to replace the one they had forced to step down.
Last month, an al Qaeda suicide bomber killed at least 47 people, mostly members of the Houthi group, as they prepared to stage a rally in Sanaa.Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Glen Johnson admits he’s considering a number of offers from abroad as the Liverpool full-back prepares to leave Anfield this summer.
The 30-year-old defender is out of contract at the end of the season and he’s confirmed that there have been no fresh talks over an extension.
Johnson, who has been linked with a move to Serie A outfit Roma, is able to sign a pre-contract agreement with a foreign club and he says discussions have already taken place.
Asked about his contract situation at Liverpool, Johnson said: “There’s no update. There have been no talks.
“At this point I have no idea (where I will be next season). I haven’t thought about it.
“I’ve got two months left here and we will see what happens after that. I’m just going to keep my head down and keep training.”
On the possibility of moving overseas, Johnson added: “I do like the idea of going abroad.
“There have been talks. I’m still young and it would be great for the kids. But I’m not thinking about that at the moment, We will have to wait and see.”
Boss Brendan Rodgers said back in January that he wanted Johnson to stay but the situation is complicated by his status as one of the club’s highest earners and his dwindling role at Anfield.
Johnson earns around £120,000 per week and he rejected the Reds’ offer of a short extension on reduced terms towards the end of last season.
Over the course of the current campaign it has become increasingly clear that the former Chelsea full-back’s Reds career is coming to an end.
Johnson, who cost Liverpool £18million from Portsmouth in 2009, has scored nine goals in 192 appearances for the club. He has been hampered by injuries this term and since regaining fitness he has found himself down the pecking order.
Sunday’s FA Cup stalemate with Blackburn Rovers was his first start since the fourth round tie with Bolton back in January.Myntra and Snapdeal, two of the country’s most popular online marketplaces, fell foul of members of the Christian community on Friday who felt slighted by the “insensitive” promotional material put out by the companies.
In a week filled with public holidays including Holi, Good Friday and Easter, e-commerce sites have tried to capitalise on the four-day weekend by luring shoppers with heavy discounts. As part of this campaign, both Snapdeal and Myntra have been sending out promotional alerts on email and their app through the week. On Friday, Snapdeal sent out an email to customers promoting offers with a subject line that read, "It’s a really really good Friday|Flat 40% Off". Myntra's app alert on Friday proclaimed: "We know it's a really Good Friday when you get 50%-80% off."
The content of the promotions did not go down well with members of the Christian community, as despite its name, Good Friday is not a day of celebration. Instead, it is the day on which Christians commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. It is a day of fasting and penance for the community. It is in this context that some Christians felt that the advertisements put out by Snapdeal and Myntra were in bad taste.
"I was appalled when I got the app notification from Myntra," said Fernando Monte Da Silva, a journalist from Panjim in Goa. "I was shocked at the ignorance and insensitivity on display."
Silva said the prefix "Good" often misleads people into thinking it is a day for celebration. There are several theories surrounding the etymology of Good Friday, one of them being that the day is "good" because Christ showed his love for mankind by dying for their sins.
However, Silva said this confusion could not be used an excuse in the case.
"I had a professor who wished me for Good Friday, but that is an honest mistake," said Silva. "In a company as big as Myntra, I would assume that there would be levels of scrutiny before such content is put out. Ignorance is one thing, but when you're using it as a promo to generate revenue, that's just taking it a tad too far."
Silva shared a screenshot of the alert on his Facebook page and triggered a debate over whether sheer ignorance was at play or whether the content writers had pushed the boundaries of creativity.
The email and notification were also criticised by others on social media.
Hey @Myntra, just got a msg on my phone about a Good Friday sale. Did no one tell you that Good Friday is a day of mourning and sadness? — lara rebello (@lararebel) March 25, 2016
A spokesperson for Myntra said they had modified the promotion immediately after being notified that it could be construed as insensitive. A fresh notification was sent out that read "Long Weekend Sale".
For its part, Snapdeal said it regretted the tag line used in its email. "It is an error on our part," said a spokesperson for the company. "We extend our sincere apologies to all whose feelings we may have hurt inadvertently. We will work to ensure that something like this never happens again."
Meanwhile, the confusion over Good Friday was not limited to the e-commerce sites alone: Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shahnawaz Hussain committed a similar faux pas. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi was properly briefed on the significance on the day, his party colleague seemed to be in the dark and was promptly corrected by his followers.
Good Friday is a day of prayer & a day to remember the noble, pious & compassionate thoughts of Jesus Christ, that touched many lives. — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 25, 2016
Warm Greetings on #GoodFriday to all of you! — Shahnawaz Hussain (@ShahnawazBJP) March 25, 2016
@ShahnawazBJP Shahnawaz bhai, Muharram ke din Eid Mubarak? — V P Lobo (@vplobot3) March 25, 2016BOSTON (CBS) – A new vaccine is giving hope to patients with one of the most dangerous cancers.
“I’m so lucky. I feel very lucky.”
It’s hard to believe how Margaret Kruse, a mother of four, could possibly feel lucky when last fall doctors gave her the diagnosis of brain cancer, glioblastoma. It’s aggressive and usually fatal within months.
“The prognosis is not good,’ says Mike Farkas, Margaret’s fiancé. “So we were looking for some hope, and the vaccine is that hope.”
That vaccine is why Margaret feels so lucky. She is 1 of 15 people currently enrolled in phase two of a clinical trial testing whether the medication can eliminate her cancer.
“I think this is the most promising of the leads that we’ve had over the years,” says Dr. Robert Fenstermaker, a neurosurgeon at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
The vaccine called SurVaxM is considered a “next generation” treatment for brain cancer, designed to stimulate a patient’s own immune system to essentially hunt down tumor cells and kill them.
“We wanted to target a protein that was important to brain tumor cells and cancer cells so we looked for one that was over expressed, which means it’s a flag on a tumor cell. It’s like, ‘Hey here I am. Come target me,’” explains Michael Ciesielski, PhD, a researcher at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
So far, one patient has survived 4 years and scientists are cautiously optimistic.
“I think that this is something that has given me much more hope than anything I’ve worked on in the past,” says Dr. Fenstermaker.
“It would be one of the greatest feelings ever to actually see something that we’ve created in the lab to treat a patient. Give them a greater quality of life and some hope,” says Ciesielski.
And that’s what they have given Margaret–hope on behalf of all of those with glioblastoma.
“They can learn from my experience, you know, and hopefully help other people,” says Margaret.
The trial will take a few more years to complete before doctors know whether SurVaxM is, in fact, better than current treatment options.‘Outstanding’, ‘amazing’, and ‘work of art’ are all labels liberally applied to the exotic race bikes built by John Britten, but in reality the Britten deserves a unique accolade to celebrate its existence. In many peoples’ minds it’s simply the greatest bike ever made.
For me it transcends everything, it’s a dream bike, it was the poster bike I had on my bedroom wall when I was growing up. Ever since I first saw pictures of it in the early 1990s, I’ve been fascinated by this hand-built race bike.
Unbelievably it was produced by a small team in the South Island of New Zealand using just one man’s creative genius. That man was John Britten, and he took on the massively well-funded factory teams - and won. It was an unthinkable achievement in the early ’90s.
If you’ve never heard of the Britten, and you’re a motorcyclist, you should be made to run around the field in your pants, like when you forgot your kit at school. This is one of the greatest bike stories ever, Hollywood couldn’t even script this true tale.
A blank sheet
I’m not going to dwell on the astounding technical innovations of achievements, you could easily write a book about the Britten, nor will I try to get too emotionally involved.
John Britten was a bike racer, but also a gifted engineer, designer, and a bit of a maverick.
He designed and built his own house from mainly recycled material as he couldn’t find what he was looking for.
He raced successfully in NZ, but was always experimenting with chassis design and engines in the late ’80s, you could never describe him as an ‘off-the-shelf’ racer.
ohn’s dilemma was that he knew what he wanted - but nobody produced the bike, or parts, he wanted.
He didn’t want a big four-cylinder bike and he didn’t want a Harley hewn from granite.
So he stuck two fingers up to the establishment, and decided to produce his own bike from scratch.
Can you imagine that happening today? Just one man and a few gifted friends getting together in a garage on the relatively remote South Island of NZ, building a unique bike, and then turning up at international meetings such as Daytona, America and the Isle of Man TT with a bike which didn’t share any components with any other bike.
There was no ready-made donor engine, everything was bespoke, and pushed the boundaries of conventional race bike engineering.
Then, not only does the bike run and handle, but - almost unbelievably - it’s competitive, too. It was contesting for race wins against full factory bikes.
Weighing in at around 145kg, it was considerably lighter than the competition at the time from the big factory teams.
It lead at Daytona on its first outing, but only a few laps from the end the rectifier gave up. Ironically it was one of the only parts John didn’t design himself.
The V1000 also recorded the fastest speed at the Isle of Man on its debut in 1993, at 165mph.
Only nine Britten V1000s exist world-wide, and most are museum pieces. Or as Kevin Grant, the proud owner of this Britten, put it: “All the others are cock teasers, this one is this one that actually runs and you can ride.”
It’s a shockingly unconventional beast – more than just a triumph of existing technology, Britten applied his incredible engineering knowledge to creating something boasting a myriad bespoke solutions to problems the factory teams thought they’d already solved.
The front fork, and rear shock are entirely unconventional, as is the underseat cooling, and the unique 1000cc V-Twin engine.
Everything from the casing to the pistons was designed and made by Britten - even the fuel injection system was entirely bespoke, and this was when fuel injection was virtually unheard of on a bike.
They were even making and programming their own homemade ECUs back in the early ’90s!
Just think about that for a moment, designing and building your own engine at home. John and the team had to work out the sizes of the valves, cam timings, pistons sizes, crank rotation, cooling, oil flow etc, all those calculations had to be done with pure engineering nous, and a lot of sketches.
Then he had to work out how to build it, producing his own casings in his garage, making a crank, working out the strengths of the components. It’s unimaginable what the team achieved.
In total they had to design and make around 6000 different parts. It takes me three hours to put up a shelf, how the hell did he do it? It’s unthinkable.
Pushing the boundaries
The freethinking innovation didn’t stop at the engine, either. The chassis design was all John’s idea or should I say the lack of it, as the engine is the chassis, just like Ducati’s new Panigale and GP bike. But this was twenty years ago. The front suspension bolts to the front of the motor, the swingarm to the rear.
There’s no conventional front fork; but a solid piece of carbon fibre handmade by John, connected to the motor via a series of linkages with a single Ohlins multi adjustable shock. Everything is easily adjustable, and you only need an Allen key to alter the rake and trail.
The rear shock is also at the front, near the front wheel, well away from any heat from the engine or exhaust, and is connected by a rod to the rear carbon fibre swingarm under the bike.
The bodywork was all clay moulded by John and the team, then formed in carbon fibre. This was when carbon fibre was common in F1 only, it was all new and exciting. Even the wheels are carbon fibre, made and designed by John’s team.
It wasn’t just a breath-taking demonstration of one mans’ thinking, it worked well. Back in NZ the Britten took national titles, then led at Daytona followed by a World BEARS (British European American Racing Series) Title in 1995, just three weeks before Britten tragically passed away.
First sight
My love affair with the Britten started at the Isle of Man TT back in 1994 listening to my older brother and father, both engineers, discussing the Britten until the early hours. They were mesmerised by it, as everyone was. It was almost alien, using technology and design solutions unheard of at the time.
And now my dream has come true. I’ve travelled to the other side of the world, Manfield NZ, to actually ride the Britten. This makes me one of a very select group of individuals, and has taken nearly a year of organising, begging and pleading. This is my moment.
Kevin Grant, the owner, is a real character. He shakes my hand firmly and proudly, and prked next to his early ’90s race truck, under a makeshift awning, is the Britten in all its glory. My heart is trying to break out of my chest. “You’re a lucky bugger you know boy, there’s a list as long as my arm of people who want to ride the Britten” says Kevin.
We instantly click, and talk about the old days of racing and TT stories. He has a huge collection of bikes, some priceless, and has travelled the world to build his collection, but he’s a down to earth guy, and it’s a pleasure to be in his company. “Right me boy make yourself look smart, and I’ll fire up my baby for yer,” he says.
As I struggle into my race leathers in the scorching NZ heat, the excitement is really building. It started when I got off the plane two days ago, and now my heartbeat is racing, and I’m about to ride the Britten.
The pressure is huge, not least because it’s worth around a million NZ dollars! I walk over to the Britten and am greeted by Kevin saying “Bloody hell, you’ve got some fancy leathers, almost looks like yer know what yer doing!” He seems remarkably relaxed considering he’s about to let an unknown Yorkshireman ride his pride and joy.
The remote engine starter slowly starts to turn the huge rear Pirelli slick, there is a slight misfire, and then she barks into life, puffing out a small cloud of blue smoke. What a bark. Stand behind the Britten and the pulse of air from the twin pipes nearly blows you over.
Sweat is pouring down my back as I stand patiently next to the angry Britten. Kevin gives me the nod, and I take the throttle and blip the twist grip, gently bringing the old racer up to temperature. It’s like Kevin has passed me the Holy Grail, I’m honoured just to stand here warming this legendary race bike.
The big v-Twin doesn’t run a fly wheel so the revs rise and fall dramatically, tiny movements of the throttle getting the rev counter dancing around with alarming ease.
The rev counter only starts at 3,000rpm and I’ve been warned that it’ll stall below that.
Time to ride
I gently lever my leg over the tall tail unit, making sure I don’t scratch it, and ease myself into position.
The aggressive throttle is making the rev counter dance quicker than most modern bikes, the heat from under-seat radiator combined with the exhaust routing is slowly cooking my left testicle, but I don’t mind - I’ll sacrifice a ball to ride the Britten.
We get the nod that the track is clear and it’s time to head out onto the historic Manfield circuit.
The pit wall and garages are full of envious NZ racers who’ve taken an early lunch from race practice to allow me to ride the Britten. I’ve got the circuit to myself. I’m so nervous. Crashing the Britten in front of a few hundred dedicated fans would be a fate worse than death.
I pull in the heavy clutch, snick first on the smooth race-pattern shift, build the revs to 5-6000 - please don’t stall - and we’re away. Pit lane is a burble of noise as the twin exiting exhausts growl away beneath me, the sound waves bouncing back from the garages as I pass.
I slowly leave pit lane into turn one, which is relatively slow and first gear, slipping the clutch slightly to help it cope with the pedestrian pace.
I give it a dab of throttle on the exit, and there’s instant response from the big V-Twin, sharp and snatchy, it wants to run. I’m up to third gear on the little straight, short-shifting as I get acclimatised to this alien creation.
I slowly negotiate a tight series of corners in second gear and up to the first left hand hairpin opposite the paddock, which leads onto a long straight.
I know the straight is coming up, I know the race Pirelli slicks are up to temperature, and having travelled half way around the world for this moment, I tuck in and give it some.
I sit the Britten upright on the exit, feel the rear Pirelli dig in and wind on the vicious power. The front goes light as the power kicks in, she’s less than 150kg wet and with a short wheelbase (the same as an Aprilia RSV4, and shorter than a Ducati Panigale) she wants to perform for the admiring crowd.
Tap third and the front goes light again, grab fourth and still the old girl is pulling strong, I even just managed to grab fifth and I’m not flat out, no way near.
Then it’s time to jump on the Brembo stoppers, dance back through the ‘box and into second gear - and it’s a strange feeling. There’s around 5mm of dive, but that’s it, as the Brembo stoppers take hold of the 320mm front discs.
Considering the age of the bike the stoppers are really impressive, but what’s more impressive is the feel even with the lack of dive. That feel means you can squeeze the brake lever harder, making the rear go light just as the slipper clutch takes over.
It turns in with incredible ease, the large bodywork allowing you to hang off the inside of the bike, knee just brushing the warm Tarmac. On the back straight it’s once again time to feel the power and let her loose as the exhaust noise echoes around the track.
Onboard you can also hear the lovely induction noise from the huge carbon fibre bellmouths, too. This is heaven, simply heaven.
Out of the final turn you’re automatically thrown wide towards the pit wall, which is lined with race fans craning to see the Britten in full flow, which is a rare sight even in its native country. I sit her up on the fat part of the Pirelli and dial in the power once more, letting her drift wide.
I skim along the pit wall as I throw in gear after gear, knowing I’ve got those amazing stoppers to rely on at the end of the straight. As the speed increased so did my confidence in the Britten.
It hates to run slowly, doesn’t like the revs to drop below 4,000 and is a little vicious off the bottom end, but it’s not a commuter, this is a thoroughbred race bike.
Being in the sweet spot of the power curve is a formidable place, the bike laughing at my feeble speeds, I’m almost embarrassed as I’m getting nowhere near the historic race bike’s potential, but I have to remind myself of its value - financial and historical.
All too soon the chequered flag comes out, and my time is over. Only on the cool down lap do I notice the heat from the hand crafted exhaust (which took 60hours to make) and the radiator running under the seat. As I slowly make my way up pit lane towards Kevin, he greets me with a smile.
The mechanics take the Britten from me and he reaches over and wipes the petrol tank near my crutch, “You haven’t made a mess have you boy, I told you she wasn’t a cock tease, you can ride this one. You did a few more laps than you said you would too, you cheeky little git!”
My hands are shaking, my leathers are soaked in sweat, and I’m beat physically and emotionally. But I could have died right there and then and been the happiest man on the planet.
What might have been
It’s a real tragedy that John Britten passed away in 1995, aged just 45. What bikes would we be riding now if his creative genius could have continued?
As I said at the start it’s a Hollywood story, one man and his team creating the ultimate V-Twin race bike in their own garage, taking on the factory teams and winning, while these Herculean successes were marred by the sad loss of Mark Farmer at the TT, and then the loss of John Britten a year later as he succumbed to cancer.
I feel so very privileged to have ridden the Britten, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and dreamed about for the last twenty years. The bike is a huge piece of biking history. I’ve been professionally testing bikes for over ten years now, ridden MotoGP bikes old and new, winning WSB and BSB bikes and other racing icons, but for me, riding the Britten on its home soil is ‘the one’.
Now when people ask what’s the best bike I’ve ever ridden, I can answer without hesitation – it’s the Britten.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah - Authorities have identified the suspect who is accused of making a bomb threat at an Eagle Mountain elementary school Monday afternoon.
Christopher Craig, 35, of Eagle Mountain, was arrested after a standoff with several law enforcement agencies at Eagle Valley Elementary, according to a press release from Utah County Sheriff’s Office.
At 2:13 p.m., dispatchers with Utah Valley Dispatch received a call from a man who said he was at the school.
Kimberly Bird, assistant to the Superintendent of Alpine School District, said a man walked into the school wearing a mask and told an employee to “Evacuate the kids and no one will get hurt.”
After the threat was made, the release states, school staff locked the doors and activated school lockdown and evacuation procedures.
There were 250 children in the building at the time and they were taken to two separate locations in the community. Early track students had already gone home for the day. The kids were reunited parents just after 5:30 p.m.
Craig told dispatchers the trunk of his car had explosives in it and he was going to open it and arm them, the release states.
“He told dispatchers officers should keep their distance from the school. He later told negotiators that he had a message he wanted to give them,” the release states.
During the course of the negotiations, the release states, Craig wanted to share his message and after he was allowed to do so, he would walk away from his car and let officers arrest him.
After talking with negotiators, Craig did walk away from his car and was taken into custody peacefully.
The Utah Valley Metro Bomb Squad searched Craig’s car and found no explosives. Authorities obtained a search warrant for his residence and found no weapons or explosives in Craig’s home, the release states.
Craig had no weapons or explosives on his person.
Craig was taken to the Utah County Jail where he was booked on charges of threat of terrorism, a second-degree felony; interference with arresting officer, a class B misdemeanor; failure to disclose identity, a class B misdemeanor; disrupting operation of school, a class B misdemeanor; and disorderly conduct, a class C misdemeanor.
Craig is known to have mental health related issues but authorities did not know if he was currently receiving treatment.
Craig is a former UTEP basketball player.
Mountain Valley will resume its normal schedule Tuesday. However, the district says there will be law enforcement at the school as well as district personnel and counselors.
If parents aren’t comfortable sending their kids back to school, their absence is excused.About this site
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a striking increase in the amount of pet food China exports to the United States. That volume increased from barely 1 million pounds in 2003 to an estimated 86 million pounds by 2011, according to the FDA.
Pet treats, including the jerky treats at the heart of the current investigation, have made up a fast-growing sliver of the pet food market. Part of the reason many U.S. companies have looked to China to produce chicken jerky treats, industry officials say, is that unlike in America, people in China overwhelmingly prefer dark meat. That leaves a larger supply of the white meat used in pet treats available for exporting.
Given the continuing problems, the FDA’s efforts simply aren’t good enough, say some pet owners.
“It’s maddening that it has gone on this long,” said Susan Thixton, who runs the Web site TruthAboutPetFood.com, which has repeatedly demanded that the agency do more. “If this were humans dying, and they couldn’t figure out a cause for seven years, members of Congress would be screaming at them.”
The home page of her site displays a clock tracking how long jerky treats from China have been killing and sickening pets. It asks: “When will FDA make this clock stop?” As of Friday, the count stood at 2,643 days.
“My job is to point out that they aren’t doing their job,” Thixton said. “I have a lot of respect for what they have to accomplish. They have huge responsibilities, but this is one of them.”
Angry pet owners also have heaped criticism on U.S. companies that continue to manufacture jerky treats with ingredients from China. The backlash includes everything from skepticism over the industry’s assurances that the treats have never posed health risks to lawsuits alleging harm.
Early last year, two industry giants, Nestlé Purina and Del Monte, voluntarily pulled several popular chicken jerky treats made in China off the market after New York state agriculture officials found trace amounts of antibiotics.
The brands included Nestlé Purina’s Waggin’ Train and Canyon Creek Ranch jerky treats as well as Milo’s Kitchen treats produced by Del Monte’s pet food division (now known as Big Heart Pet Brands).
The companies insisted that the treats had never been unsafe for pets and that the withdrawals were precautionary.
Complaints related to jerky treats dropped sharply in the months that followed. But the FDA agreed with company officials that the reduction probably reflected the smaller number of products on store shelves rather than any problems involving the antibiotics.
A spokeswoman for Big Heart Pet Brands said that this month, the company is introducing reformulated Milo’s Kitchen treats, manufactured in the United States with domestically sourced ingredients.
After revamping its manufacturing process and overhauling its supply chain, Nestlé Purina also has relaunched several kinds of Waggin’ Train treats, including two varieties that are made in the United States. The company still produces its Chicken Jerky Tenders in China but now gets its chicken there from a single U.S.-owned supplier, which oversees the process “from egg all the way through to treat,” said Bill Cooper, Nestlé Purina’s vice president of manufacturing, who declined to name the supplier. He said the company now routinely tests for 40 types of antibiotics and detailed its new quality controls in meetings with FDA officials.
“We have added to the strict protocols we already had in place,” Cooper said, noting that the company received very few complaints even before last year’s voluntary withdrawals. “We certainly believe that we have the highest level of quality.”
Nina Leigh Krueger, head of the Waggin’ Train brand, said most retailers and customers have welcomed the treats back. “Thousands of consumers have been calling and asking us for Waggin’ Train treats to be back on the market,” she said.
Terry Safranek is not one of them.
“It’s a kick in the gut to see them back on the shelf,” said Safranek, whose 9-year-old fox terrier, Sampson, who had eaten jerky treats, died of kidney failure in 2012. Since then, Safranek has become a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against Nestlé Purina and retailers including Target and Wal-Mart. She helped create Animal Parents Against Pet Treats and Food Made in China, a group that has petitioned the FDA to do better in alerting people about the potential dangers of jerky treats produced in Chinese factories.
For now, on Florida’s west coast, Andy the terrier has returned to normal after months of treatments — about $3,500 worth — to restore his kidney function. “We feel very lucky,” said Gude, who has taken the advice of many vets around the country to steer clear of pet jerky treats altogether. “It could have gone another way.”
At the FDA, a small cadre of investigators, their offices littered with jerky treat packages, continues to chase leads from the latest batch of reports, hoping to finally decipher a mystery seven years in the making.
“They want to solve it more than anything,” said Hartogensis, the FDA official overseeing the effort. “I’m confident we’ll get there. It’s a really complicated issue, but we’ve got a lot of great people working on it. And I think we’re getting closer.”Vancouver is a beautiful port city in a spectacular natural setting between majestic mountains and the Strait of Georgia. The Port of Vancouver is not only Canada’s largest cargo gateway but it also serves as home port for cruise lines operating in the northern Pacific. What is more, British Columbia’s coastal waters are inhabited by countless marine mammal species, such as orcas, fin, blue, grey and humpback whales, dolphins and seals. With its rich marine wildlife the region is a favorite among marine biologists, and every year thousands of nature enthusiasts flock the region during whale-watching season from May to October.
Protecting this precious natural habitat, and in particular those marine mammals designated as “at-risk” under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, is a core objective of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, whose Enhancing Cetacean Habitat and Observation (ECHO) program aims to strike a healthy balance between preserving wildlife and accounting for the needs of tourism and cargo shipping. Lowering underwater noise from ships is one of the measures that can be taken to reduce the impact of shipping on marine mammals in the area. Ship noise can interfere with the ability of marine mammals to navigate, communicate and identify prey.
An innovative incentive program
Shipping-induced underwater noise has been given a lot of attention during the past decade. The International Maritime Organization adopted its MEPC.1/Circ.833 Guidelines for the Reduction of Underwater Noise from Commercial Shipping to Address Adverse Impacts on Marine Life. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration presented an Ocean Noise Strategy Roadmap for addressing ocean noise. The European Union has completed two large projects looking into the effects of underwater noise in European waters, called “Suppression of Underwater Noise Induced by Cavitation” and “Achieve Quieter Oceans by Shipping Noise Footprint Reduction," respectively.
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority has been among the pioneers investigating the impact of shipping noise on at-risk marine mammals. Launched in 2014, the port authority-led ECHO program is a collaborative research initiative involving marine transportation industries, conservation and environmental groups, First Nations individuals, government and scientists. In 2016, the port authority turned to DNV GL for advice on underwater noise criteria to support this program. DNV GL recommended using its SILENT class notation developed by the DNV GL underwater noise expert group. Published in 2010, this notation defines various underwater noise limitation categories, including the SILENT-E class notation specifying “Environmental” criteria. “These limits include sound frequencies marine mammals are known to use for communication or are sensitive to,” says Yanran Wang, Project Engineer – DNV GL Maritime Advisory, Miami. “The DNV GL rules provide a realistic framework for what is technically achievable and feasible.” The DNV GL expert group was able to share key expertise which allowed the port authority’s ECHO program to include “quiet vessel” notations in its underwater noise reduction incentive program.
What makes the ECHO program so innovative is the inclusion of some new underwater noise criteria to the port authority’s existing EcoAction incentive program. Since 2007, EcoAction has recognized a variety of fuel, technology and environmental management options that make ship operators eligible to receive discounted harbor due rates. On 1 January 2017, the port authority added new incentive criteria to the program to include harbor due rate discounts for quieter ships. Depending on the environmental protection measures taken, ships may qualify for one of three EcoAction Award levels, rewarding vessels with up to a 47 per cent reduction in harbor dues. This makes Canada the first country in the world with a marine noise reduction incentive.
“Adding underwater noise reduction criteria to our EcoAction program is an exciting next step towards our long-term goal of reducing the impacts of shipping activities on at-risk whales,” says Duncan Wilson, Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility at the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.
Rewards beyond discounted fees
Ships bearing the DNV GL SILENT-E class notation qualify for the highest EcoAction discount when calling at the Port of Vancouver. When Captain Zissis Koskinas, Associate Vice President in charge of Nautical Operations and Fleet Captain at Celebrity Cruises, learned about the soon-to-be-introduced incentive program last October, he called DNV GL to inquire what needed to be done for a ship to qualify. DNV GL scheduled a measurement campaign within in a few days to evaluate the underwater noise level of the cruise vessel Celebrity Eclipse against the DNV GL SILENT-E notation. The vessel calls at Vancouver on certain routes. Captain Koskinas says he expected having to make some modifications on board but DNV GL, after taking the measurements, found that the vessel was already fully compliant.
“Celebrity Eclipse was the first cruise vessel ever to receive the SILENT-E notation,” says project manager Yanran Wang. “Our experience with this vessel shows that it is not difficult for modern cruise ships to meet the low-noise criteria. In spite of their huge power demand, they are quieter by design than many other commercial ship types, from the propeller to the machinery installation.”
For Celebrity Cruises, the port fee discount is not the only reason to welcome the EcoAction program, says Captain Koskinas. “Passengers are often environmentally aware and ask us what we do to protect the environment. Being able to demonstrate that our cruise ship is kind to marine life makes our brand look good and is consistent with the concept of sustainable tourism. Celebrity Cruises has always had a culture of going beyond regulations in terms of safety and the environment. Signing up for EcoAction makes us a pioneer in whale-friendly cruise shipping.”
DNV GL has already received inquiries from other owners regarding the SILENT-E notation, and Celebrity Eclipse can serve as a reference ship for the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s industry-leading EcoAction incentive program. “When assessing a vessel, DNV GL can accommodate the ship itinerary for necessary measurements. The underwater noise measurements on Eclipse were carried out with passengers on board and without requiring any deviation from the cruise schedule. Drawing on extensive experience in noise and vibration evaluations from the past 60 years, the DNV GL noise experts are also able to give practical advice on underwater noise reduction measures,” explains Wang. Considering the increasing environmental awareness among ports worldwide, DNV GL is confident other ports will follow in Vancouver’s footsteps.
By Rachel Carmichael, Communications Manager, North & South America, DNV GL
The views presented hereabove are only those of the author and not necessarily those of GREEN4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
[divider]
Rachel Carmichael is a senior level communications and marketing leader with the discipline, agility, and teamwork skills needed to deliver effective materials and build cohesive teams. She holds the position of Communication Manager in America at DNV GL, Maritime and Oil& Gas. DNV GL is the world’s leading classification society and a recognized advisor for the maritime industry with the aim to enhance safety, quality, energy efficiency and environmental performance of the global shipping industry – across all vessel types and offshore structures.Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does government. If no one knows what to do, if there is chaos and indecision, then the person with the clearest vision — for good or for ill — wins the argument. That’s the lesson of the Russian Revolution, of Weimar Germany, and, without meaning to overdramatize — we are not talking about events on that scale — that’s also the lesson of Brexit Britain.
Britain is past the surprise of June’s referendum and well into the stage of trying to make Brexit happen. Theresa May, the prime minister, has promised to invoke Article 50, the legal mechanism for leaving the European Union, next March. She won cheers at her party conference by declaring that “Brexit means Brexit.” She does not appear to be deterred by a court decision requiring more parliamentary scrutiny of the process.
But because the European Union is so many things — a trading bloc, a manager of agricultural subsidies, a coordinator of anti-terrorism teams, a funder of culture and scientific research — this statement is farcical. “Brexit means Brexit” — but what does Brexit mean? During the referendum, the “leave” campaigners avoided talking about Britain’s future relationship with Europe (and the rest of the world) because their visions differed so profoundly. Should Britain retain close economic links to the continent, remaining a member of its single market? Should Britain annul all treaties and start again? Are there other options, some organizations in which it would be useful to remain? The situation is further clouded by the fact that the “leave” campaign, like the other populist campaigns this political season, made a series of unfulfillable promises, from the general (“take back control!”) to the specific (350 million pounds a week, a number plucked from the air, for the National Health Service!). None of these can possibly be delivered.
Instead of offering an answer to these questions, the prime minister has created exactly the sort of vacuum that nature and government abhor. Her cabinet members offer different proposals on different days; May herself says she won’t offer a “running commentary,” i.e., no proposals at all. European officials scan the British press for clues; the British press has been reduced to photographing the notebook of a parliamentary assistant in order to figure out May’s goals. (One of them seems to be “have cake and eat it.”)
The result is a classic revolutionary dynamic. In the general chaos, the loudest, clearest and most convincing voices are the most radical: Leave the E.U., leave all of its institutions and just take the hit. Start paying high tariffs, lose the right to sell services in Europe, drop out of those research teams, eliminate all relationships with allies. A small number of anti-European Conservatives — they’ve been preparing this moment for years — are arguing for this form of “hard Brexit.” So is the UK Independence Party and its most powerful media backer, the Daily Mail.
May, like a hapless Kerensky, spends much of her time trying to counter or pander to the minority radicals. At her party conference in October, she threw a bone to the xenophobes by mocking “citizens of the world”; the rest of the time, she gives the impression, in the words of Financial Times columnist David Allen Green, that she is in “an intense negotiation” — not with the E.U., but with her own politicians and press.
Already, the ideas being mooted in the British political debate are much more extreme than anything heard in the referendum campaign, and far from what many people thought they were voting for. But the really dangerous bit comes next. If May makes any compromises at all, the radicals will blame her, not their own folly, for the broken promises. If there’s no extra money for the NHS, if the populist press doesn’t feel “control” has been taken back, if too many immigrants remain — then the fanatics will find scapegoats: anyone deemed insufficiently radical, or inadequately nationalist, or lacking in nerve.
Unless the moderate majority organizes itself into an organized, aggressive and verbal lobby, the angry minority will win this argument. Because this is 2016 and not 1917, I don’t expect an actual civil war to follow. But the damage in lost trade, lost political clout and lost time may be worse than it could have been, and the bitter politics will keep Britain divided and inward-looking for many years.
Read more from Anne Applebaum’s archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.Manufacturers can often pick and choose between power units, so here's a low-down of what they all equate to
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Power units are always the headline figures associated with any new performance car and can provide interesting comparisons between cars across the entire spectrum of automotive production. Power as an entity is a measure of how quickly and how far an engine can force the car forward, with that force being the torque produced from the internal combustion. This is generalised in engineering as the amount of ‘work’ the car has to do to propel itself along and has taken many forms since the early days of internal combustion. Generally divided into three main units used in different areas across the globe, let’s delve into what each unit of measurement means and how they compare to each other.
Kilowatts
1kW = 1.341hp Technically, this form of measurement is the most uniform method of measuring power and is used by every engineer worldwide. Watts are an SI unit (International System) which means they are based around the metre, kilogram, joule and second that make up the metric system. It is a measurement of energy transfer over time, which is the exact job that an internal combustion engine undertakes. Used as a unit for cars mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, Kilowatts can be measured by finding the torque value from the wheels on a rolling road, followed by applying this equation:
Kilowatts are a modern take on car power output and I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes the norm to use this form in Europe, although it may take a lot more to persuade Americans to make the transition. Although considering the rise of the electric car, it would make a whole tonne of sense to start switching, as the capabilities of electric motors are measured using kWh (Kilowatt hours) which dictates how long the electric motors can produce a certain amount of power for.
Horsepower
Created by the master of the steam engine – Mr James Watt – this unit of power has somehow still survived to this day as the staple unit of power measurement of new cars where I’m from. Horsepower was deemed equivalent to a horse moving 33,000 pounds of mass one foot in one minute. Now no one knows how big this horse was or whether it was a particularly healthy horse or not…but let’s just go with it. This new-found unit allowed Watt to show direct comparisons between his steam locomotives and the common horse that dominated the haulage business up until the invention of the steam engine. Horsepower still survives as the main power unit for us petrolheads in the UK and you lot over in the USA, staving off any outside influences from Continental Europe and Australasia. Again, this power unit can be found by a torque translation using a similar equation to that of the Watt:
It may start off as a bit of a mess, but this equation simplifies down to something very similar to that of the Watt equation
Horsepower can become a tricky business however, with values measured in different ways. BHP (brake horsepower) refers to the equipment needed to test the engines for their power outputs, with a large drum with a water brake within it measuring the braking force once the engine is spinning at a desired rate. Over in the US, this is measured with only some ancillary components attached to the powertrain, missing things like the power steering pump which would lead to a lack of parasitic losses if in place. Therefore higher ‘HP’ figures are calculated in the US than the BHP figures calculated in Europe where every component is kept in place. WHP or wheel-horsepower is a greater indicator of the usable power that an engine produces, as this is calculated using the exact torque that has made it through the drivetrain and is driving the wheels.
PS
1PS = 0.986hp PS stands for pferdestärke which translates simply as horsepower, but it has had some metric tweaking to try and bring good old HP forward into the 21st Century. This metric horsepower has been adopted throughout Europe as the new standard for power measurement and will probably make its way fully into the UK psyche in the not too distant future. The official engineering standard for metric horsepower is the amount of power needed to lift a 75kg of mass one metre vertically in one second, which – once the conversions from imperial to metric are applied – equates to a 1.4 per cent higher figure than the old imperial units. Manufacturers will often pick and choose between PS and HP depending on whatever figure seems more rounded and presentable. Although I’ve always just seen PS as ‘horsepower plus a few’. To summarise these three units of power, let’s break down famous cars and their relevant figures to put the new and old units into perspective:
Nissan Skyline GTR R34: 206kW = 276hp = 280PS (advertised)
McLaren 570S: 419kW = 562hp = 570PS
Honda Civic Type-R FK2: 228kW = 306hp = 310PS
Bugatti Chiron: 1,103kW = 1,479hp = 1500PSWashington (CNN) The FBI on Friday formally denied a CNN Freedom of Information Act request to turn over former director James Comey's memos documenting his conversations with President Donald Trump.
The move comes one day after CNN filed a lawsuit asking the agency to release the documents.
Comey described the meetings and his note-taking in detail last week while testifying before the Senate intelligence committee.
Despite high public interest in the content of the memos, Comey's testimony that the records are not classified and a ruling from the Justice Department that the FBI should expedite CNN's FOIA request for the memos, the FBI has not provided either the documents or a reason to withhold them, according to the lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
That constitutes a violation of the federal Freedom of Information Act, the lawsuit alleges. CNN asked the court to require the agency release the documents "unredacted, and without further delay."
Friday, the FBI formally denied the FOIA request for the Comey memos, citing a law enforcement exemption.
What the memos say
Before he was fired, Comey was overseeing the investigation into whether members of Trump's campaign team participated in Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election.
In riveting testimony last week, Comey detailed how prior to the firing, Trump invited and corralled him into a series of private meetings. He said the conversations were uncomfortable enough that he documented them in a series of nine memos initially distributed to only a small circle of FBI colleagues.
The memos, he said, are evidence that Trump urged him to end one strand of the investigation involving Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, pledge loyalty to the President and state publicly that the FBI was not investigating Trump himself.
Comey rejected those requests and the investigation continued. Trump has denied several of Comey's claims, and his lawyer criticized what he called attempts to "undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications."
After details of one memo were made public by The New York Times, Comey told Congress that he was responsible for the disclosure. He said he provided one of the documents to a friend and requested the details be shared with the media.
Comey testified that he hoped the news would "prompt the appointment of a special counsel," which indeed happened several days later.
He said his copies are now in the possession of the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, and his friend said he returned his copy to the FBI.Tony Abbott has conceded it is possible no Indonesian fishing boats will be bought by the Australian government under a scheme he has proposed to tackle people smuggling.
The opposition leader last week announced the coalition would buy fishing boats from Indonesians to stop them falling into the hands of people smugglers.
As part of their border protection policy, the coalition has pledged to spend $20 million on a "community engagement program" in Indonesia, which includes the boat buyback scheme.
The plan has been met with heavy resistance in Jakarta, and some scepticism back home.
Mr Abbott on Sunday defended the scheme, saying it was worth trying to get local villages in Indonesia working with Australia rather than the people smugglers.
But he admitted "it's possible" the government would never actually buy any boats at all.
"We may not buy boats back," he told ABC Television on Sunday.
But the opportunity to pay someone a couple of thousand dollars to stop a boat from being launched when the cost of one arriving in Australia was about $12 million would be "a shrewd investment".
The boat buyback plan was just one plank of the coalition's border protection policy, and would add to flexibility for Australia and Indonesia authorities on the ground, Mr Abbott said.
Federal Labor has rubbished the idea, pointing out Indonesia has three quarters of a million boats, and shipbuilders would make them faster than they could be bought.Sure, you could dress your dog up for Halloween in some pre-fab hot dog costume or a little French maid outfit, but what’s the fun in that? Hilarious as it may be, there’s no hack there. [Becky Stern] will help you out of your pet costume rut with the tutorial for her latest creation, laser dog goggles.
First things first: the laser she uses is fairly benign. You can safely stare it down for just under 30 seconds, so your pet should be okay. [Becky] offers other helpful safety suggestions, like covering the delicate battery pack with fabric to avoid scratching damage, and waiting until the adhesives are completely dry before outfitting Rover. But hey, if your dog isn’t into eye wear, don’t force it.
These are based on Doggles brand dog goggles and the Adafruit Trinket. The laser is mounted on a micro servo so that it pivots back and forth, allowing your dog to scan the ground like RoboCop or Terminator. As you might expect, [Becky]’s tutorial includes a comprehensive list of tools and great documentation. Check out her video overview after the break.Pretty much every poll says that tonight Donald Trump is headed toward the greatest, most high-profile failure in a life overflowing with them. His own demeanor has turned apocalyptic; on 4chan, his most virulent supporters are turning, slowly, to see the frog in the mirror.
And now, to add insult to injury, someone has taken a shit on his website. Or placed a shit, more like: As Wired reports, a “stored cross-site scripting” vulnerability allowed one enterprising user to do to Trump’s site what so many of us have only dreamed.
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Trump’s team later fixed this vulnerability, but not before users discovered a second exploit, wherein any text entered at the end of a URL would then appear as a banner on the page. While Trump’s team eventually got around to fixing this bug as well, for a brief moment the universe was alive with possibility.
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It’s a little surprising that there hasn’t been more of this. Bloomberg’s recent report from inside Trump’s death cult unveiled that most of Trump’s web presence was the work of one self-trained programmer—a house of cards, essentially, which we are now watching crumble. And get shit upon.
[via Slate]Image caption Eight fire stations in total sent crews to the Apollo Theatre after part of the ceiling collapsed
Three fire stations which sent crews to attend the Apollo Theatre after part of the ceiling collapsed are set to be axed in the new year.
Crews from Knightsbridge, Southwark and Westminster stations, set for closure, attended the Shaftesbury Avenue incident which left 76 people injured.
The Fire Brigades Union said: "If the cuts go ahead, the mayor will end up with blood on his hands."
Previously, London mayor Boris Johnson said the service must be modernised.
London Fire Brigade said it was confident it could react to any emergency situation with the resources in place after the cuts.
Fire Brigades Union London secretary Paul Embery said three of the eight fire stations that sent crews to the incident were set to close on 9 January.
Image caption Pictures from inside showed the scale of the damage to the theatre
He added: "The Apollo Theatre collapse demonstrates how dependent the safety of Londoners is on the stations that Boris Johnson intends to close.
"These cuts are reckless, wrong and will jeopardise the safety of millions of Londoners. It will only be a matter of time before someone dies as a result of a fire engine failing to reach them in time."
It will only be a matter of time before someone dies as a result of a fire engine failing to reach them in time Paul Embery, Fire Brigades Union
On Friday, seven London councils lost their High Court battle over Mr Johnson's proposal to shut 10 fire stations in the capital.
More than 500 firefighters' jobs will be lost under the plans, which have been approved by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA).
'Isolated incident'
Tower Hamlets, Camden, Greenwich, Hackney, Islington, Lewisham and Southwark councils were appealing against the cuts, which are expected to save £28.8m.
The Apollo Theatre was packed with 720 people when the ceiling partially collapsed on Thursday evening. Seven of those hurt were said to have serious injuries.
Westminster City Council said the building was safe for its investigators to go in to but it would have to conclude its investigation before it could say whether it was safe to reopen.
Nicola Aiken, the council's cabinet member for community protection, said the theatre's health and safety checks were "up to date".
"Each historic theatre is unique and we have no reason to believe this is other than an isolated incident," she said.
"We have confirmed with the Society of London Theatre that all theatres' safety checks are up to date; however, as a precaution, all historic theatres are carrying out further safety checks."
A spokesman for Mr Johnson said: ''Thursday night's incident at the Apollo Theatre proved that London's firefighters are the best in the world with incomparable response times.
"However, we need to continue to modernise the service, so that it is fully equipped for the challenges of 21st Century firefighting.
"The recent court ruling recognised the robustness of LFEPA's plans which will deliver a balanced budget while keeping London safe."UK employees might need to stay in employment till their 70 due to a lack of qualified staff
Impending limits to the number of immigrants allowed into the UK means firms are being urged to change their attitudes to older workers.
Furthermore, a lack of school and college leavers compared to the number of positions needing to be filled will compound the problem for businesses.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Pensions Minister Steve Webb said: "Over time there will be a whole set of jobs where employers need experienced older workers.
"A firm that doesn't change its attitude to older workers will be left behind."
According to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), employers will need to fill 13.5 million vacancies over the next 10 years.
However, only 7m young people will leave school and college in that period dealing human resources departments a talent shortfall.
Steve Webb said businesses need to change their attitude otherwise risk being 'left behind'
A firm that doesn't change its attitude to older workers will be left behind Pensions Minister Steve WebbSupermarket chain FairPrice has filed a police report over online rumours that its house brand jasmine fragrant rice is made of plastic.
Addressing a post on social media that contained the fake claim, FairPrice said its rice has passed safety checks by the authorities.
"We would like to advise the public not to further circulate this false information which may cause unnecessary public alarm," said its corporate communications director Jonas Kor.
The chain will put up notices at stores about the rumour which has been circulating via text and on social media since Tuesday.
Several alarmed customers had gone to FairPrice stores to demand refunds yesterday.
FairPrice has been selling its house brand jasmine rice, sourced from Vietnam, since 2008.
Those who suspect that the rice they bought is fake may approach the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA) to verify its authenticity.
The authority regularly inspects and samples imported rice to ensure it complies with Singapore's food safety standards and requirements. The sampling includes testing for mycotoxins, pesticide residues and heavy metals.
The AVA in December said it had not detected fake rice in Singapore.
This is not the first time FairPrice has been a target of false news.
In 2015, a fake social media post asked users to share a link on their Facebook page in order to claim a $100 FairPrice coupon.
In 2007, FairPrice lodged a police report after it found a picture of "halal pork", allegedly sold by its stores, circulating on the Internet.
The image, which resurfaced online in 2014, is fake.During the “Meet The Experts” webinar, AMD’s board partners revealed new motherboards designed to support Ryzen processors.
AMD Partners Show Off New Ryzen Motherboards – Full AM4 Lineups Being Prepped For Summit Ridge, Bristol Ridge and Raven Ridge Processors
During the webinar, AMD partners revealed some interesting features of their upcoming AM4 motherboard lineups. ASUS, MSI and GIGABYTE went in full detail to reveal key features and technologies of their AM4 boards. A range of new features would allow great experience and compatibility with a wide array of I/O devices. Details shared by the partners are listed below.
Related AMD Radeon RX 590 and Radeon RX 580 Graphics Card Reportedly Receiving Price Cuts – New Prices To Be $199 and $229, Starting in Few Weeks
ASUS AM4 Motherboards
ASUS went ahead to show two new motherboards from their AM4 lineup. These include the ROG Crosshair VI Hero and the X370 Prime. Both motherboards are aimed at enthusiasts and overclockers. The new ROG board is the latest addition to the ROG Crosshair family which hasn’t seen much action since the Bulldozer days. The new board makes sure to offer the best overclocking support for Ryzen processors.
ASUS ROG Crosshair VI Hero Motherboard
In terms of features, the board boasts a monochromatic color scheme. The PCB is fitted with a ROG exclusive design and quality VRM components. Power to the AM4 socket is provided by an 8+4 power configuration. We can see a beefy 12 phase Digi+ PWM design. Large heatsinks and the I/O cover can be seen on this board. In terms of storage, the motherboard comes with 8 SATA 6 Gb/s ports and a single M.2 slot.
Expansion slots on the motherboard include three PCIe 3.0 x16 and three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots.The motherboard comes with a high-end on-board audio layout equipped with ESS SABRE DAC and OPAMP. There’s also USB 3.1 front panel connection and 802.11 AC Wi-Fi connectivity. The motherboard is fully featured for overclockers.
ASUS Prime X370 – PRO Motherboard
The other board detailed by ASUS is the Prime X370-PRO. Both motherboards are not that visually distinct from their Z270 counterparts which is a good thing. It means that partners are maintaining the feature set and overall quality for both vendors. The ASUS X370 Prime-Pro features a white and monochromatic color scheme that comes with a fully lit RGB AURA display. The AM4 socket is powered by a single 8-Pin connector. Board PWM is made of a 10+2 phase design. Large aluminum heatsinks are featured over the VRMs for ample cooling during overclocking.
Related AMD Drops The Price Bomb on Radeon RX Vega 56 Graphics Card, Now Available For $279 US To Tackle NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
In terms of features, the motherboard has eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Expansion slots include three PCIe 3.0 x16 and three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. There’s also a single M.2 slot rated to operate at PCIe x4 speeds. There’s a single USB 3.1 front panel connector. Audio includes a high-end S1220A codec which comes with an isolated design.
ASUS AM4 Motherboard Features
I’ll simply skim through the feature set of these boards by saying that they are on par with their Z270 counterparts. So all the fancy RGB Lightning and USB 3.1 connections are in place. AMD will finally have a platform that can be directly compared against their counterparts. You can find details of these features in the slides below:
AORUS AM4 Motherboards
AORUS is the new subdivision of GIGABYTE who are responsible for producing gaming branded motherboards. The new brand will have at least six new motherboards, most of which were captured at CES 2017. You can find a couple of boards along with their features mentioned in the slides below.
AORUS AM4 Motherboards Features
MSI AM4 Motherboards
Finally, we have the MSI motherboards which will be great for AM4 builders as well. MSI has promised at least three new gaming series segments which will comprise of X370, B350 and A320 chipset based designs. These will include Enthusiast Gaming, Performance Gaming and Arsenal Gaming series. On the Pro side, AMD will also have a few AM4 motherboards which will be detailed prior to launch.
MSI AM4 Motherboards Features
We will have more details on the AM4 platform along with Ryzen processors in the upcoming weeks so stay tuned. For more AM4 motherboards, you can visit our article here.By Radar Staff
In a revealing interview with Ladies Home Journal conducted just before she was replaced by Savannah Guthrie as TODAY co-anchor, Ann Curry vents about how she irked decision-makers at NBC because she wasn’t their style — literally.
Curry said Peacock Network officials didn’t like that she had grey hair, thought her wardrobe was frumpy and wanted her to wear “ridiculously high heels” during her time as an anchor with the TODAY show.
Curry said when she wore clogs and flats into the studio, it didn’t “go over very well with my bosses,” and in one instance, she was compared to breakfast cereal mascot Toucan Sam when wearing a colorful dress on the air.
PHOTOS: Stars Who Look Like Other Stars
As for the greying, Curry, 55, said, “I’ve got gray hair because I won’t dye it: I want to be about to honor my family by looking exactly as they did as they got older … I think showing some grey is authentic … true beauty is a face you have lived in.
“Of course I want to look my best: I eat right, exercise and use skin cream. I try to wear nice clothes. But I don’t want to change the fundamental parts of me, |
.
In a March 24 blog post, Netflix spokeswoman Anne Marie Squeo said that speed was the “default bitrate for viewing over mobile networks,” and that Netflix slows mobile video traffic to help consumers avoid going over their monthly data caps, which could result in hefty additional fees. The company declined to comment aside from the blog post.
ISPs could receive a hefty fine under the net neutrality rules for similar practices, but Netflix faces no such danger, at least not for the throttling itself. The net neutrality rules only apply to ISPs and those who control access to the Internet, not to companies that operate over it, like Netflix or Google Inc.
Netflix’s practice does, however, add a new wrinkle to the debate over how, who and when federal authorities should regulate in the Internet ecosystem.
Netflix—whose traffic alone accounts for 37 percent of wireline Internet use in North America in 2015, according to Sandvine, an Internet traffic management firm—was one of the lead proponents of stricter regulations for ISPs under Title II of the Communications Act, including a bright-line prohibition on throttling online traffic by broadband providers, due to what Title II advocates said is ISPs’ unique gatekeeper status for Internet access.
Some ISPs and Title II opponents have countered that the practices banned by the FCC could be beneficial to consumers, a fact some were quick to point out in response to the Wall Street Journal report.
“Netflix fought hard during the open Internet proceeding to ensure that broadband providers could not engage in this same behavior that would benefit the same customers in the same way,” said Doug Brake, a telecom policy analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington think tank.
“Most content providers already build adaptive bitrate algorithms into their streaming service, allowing the video to adjust its resolution to the network conditions. Adapting streams with a hard cap on data rates for resource-constrained mobile networks is not much different,” Brake said.
Even some of the groups criticizing Netflix for the hypocrisy of the policy advocacy said the company’s mobile video throttling wasn’t inherently wrong. They did, however, question the company for not disclosing the practice to its subscribers.
And the lack of disclosure, rather than the throttling itself, could be what gets the video Netflix in trouble with the feds— namely, the Federal Trade Commission.Usually, the corporate shuffling of WWE's senior management isn't very newsworthy for wrestling fans, as one unknown executive gets replaced with another one. Today, is a rare exception to that rule as WWE announced the election of Laureen Ong to their Board of Directors, a senior television executive that has successfully launched new cable channels and ran established stations too. Here's the relevant portion of WWE's press release on the matter:
"WWE (NYSE: WWE) today announced that television executive Laureen Ong has been elected to its Board of Directors. Ong is a 30-year veteran of the cable industry with extensive experience in sales, marketing, programming and management.
Most recently, Ong spent three years as President of the Travel Channel, where she was responsible for building brand strategy, developing programming and creating new business opportunities for the network. Prior to the Travel Channel, Ong was Chief Operating Officer of Hong Kong-based STAR Group Limited, where she oversaw STAR’s media and entertainment operations spanning 55 countries.
Ong was also responsible for launching the National Geographic Channel. As the network’s Founding President, Ong oversaw National Geographic’s distribution, which reached 60 million households in just six years and included several shows that became ratings successes. Ong also oversaw National Geographic’s expansion into online, video-on-demand, and other new media platforms, and spearheaded the launch of the high-definition simulcast of the linear network.
"We are pleased to elect Laureen to WWE’s Board of Directors," said Vince McMahon, WWE Chairman & Chief Executive Officer. "Laureen brings more than 30 years of global media experience that will be very beneficial to the future growth of our company."
Earlier in her career, Ong was Vice President and General Manager of WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C., a top 10 market affiliate and one of FOX’s most successful television stations. She also spent time with the Chicago White Sox as Vice President, Programming, where she helped launch SportsVision in Chicago, one of the first regional sports networks in the country.
Ong's honors include Woman of the Year from Women in Cable Television (WICT), the Vision Award from the Washington Chapter of Women in Film and Video and Multichannel News’ Wonder Woman award in recognition of her significant accomplishments in the cable television industry."Back in the DC real estate doldrums of the mid-1990s, before he helped pave the way for war in Iraq, Stephen Rademaker owned a modest condo in Arlington, Va.
Then, a few years later, as a House staffer on the International Relations Committee, Rademaker wrote the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which called for regime change, a phrase that altered the course of history. Bill Clinton signed the Act, which became the basis for the congressional authorization for the use of force against Saddam Hussein four years later; by then Rademaker was working at the State Department.
Things soon took a turn for the better, at least for Rademaker; he left government and went to work as a lobbyist, eventually joining countless numbers of retired government officials who cleaned up, directly or indirectly, by leading the country into war.
I wrote the other day about two of these former senior government officials, who have made a killing in the post-9/11 era: former CIA director George Tenet and former FBI director Louis Freeh. But when it comes to those who profited directly from the last thirteen years of war, Exhibit A perhaps is Rademaker, a man for whom the Iraq war became a giant piggybank.
Rademaker, who was a strong backer of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and has generally never met a war he didn’t want, from Syria to Libya, is now a principal at the Podesta Group–the lobbying and and public affairs firm founded by Tony and John Podesta, two of the worst people in Washington. At the Podesta group, Rademaker has advised the firm’s international clients, including the Iraqi government.
That contract was originally signed in 2013 and was worth close to $1 million; it was renewed last year and paid the Podesta Group about another $1 million. I’m told by a well-informed source that Podesta Group lobbyists get a 20 percent cut of business they bring in, so if Rademaker helped land that deal he could have earned an impressive bonus. (I emailed Rademaker yesterday evening to ask for comment. So far he hasn’t replied; if he does I’ll update this story.)
Rademaker doesn’t take credit for his role in drafting the Iraq Liberation Act, at least not in his bio on the company’s website, but he does cite his “lead responsibility, as a House staffer, for drafting the legislation that created the US Department of Homeland Security,” now widely regarded as the most dysfunctional part of the federal government.
Also worth mentioning is that Rademaker is married to neocon Danielle Pletka, another former Hill staffer who is now senior vice president at the American Enterprise Institute, and who clings by her nails to the cliff’s edge of sanity. She and her think tank were major proponents of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and last August, Pletka co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed that called President Obama’s response to ISIS “inadequate.” She demanded that Obama arm the Syrian opposition, send military advisers and trainers to Iraq “by the thousands, not hundreds,” and stop “blocking the delivery of much-needed weapons” to Iraq.
Resuming those shipments—which had been delayed by annoying human rights concerns, like widespread “politically motivated sectarian and ethnic killings” in the words of a U.S. government report—is one of the things that Pletka’s husband gets paid to lobby for, my source said, so it’s nice she can use the Journal’s op-ed pages to help him out.
In the meantime, Rademaker has taken a nice step up from the Arlington, Virginia condo that he sold in 1995 for $148,000. Now he and Pletka live in a 6,138-square-foot 6-bedroom home in McLean, Va.—big enough to fit a few of the over one million Iraqis who have been displaced or fled their country since the 2003 invasion. Rademaker and Pletka bought the house, currently assessed at $1.8 million, a year after the war began.
Photo: AP
– Researcher Sheelagh McNeill contributed to this report.When people hear the term money laundering today, they envision the most evil of acts, in which gangsters process satchels of cash through a fabricated company to show it as business revenue. Words and semantics are very important in this post-9/11 world, and as far as creating a negative connotation, that parlance has been extremely effective.
At its essence, money laundering is the act of concealing money or assets from the state to prevent its loss through taxation, judgment enforcement, or blatant confiscation. However, as the late J. Orlin Grabbe wrote: "Anyone who has studied the evolution of money-laundering statutes in the U.S. and elsewhere will realize that the 'crime' of money laundering boils down to a single, basic prohibited act: Doing something and not telling the government about it."
Protecting one's wealth is interwoven with the history of trade and banking which has existed since the dawn of commerce. Sterling Seagrave's Lords of the Rim describes how some 2,000 years before Christ, merchants in China would hide their wealth from rulers who would simply take it from them and subsequently banish them. This concealment involved moving the wealth and investing it in remote provinces or outside China.
Part myth, part rumor, the plausible tale of Mafia gangsters running huge amounts of cash from extortion, prostitution, gambling and bootleg liquor through existing Laundromats accounts for the phrase money laundering.
Also during this period, Al Capone was convicted in October 1931 for tax evasion, which is what earned the prosecutor's conviction rather than the predicate crimes that generated his illicit income. Capone's episode inspired Meyer Lansky, the mob's accountant, who structured elaborate international and Swiss financial facilities for safely securing money and vowed never to suffer Capone's fate.
Lansky is credited with designing one of the first real laundering techniques, the use of the "loan-back" concept, which disguised allegedly illegal money within "loans" provided by compliant foreign banks. The money could then be justified as revenue and a tax deduction for interest expense obtained in the process.
Without any method of tracking cash or bank activity, Congress passed the Bank Secrecy Act in 1970, heralding the age of transaction reporting, including the Currency Transaction Report (Form 4789), the Report of International Transportation of Currency or Monetary Instruments (Form 4790), and the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (Form TD F 90-22.1). In the United States, the Money Laundering Control Act formally made money laundering a federal crime.
Internationally, the elements of the crime of money laundering are set forth in the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances and Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Also, the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, founded in 1989 on the initiative of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, is an intergovernmental organization whose purpose is to develop policies to combat money laundering and terrorism financing.
From President Roosevelt's 1933 seizure of personal gold to the Nazi confiscation of Jewish wealth to the recent deposit theft at Cyprus banks, asset plundering by governments has a long and colorful tradition. Protecting wealth from oppressive regimes continues to this day.
It's highly political and also a matter of perspective whether protection from confiscation is a justifiable activity. Government access to wealth is at the heart of the issue and it matters not if it's hiding money or cleaning money.
Therefore, the artificial crime of "money laundering" had to be invented, mainly because more direct and traditional methods of enforcing certain laws yielded little result. Think of it as driving without a lightbulb above the license plate being a felony because thieves might drive away in the night. All must participate in illuminating the way to be tracked. More than anything, this is a clear sign of regulatory desperation.
Money laundering has been called the thoughtcrime of finance. Isn't it really just banking with someone's possibly nefarious intentions attached to the act? It's like buying a drive-thru donut in a stolen vehicle. The theft of the vehicle may have been illegal and immoral but the act of purchasing a donut is not. Money laundering is not pre-crime but post-crime. And, it's difficult to identify the victim, other than the bank shareholders that must expend millions of dollars for the proactive compliance required as the state's deputized enforcers.
Moreover, money laundering is guilt by association. If the monetary flows resulting from associated businesses are deemed illegal, then the banking activity is defined as money laundering. But, in the absence of victimless crime laws against drugs, gambling, and prostitution, the majority of banking labeled as money laundering would simply be banking.
According to the International Money Laundering Information Bureau, "Money Laundering is also the world's third-largest industry by value." Apparently, it happens in every country in the world. Well, breathing by humans also happens in every country in the world. If money laundering is actually the third-largest industry in the world then it's either being calculated wrong or it's too easily defined.
In his Rolling Stone article "Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail," Matt Taibbi mocks the anti-money-laundering regime as being hypocritical because large commercial banks like HSBC receive a light slap on the wrist and the blind-eye treatment as smaller fish are routinely scooped up in the net. Taibbi correctly distinguishes between an arrestable class and an unarrestable class. However, he misses the point of the law's arbitrariness in the first place. Thank you for the analysis, Mr. Taibbi, but dispensing enforcement of an immoral law more evenly is not a solution for justice.
Even as the money-laundering laws are said to exist for the fight against terrorism or drugs or gambling, the cashless utopia is simultaneously being thrust upon us as the monetary architecture of the future. Expect ever more increasing thoughtcrime enforcement as the international money flow tightens.
Jon Matonis is an e-money researcher and crypto economist focused on expanding the circulation of nonpolitical digital currencies. His career has included senior posts at Sumitomo Bank, Visa, VeriSign, and Hushmail. Currently, he serves on the board of the Bitcoin Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @jonmatonis.The red and yellow warning flags were out. The gun range was cleared. The klaxon sounded.
"System is enabled," the voice on the speakerphone said. There was a pause, then a distant thud that could be felt through the floor.
"Gun is fired," the voice said.
Inside a cavernous building at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., on Friday, a gigantic pulse of electricity hurled a 20-pound slug of aluminum out the barrel of an experimental gun at seven times the speed of sound.
The slug trailed a pillar of fire as it left the weapon and the building, illuminating the surrounding woods like a giant flashbulb. It streaked down range, generating a small sonic boom, and traveled about 5,500 feet before tumbling to the ground harmlessly.
In an adjacent building, there was a round of applause from observing scientists.
It was the latest test of the Navy's electromagnetic railgun - a futuristic weapon that is right out of the latest video war game and could one day change the face of Naval warfare.
Roger Ellis, the railgun program manager, said people "see these things in the video games, but this is real. This is what is very historical."
The gun is fired with a huge jolt of electricity that can propel a round more than 100 miles and at such velocity that it does not need an explosive warhead.
Two tests were conducted Friday - the first of which the Navy said generated a world record 33 megajoules of force out of the barrel. The second shot, witnessed by reporters, produced 32 megajoules.
Forty-five minutes after the second shot, a part of the battered bullet that was retrieved from the range was still warm to the touch.
The Navy hopes the railgun might bring a sci-fi level of range and firepower to its fleets of the future.Graphic designer-turned-muralist Kyle Steed has expanded his practice in every sense of the word. Self-employed for the past six years, he has quickly evolved from small projects such as windows at the now-defunct Knox-Henderson boutique Milk & Honey to paintings growing ever larger in scale and ambition.
Most recently, he crowned the Plaza of the Americas building with a 110 x 30-foot splash of swirling color. So, when Steed was approached to create a piece of art for the backside of Dallas' iconic Coors Light waterfall billboard, he was more than ready for the challenge.
“I think scale has always drawn me,” says the artist, who also has created murals on the Trinity Strand Trail and in the Bishop Arts District. “I’ve always been drawn to doing stuff larger than outside of a piece of paper or on a computer screen. I also had an appreciation for graffiti growing up in high school — there’s a little bit of a rebellious streak in me that wants to defy the norm.”
Self-taught, Steed took a circuitous route to becoming a full-time artist. After moving to Texas post-graduation in 2000, he scored a graphic design internship but ultimately decided to enter the military.
While serving in the Air Force, he indulged his creative impulse with photography, painting, and drawing. Time spent in Japan gave him an appreciation for minimalism and simplicity, hallmarks of his work today. When his time was done in 2007, he moved to Texas with his wife and began exploring the web design world while building a presence for his fine art work on social media platforms like Twitter (where he has 12,000 followers) and Instagram (where he has 150,000).
He attributes the upward trajectory of his career to “a snowball effect. People see that thing and want you to do something for them.”
The latest in line was Dustin Lovingood, the vice president of marketing for Monogram Residential Trust, who needed something on the rear side of Harry Hines’ classic waterfall billboard, to brighten the view for residents of the new luxury complex The Alexan.
“People would say the Coors Light billboard is an icon in the city of Dallas,” Lovingood explains. “We’ve got apartments facing the backside, and that’s not attractive. But then you’ve got the weight of this icon and how do we do it right? There were several artists I considered, but Kyle has such a following and wasn’t intimidated by the scale of this project.”
For Steed, who spent his childhood in Alabama and North Carolina, the famous billboard was an instant reminder of visiting his father during the Texas summers.
Since the final piece will be the main view for many of The Alexan’s residents, Steed wanted it to have a special significance. “I was trying to get in touch with these memories I had as a child, and what this billboard meant to me, so I used all these icons and we went through four or five versions of artwork.”
Ultimately, he landed on an idea inspired by the dichotomy of keeping a sense of peace in a driven, competitive city. The work, printed on vinyl to survive the elements, features figures in red, white, and blue tumbling across a black background, representing two opposing forces meeting in the middle.
“It’s like Rothko — you look at a piece of his painting that’s minimal, but if you read about what he was dealing with [while] making it, it’s very heady,” Steed says of his work’s layered meaning.
Being revealed at a private event on May 18, the billboard is visible for non-residents at the intersection of the Trinity Strand Trail with the Katy Trail. Eventually, Lovingood says a restaurant going in that spot will give visitors another reason to stop and take in Steed’s vision.
As for Steed, he hopes his latest undertaking will have the same effect on its viewers that his other murals have achieved.
“Art is very subjective, but I hope I get somebody that stops and wants to take a minute to pause and reflect on what it means in their life. Maybe that’s what I hope to do in all my work — give people a moment of pause.”This afternoon, FiveThirtyEight is presenting forecasts of the Republican contests in Nevada, Arizona, Michigan and Ohio.
The polling in these states has been a little thinner than ideal — just one or two recent surveys in each state. So for the most part, the forecast is simply taking the most recent poll and translating the data into odds of victory for each candidate. The forecasts will become more reliable once additional surveys are released.
Still, it’s clear who has the edge in three of the four states: Mitt Romney.
In Nevada, which votes on Saturday, a poll released by the University of Las Vegas for The Las Vegas Review-Journal gives Mr. Romney a 20-point lead over Newt Gingrich. A 20-point lead with just a few days before a vote is normally quite safe, and the forecast model gives Mr. Romney a 99 percent chance of winning.
It should be noted that polls of the Republican caucuses in Nevada were extremely inaccurate in 2008. Caucuses in general are hard to poll. And Nevada has been a nightmare for pollsters in recent years. The state’s rapidly growing population; its unorthodox working hours, linked to the pre-eminence of the gambling industry; and the presence of some unique demographic groups — like Mormons — all present challenges.
In 2008, the polls vastly underestimated Mr. Romney’s standing — so saying that he is the overwhelming favorite there this year seems a safe assumption.
There is more time for events on the campaign trail to intervene before Arizona and Michigan vote on Feb. 28. The most recent polls there, however, give Mr. Romney big leads as well. The FiveThirtyEight model gives him a 91 percent chance of winning Arizona and an 89 percent chance of taking Michigan — although these estimates should be thought of as provisional until one or two more surveys in these states are released.
Ohio, on the other hand, which votes on Super Tuesday, March 6, looks as though it could be close. A Public Policy Polling survey there, completed last week, showed a competitive three-way race between Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Romney and Rick Santorum, with Mr. Gingrich holding a nominal one-point lead.
The survey was conducted before Mr. Romney’s win in Florida. Still, earlier polls of Ohio sometimes showed middling results for Mr. Romney — a Quinnipiac poll released in early December gave Mr. Gingrich a significant lead there, for instance.
Ohio could be an interesting test case: like Florida, it is a populous state with a number of media markets, potentially giving Mr. Romney’s campaign some advantages because of its superior resources. However, it is also a working-class state, a group with which Mr. Romney has sometimes struggled.
There are also caucuses in Maine, Minnesota and Colorado this month, as well as a “beauty contest” primary in Missouri that has no effect on delegate allocation. But there is little recent polling in these states, and surveys in low-turnout events like caucuses and beauty contest primaries can be inaccurate. The forecast model is specifically designed for states where the polling is reasonably robust. Still, we may release forecasts for these states if additional surveys come out.The BBC reports that scientists have solved the riddle of why a fat gene, a genetic abnormality, causes one in six people to be at a 70% increased risk for obesity. Researchers had previously identified the “FTO” gene but had never figured out how it worked to cause excess fat. The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. It showed that the FTO gene creates a double heap of trouble in that it increases ghrelin, which is a hunger hormone, and increases a person’s craving for fattening food. This is a major breakthrough in obesity gene research. It’s the first time it has been proven that genetics can cause obesity along with the understanding of how the genes operate to do so.
Contrary to what many people believe about obesity, the BBC reports that the disease is mostly familial, this is, inherited. While the current accepted “wisdom” about obesity runs along the line of blaming the afflicted person as being an “emotional eater,” new evidence suggestes that genetics plays a major role in the disease. According to the BBC:
There is a strong family link with obesity, and a person’s genetic code is thought to play a major role in the risk of them becoming overweight. People have two copies of the FTO gene – one from each parent – and each copy comes in a high and a low-risk form. Those with two-high risk copies of the FTO gene are thought to be 70% more likely to become obese than those with low-risk genes.
Dr. Rachel Batterham is the head of obesity research at University College London. She says that the problem lies in the brains of obese people and that they are pre-programmed to eat more. Their desire to eat seems to be unrelated to emotion. Rather, she says, they are born predisposed to be hungrier and therefore ingest a greater number of calories from fatty foods. “Their brain is set up to be particularly interested in anything to do with high-calorie food,” she says, and people with the gene are “biologically programmed to eat more.”
This new evidence flies in the face of the accepted treatment methods for obesity, including talk therapy. The book “It’s Not What You’re Eating, It’s What’s Eating You,” and countless other books that focus on how people are “emotional eaters” have pointed the finger of blame directly at the afflicted person. This line of thinking has traditionally ignored genetics as the cause of obesity.
Now, it seems those authors and mental health professionals may have to go barking up a different tree, as the evidence for a familial and genetic link to obesity continues to pile up. The new evidence echos what many obese people have known for a very long time- it’s not their fault. University of London professor Dr. Steven Bloom seems to corroborate this:
We know the tendency to overeat in a society with too much food and no need for exercise is inherited. Slowly we are discovering the factors which make us overweight and this study, encompassing not only demonstration of a higher level of hunger hormone, ghrelin, but also changes in the brain associated with ghrelin’s action, is an important step forward.
This obesity breakthrough shows that a genetic abnormality, present in a whopping one in six people, is at least partially responsible for raising obesity risk by 70%. Genetics cause obesity, just as many have suspected all along. This news understanding could pave the way for groundbreaking new treatments and one day, a cure.
By: Rebecca Savastio
Source: BBCHaving trouble reading this email? Download the PDF. DECEMBER 2013 Home Subscribe Archive Contact Thematic focus: : Ecosystem management, Environmental governance, Climate change Saving the Great Migrations: Declining wildebeest in East Africa? The iconic wildebeest migrations of East Africa are an important ecological phenomenon and massive tourist attraction. However, many wildebeest populations are in drastic decline across the region (Estes and East, 2009). Their dispersal areas and migratory corridors are being lost due to high human population densities, increasing urbanisation, expanding agriculture and fences. Their loss would contribute to biodiversity decline, and jeopardise tourism and other ecosystem services. Urgent efforts need to be made to protect wildebeest migratory corridors and dispersal areas to ensure these great migrations for the future. Why is this issue important? Large scale animal migrations were once common around the world, but many have now collapsed, and others face serious decline (Bolger et al., 2008; Harris et al., 2009). For example, on the Great Plains of North America, the American bison once numbered as many as 30 million animals; today only few remnants remain due to over- hunting (Bolger et al., 2008). In Central Asia, the Saiga antelope has declined from over 1 million animals in 1980 to less than 200,000 in 2000 (Milner-Gulland et al., 2001). In Kenya, the migration of vast herds of zebra and Thomson�s gazelle between the Lake Nakuru-Elementaita region and the Lake Baringo disappeared in the early part of the 20th century due to over-hunting, habitat loss and other human disturbances (Ogutu et al., 2012). The East African savannas are well known for the large-scale seasonal migrations of grazing herbivores. Perhaps one of the most well-known is the annual migration of 1.3 million wildebeest, 0.6 million zebras and Thomson�s gazelle in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem (Sinclair, 1995). The significance of this migration is huge: it is the largest and most species diverse large mammal migration in the world. It is of iconic importance for tourism and has huge ecological significance, resulting in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania being listed as a World Heritage Site (UNESCO, 2013). The East African savannas are highly variable ecosystems, so migration enables animals to track spatially and temporally varying resources across the landscape. This gives migratory populations an advantage over resident populations, and allows these populations to rise to very high abundances (Hopcraft et al., 2013). Migrants may also move to access breeding grounds, to reduce the risks of predation and disease, and to enhance their genetic health (Bolger et al., 2008). Wildebeest migrations are important both ecologically and economically. They play a vital role in ecosystem function and provide a number of important ecosystem services. They also have a direct effect on predator populations and other wildlife species, and on grass food resources (Sinclair et al., 2008). Economically, wildebeest migrations are important because they draw in tourism and thus contribute significantly to national economies. Tourism generated an estimated US$1.2 billion revenue in Kenya in 2012 and US$1.3 billion in Tanzania in 2011 (KNBS, 2013; RoT, 2011). In Tanzania, the northern safari circuit alone, the main attraction of which is the Serengeti-Mara wildebeest migration, generated an estimated US$550 million in 2008 (Mitchell et al., 2009). Any loss of wildlife migrations, or their habitats, could undermine some of East Africa�s key tourism products with significant impacts on national economies. What are the findings? Declining wildebeest in East Africa Wildebeest depend on migratory corridors and dispersal areas as they migrate out of protected areas to their seasonal habitats, often located in pastoral lands. Migratory corridors and dispersal areas usually cross human-dominated landscapes where land use practices are becoming increasingly incompatible with wildlife. As these areas are degraded or lost, severe declines in the wildebeest populations can result. In East Africa, the white-bearded wildebeest, found across Kenya and Tanzania as shown on Figure 1, is facing large declines due to incompatible land uses in their migratory corridors and dispersal areas (Estes and East, 2009). This has occurred as their migratory corridors and dispersal areas have become blocked or lost, limiting their migratory movements. The result has been the near collapse of many wildebeest populations. The exception to this general pattern is the Serengeti-Mara population, which increased six fold between 1963 and 1977 following the eradication of rinderpest, before stabilizing at its current population of approximately 1.3 million (Hopcraft et al., 2013). In southern Africa, the blue wildebeest is stable or increasing; although their numbers are still far lower than their 1960s levels (Estes and East, 2009). Figure 1: Map showing the distribution of wildebeest subspecies in Africa including some important National Parks and Reserves in Kenya and Tanzania. Source: (Estes, 2006), visualisation by UNEP/DEWA. Full Size Image In Kenya, all four wildebeest populations are declining dramatically as indicated by the latest trends (Figure 2). In particular, in the Mara ecosystem, found within Narok County, the wildebeest population that migrates annually between the Maasai Mara National Reserve and the Loita Plains declined by more than two-thirds, from approximately 113,000 in 1977 to 35,000 by 2009 due to the expansion of agriculture (Ogutu et al., 2011) and continues to decline to date. In the Athi-Kaputiei ecosystem, the wildebeest migration between the Nairobi National Park and the adjoining Athi-Kaputiei Plains declined by more than 90%, from over 30,000 in 1978 to under 2,000 by 2011 as a result of increasing urbanisation, fencing, settlements, mining and other developments (Ogutu et al., 2013). Figure 2: Trends in wildebeest populations in four regions of Kenya. Black dots are population estimate from aerial surveys, the red lines are the fitted trend curves, and the shaded bands are the 95% confidence bands. (Figure courtesy of Joseph O. Ogutu, data drawn from Ogutu et al., 2013; Ogutu et al., submitted). Full Size Image In Tanzania, in the Tarangire-Simanjiro ecosystem, the wildebeest migration from Tarangire National Park to the Simanjiro Plains declined by 88%, from 43,000 in 1988 to 5,000 in 2001 due to expanding cultivation and settlements blocking their migratory corridors (Bolger et al., 2008; Msoffe et al., 2011). In each of these cases, wildebeest are prevented from accessing their wet season ranges due to the blockage of migratory corridors or the loss of habitat in their dispersal areas. Wildebeest are especially vulnerable to human impacts in their wet season ranges. Many protected areas in East Africa primarily conserve the dry season habitat for migratory wildlife, with the wet season ranges occurring almost entirely outside of protected areas on adjacent communal or private lands (Fynn and Bonyongo, 2011). Protected areas also tend to be small and were not designed to conserve all of a migratory species� habitat requirements (Fynn and Bonyongo, 2011). As a result, wildebeest must journey outside of protected areas to reach their wet season ranges. Here they face a number of pressures due to human population growth, land use change and increasing development. In the past, protected areas were able to sustain large migratory wildebeest populations because human population densities were low enough to allow them to migrate outside of protected areas to their wet season ranges. However, this is becoming increasingly difficult as human populations surrounding protected areas rise, and land use changes and habitat loss intensify. Today, nearly all the world�s remaining large wildlife populations exist in unfragmented migratory systems (Fynn and Bonyongo, 2011). For example, the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem migration has been sustained because it has survived in a relatively intact ecosystem contained within a network of protected areas that encompass all the grazing habitats required to support a large migratory population. However, this migration too now faces a number of threats (see Box 1). Threats to wildebeest migrations The loss or fragmentation of habitats is one of the main threats to wildlife migrations globally (Bolger et al., 2008; Harris et al., 2009). In East Africa, wildebeest migrations are in decline due to a number of land use activities causing habitat loss and fragmentation in their wet season dispersal areas. These land use activities, which include cultivation, land subdivision, settlements, fencing and other infrastructure, disrupt migratory movements and cause wildebeest populations to decline. Fences obstruct migratory routes and have deleterious impacts on wildlife populations (Bolger et al., 2008; Harris et al., 2009). Fences are used to stop resource competition and disease transmission between wildlife and livestock, to prevent poaching and to protect crops and homes. Fencing is one of the main causes of the crash in the wildebeest population in the Athi-Kaputiei ecosystem in Kenya, blocking and threatening migratory routes (Ogutu et al., 2013). More than 20% of the ecosystem is now fenced, and a number of migratory corridors linking the Nairobi National Park and the Athi-Kaputiei Plains have been blocked by fences (MEMR, 2012) (Figure 3). Now, only few wildebeest enter Nairobi National Park during the dry season (Ogutu et al., 2013). Similarly, fencing, cultivation and other developments now threaten the wildebeest migrations in the Amboseli ecosystem and the Mara-Loita Plains (MEMR, 2012). Roads obstruct migratory routes, cause wildlife mortality due to vehicle collisions, and decrease landscape connectivity (Lesbarr�res and Fahrig, 2012). Due to increased access, roads can also open up new areas for development, leading to land uses incompatible with wildlife. These are many of the concerns in the development of a new road through the Serengeti National Park (see Box 1). In Kenya, a similar threat faces the wildebeest migration in the Athi-Kaputiei ecosystem due to the upgrading of the Athi River-Namanga Road and the proposed Greater Southern Bypass Road along the southern boundary of Nairobi National Park (FoNNAP, 2011). Figure 3: (A) Map showing the position of fences blocking wildlife migratory routes to and from the Nairobi National Park of the Athi-Kaputiei ecosystem in Kenya, and (B) initially fenced land parcels now signed up to the wildlife lease program prohibiting fencing (from MEMR, 2012). Full Size Image Poaching is a threat to many migratory populations, particularly as human populations around protected areas increase (Bolger et al., 2008; Harris et al., 2009). In the Serengeti National Park it is estimated that local consumption of bushmeat is responsible for approximately 70,000-129,000 wildebeest deaths per year (Rentsch and Packer, 2012). A high intensity of poaching is also linked to a decline |
art from the University of Isfahan. Two were painters and two were experts in carpet design.
One of the painters identified herself as a "feminist artist" and seeing images of her work on her phone we knew what she meant. Using herself as a model, she had arresting images showing a woman in situations showing both hope and restrictions on thought. She did her final intellectual project on the work of the well-known contemporary Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, whose work, exhibited in the New York City Museum of Modern Art, was well known to her.
There is intense interest in music, both Iranian classical and contemporary. I have been involved in several discussions about the quality of music whether the traditional "dastgah" classical Iranian musical suite or Iranian rap music. Recordings are regularly available and are broadcast on radio and television. I asked about the prohibition of music by some conservative clerics. One young man sniffed and said, "people should ignore them." The recent annual Fajr music festival resulted in prizes for many musicians.
However, music remains a sticking point for some conservative clerics and pockets of resistance in the government. Iran's Minister of Culture and Guidance, Ali Jannati, has been a fierce defender of musical culture. He recently announced a program of exchange with Armenia in which musical groups would explicitly be exchanged between the two nations. His ministry has authorized a steady stream of music concerts of all varieties of music (except for solo female singers, who are still not permitted). However, in some instances the concerts have been canceled at the last minute by the police with no warning. Minister Jannati objected strenuously in the Iranian press, saying: "Alongside prayer and fasting the people need and deserve music."
Film is such a prominent art form now that most newspapers devote a whole page or section to it. Iran has its own "Oscars." Now it its 15th Year, the Hafez Awards give prizes to the best films, documentaries, television programs, actor, actress, comedian and comedienne (for both film and television), film singer (which went to the very well known singers Homayun Shajarian and Shahram Nazaeri). The top film this year was Masud Jafari-Jozani's new comedy drama, Iranburger. Our group of Americans had seen Asghar Farhadi's Oscar-winning film, A Separation, and his most recent release, About Elly. We couldn't find anyone from age 15 and up who hadn't seen these films either in cities or small towns. Discussion of these films were always a conversation starter.
Theater is slowly making inroads again in Iran. The City Theater (Theatr-e Shahr) in Tehran is not only an active producing institution, it is also a training ground for actors in stage, television and film. Live theater, once common outside of the capital, is slowly finding its way back into the life of medium and smaller cities. Actor training is also found in many universities today.
I have to end with a mention of cuisine. Traditional Iranian cuisine has always been world-class and it is no less so today. The traditional kebabs and rice and khoreshts (stews of meat and vegetables or fruit served over rice) are still there, but have been elevated to a new level. Of most note is the large number of new vegetable offerings on menus, particularly as salads and cold offerings. Thirty years ago a vegetarian or vegan would have had a hard time in Iran. Not so today. Menus are full of vegetable offerings and with healthful preparation with little oil (yoghurt bases are most common). A new kind of Iranian cooking based on traditional roots is in the near future.
This appears to be no accident. A nutritionist at the Ministry of Health informed me that the government has been successful in eliminating trans-fats from the Iranian diet. Healthful vegetable oils are now the rule, and the Iranian diet is now employing home-grown vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower, once rare, in much greater quantities in delicious, original preparations, beautifully presented.Gatland was born Maria McGuire, to a middle-class family, and lived in the suburb of Churchtown, Dublin. She was one of four siblings (two brothers and a sister). [1] She was educated at St. Anne's School and then University College Dublin, where she studied English language and literature. [1]
McGuire became a member of the Provisional IRA in the early 1970s. She accompanied Dáithí Ó Conaill (a leader of the Republican movement, also known as David O'Connell) to the European continent on an arms buying expedition. The expedition came to nothing because it was reported in the British press and Ó Conaill and McGuire abandoned the mission. She and Ó Conaill had an affair during this trip, although he was married. She, Ó Conaill, and Ó Conaill's wife had a difficult discussion about the issues involved shortly after they returned to Ireland.[1][2][3]
Provisional IRA bomb attacks in Belfast, on July 21, 1972 (known as Bloody Friday), killed seven civilians and two soldiers, and left 130 injured. McGuire subsequently decided to leave the Provisional IRA. She was told by the authorities if she did so she would receive Special Branch protection. In the late summer of 1972 she appeared in London and wrote a series of articles for The Observer,[4] went into hiding, and wrote a book about her experiences in the organisation called To Take Arms, A Year in the Provisional IRA which was published in 1973.[1][5] In it she was hostile to Seán Mac Stíofáin, IRA Chief of Staff at the time she was a member, but remained sympathetic to Ó Conaill, and wished him success in internal struggles against Mac Stíofáin in the Republican movement.[2]Former Dons player is back as our new boss
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Neal Ardley as our first-team manager.
Neal, of course, is well known to our supporters as he made almost 250 appearances for Wimbledon as a player from 1991 until 2002, during which time he helped the Dons to a sixth place Premier League finish in 1994.
However, history played no part in his selection as he impressed the club board, supported by Harry Bassett, with his coaching and his leadership skills, combined with a very clear vision for football development within the club, beating off three very strong competitors for the job.
They were all very impressive but it wasn’t difficult to pick out the outstanding candidate for the role. With four graduates from our Academy already in the first team squad, Neal’s background in bringing through young players fits perfectly with our commitment to youth development. We are looking forward to working with him.” Chief Executive, Erik Samuelson, said: “We put the candidates through a very exacting interview process.
Former Aston Villa, Middlesbrough and Watford full-back Neil Cox has been appointed as our assistant manager. Neil hung up his boots in 2008 after over 600 appearances in senior football and he has since had a spell as manager at Leek Town. We are delighted that Simon Bassey, who impressed during his spell as caretaker manager, has agreed to continue as a first-team coach at AFC Wimbledon.
About Neal Ardley
Neal started preparing for a manager’s role at the early age of 24, when he took his first coaching badges and he now holds the UEFA Pro coaching qualification, which has helped him in his role as Academy Manager at Cardiff City, being instrumental in developing Cardiff’s highly regarded youth system.
The Bluebirds appointed him as Academy Manager in 2007 with the remit of continuing the club’s reputation for bringing young players through after the emergence of talented players such as Joe Ledley and Aaron Ramsay. Neal has since impressed in the role by guiding several players through to the first-team squad, most recently with highly-rated pair Joe Ralls and Theo Wharton making the step-up.
A full-back or right midfielder during his playing days, Neal played with distinction for the Dons for 11 years and also had spells with Watford, Cardiff and Millwall, before taking on the role of Academy Manager with the Bluebirds after his retirement from playing in 2007.In August the decomposing bodies of 71 migrants were found in an abandoned truck in Austria. In the most complete account to date, we tell the story of one of the victims, Saeed Othman Mohammed, and how he came to die
Late in the evening of Monday 24 August, Saeed Othman Mohammed called home. He was in Hungary, Saeed told his family, and that night he hoped smugglers would drive him to Germany. Then he hung up.
It was the last time Saeed’s family heard from him. A month prior, Saeed had left home, 2,240 miles (3,600km) away in Iraqi Kurdistan. The grey-haired mechanic hoped to get to Germany to fix his diseased kidney. At frequent intervals throughout the journey, he had checked in with his relatives. But from this point on, they heard nothing.
Not even the smugglers seemed to know where he was. Four days later, Saeed’s brother Mohammed called the man who had organised the trip, Jamal Qamishi. “I swear, brother, I have no news,” Qamishi said. “When I get some news, I’ll let you know, 100%.”
But the news, when it finally arrived during the second week of September, was not from Qamishi. It was from the Austrian police. Saeed, the Austrians said, was among 71 people found dead in the back of a refrigerated food truck with a slogan on the side that read: “Honest Chicken”. The van had been discovered on the roadside in Parndorf, Austria, on 27 August. But some of the bodies were so badly decomposed, and the situation so confused, that it had taken several days to identify them.
This is the story of how one of them – Saeed Othman Mohammed – came to die there. Pieced together from interviews with relatives, travel companions and smugglers, it is the first extended account of an event that woke Europe to the proximity of the migration crisis – but which has until now remained a mystery.
It’s a story that begins in mid-summer, in Sulaimaniya, the second-biggest city in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Thousands have fled Iraq this year for Europe, helping to form the biggest mass-migration the continent has seen since the second world war. The vast majority of the refugees are Syrians, Afghans, and Eritreans – many of them fleeing war and political repression.
But Saeed and his friends from Sulaimaniya had other reasons to join the exodus. Islamic State had overrun large parts of Iraq – but the city of Sulaimaniya was not one of them. Instead, Saeed wanted treatment for his last remaining, decaying kidney. He was 35, but looked a decade older, perhaps a side-effect of his condition.
People smuggler Jamal Qamishi
Then there was the pervasive corruption. Saeed had joined pro-democracy protests in 2011 that ultimately led nowhere. He joined one political party, and then another – but he found both of them ineffectual and corrupt.
“I have no future in this place,” Saeed told his friend Bahman Abubakr, as the two smoked shisha pipes in a cafe after work in June. An even grander declaration followed: Saeed saw his future in Germany. He had no grand vision of what he would do there, but he knew he liked BMW, and wondered if he could run a carwash there, or trade in secondhand phones.
The path to Europe is one long trodden by Kurds. Since the 1970s, small waves of people have fled Iraqi Kurdistan for Europe for political and economic reasons, creating an industry in people smuggling. But not everyone made it. Saeed had tried the route in 2006 but was arrested in Turkey and sent back home.
'More dangerous than Isis': power cuts leave Iraqis boiling with rage Read more
The first step was a conversation with Qamishi, the 46-year-old owner of a local tourism company. Qamishi lived in Bulgaria for five years in the 90s, and has been back and forth ever since. Now he claims to focus exclusively on tourism, but over the years Qamishi developed a reputation as someone who could get people to Europe through means other than a package holiday.
Some would-be migrants pay as they go: $1,000 to the person who gets them across the Aegean to Greece; perhaps €200 to the man who drives them to the Macedonian border. It’s a more complicated process. But it gives refugees more flexibility, and means they don’t have to rely as much on smugglers.
But others – like Saeed’s group of 14 – prefer a simpler set-up. And this is what Qamishi offers: a huge lump-sum payment in exchange for organising the whole route to Germany. Jamal the Guarantee, they call him. The man who will guarantee you will get to your destination.
Like many smugglers, Qamishi says he does it with a heavy heart. He was out of the game for five years, he says, and helped this particular group only because he was related to three of them. “Their families called me and told me to arrange it for them,” Qamishi said. “I told them I had given up on smuggling – but they insisted.”
This year seemed different. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians blazed a trail across the tiny stretch of water between Turkey and Greece, while others braved the land border with Bulgaria. Suddenly what had seemed an impossible journey now appeared to be comparatively straightforward. So when 13 of Saeed’s friends thought they would try their luck at it, Saeed decided to join them.
Retired or not, Qamishi still had the connections. For $9,500 he said he could get Saeed and his friends to Germany. It would be a 10-day journey, he promised, and barring a 22-hour walk in Bulgaria, they would be taken by car.
Saeed had the money, which he had saved up during long years as a mechanic and then as an engineer for a telecoms company. He took the cash to the foreign exchange market in Sulaimaniya and deposited it with a dealer whom the smuggler trusted. When Saeed reached Germany, he would call the dealer and ask him to wire the money to the smuggler or his associates.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Left to right: Bahman Abubakr, Ahmad Saeed’s elder brother, Saeed’s sister-in-law and nieces, Saeed Othman and unidentified friends and family.
Wednesday 22 July was the day Saeed finally set out. In the morning, at about 10am, his brothers, sisters, and best friend Bahman gathered at the family home to give him a send-off. Standing on the balcony, they posed for one final photograph. Saeed grinned, but there was a hint of fear in his face. His family’s smiles looked more like grimaces. “We were suffering,” his elder brother Ahmad recalled, “but we had to pretend we were happy for him.”
Ahmad made one final attempt to persuade Saeed to stay, fearing he was too ill to travel. But it was in vain. In the minutes before leaving, Saeed stood before the vehicle that was shortly to take him to the Turkish border, and recorded a video. After criticising the Kurdish authorities and blaming them for the area’s woes, Saeed stared into the camera and said: “God willing, we will go – and won’t come back.”
By 1pm, the 14 friends were speeding towards Turkey in two vehicles. By the evening, they were at the border, and three hours later they had reached the southern Turkish city of Diyarbakır. The following day, a one-hour flight brought them to Istanbul in the north-west of the country, close to Greece and Bulgaria.
It was then that Qamishi called two Kurdish colleagues in Bulgaria. Their passengers were ready, he said, and promised them €7,900 for every person they smuggled. After checking with a relative in Sulaimaniya that the money had been deposited with the foreign exchange dealer, the pair came to fetch Saeed’s group from Istanbul.
The group moved fast. By the evening of 23 July, 18 hours after leaving home, they was in the countryside near the Bulgarian border. In the early hours of Friday 24 July, they walked into Bulgaria. After a four-hour hike, they were stopped by nine uniformed men who drove cars marked with police insignia. The nine men beat them and stole their phones and money, prompting them to return to Turkey.
A few days later, the group tried again. This time, most of the 14 passed through undetected: one is now in Finland, another in Austria. But Saeed, again, was unlucky. Bulgarian police caught him and three others, including his friend Shwana, and held them in the border town of Svilengrad. A police mugshot shows Saeed was in police custody by 28 July, going by the assumed name of Ali Mohamed Mustafa. He looks tired, but defiant – and even contemptuous.
Later, the foursome were transferred to a refugee detention camp. They stayed there for nearly a month until they were released around 21 August. Their friends had long since reached central Europe.
Finally free, Saeed called a man named Barzan, one of the Qamishi’s associates. Barzan led Saeed’s friends over the border with Serbia with another group of travellers. Spirits were still high. Saeed sent his family a picture of the group in a forest. Most of them are smiling, one flashes a thumbs-up, another raises a victory sign.
They had good reason to be happy: crossing the Serbian border was straightforward. Once in Serbia, Barzan handed them to another smuggler, who took them easily to Hungary.
It was then, on 24 August, that things began to unravel. In Hungary, Saeed and his friends were entrusted to another Kurdish smuggler called Karwan Hussein. He was supposed to be the fifth and final link in a tried-and-tested network that snaked from Iraq to Austria. But in reality, Qamishi says he had never met Hussein. And already, Saeed’s relatives were hearing bad things about him.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Karwan Hussein, a Kurdish people smuggler.
Ari, one of Saeed’s initial travelling companions, had crossed Bulgaria in July without getting caught. Now safe in Austria, he gave Saeed’s brother Mohammed a call. Alarm bells started ringing when Ari mentioned a near-death experience in the back of the truck that brought him from Hungary to Austria – Ari had almost suffocated.
Saeed was meant to avoid a similar fate. When he called, late in the evening of 24 August, he asked his brother to deliver an extra €600 to Hussein’s relatives in Sulaimaniya. The money was to guarantee him a place in a car rather than a chicken van. “Please,” said Mohammed to Hussein’s family as he delivered the money that night. “Make sure Saeed goes to Germany in a taxi, not in a truck.”
No one knows quite why Saeed ended up in the back of a truck, not even Qamishi. The smuggler was the last person to speak to Saeed by phone – at 3am on 25 August, shortly before he boarded the van. “I told Saeed and the others: do not get into any vehicle apart from a taxi,” Qamishi said. “Saeed was ill, so there was no way I would send him in the back of a lorry. His brother had also told Saeed that he should not travel in the back of a lorry. Why he got into that lorry, I don’t know.”
The man who might have an answer is Hussein. But when Mohammed called him late on 25 August, wondering where his brother was, Hussein claimed he had been arrested in either Austria or Munich. Then he switched his phones off and has not been heard from since.
Two days later, a truck was found by the side of the road in Parndorf. The door was reportedly ajar, putrid liquid seeping from the back. The surrounding air, one journalist said, was thick with the “smell of death”. Police initially thought there were 20 bodies in the back. Then 50. Finally they realised there were 71 suffocated people inside – 59 men, eight women and four children, including a baby girl. Many are believed to have come from Syria. They had been stuck inside for at least 48 hours.
The suspected driver, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, was arrested in Bulgaria soon after the truck was found. He has been charged with negligent manslaughter and belonging to a criminal group, and faces extradition to Austria. His lawyer claims he is innocent. Five men, four Bulgarians and an Afghan have also been detained in Hungary over the case.
For a fortnight, Saeed’s family had no idea whether he was among the dead. In his last utterances, Hussein had claimed Saeed was in police custody. He had, after all, paid for a taxi.
But slowly, the increasing drip of information made the truth unavoidable. First came the news that Shwana, Saeed’s friend, was among the dead. Then an interpreter in Austria told a relative in the UK that Saeed was also in the van. Finally, the receipt of Saeed’s death certificate, three weeks after his death, turned the rumours into fact.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Saeed Othman Mohammed’s funeral in Sulaimaniya. The family kept his death secret from his mother and sister for as long as possible.
Ahmad called the male members from the families of all four friends to his driving school, telling them he had some news. The second of Saeed’s three brothers, Mohammed, arrived late to find a crowd had assembled and had begun to guess at the truth. Then Ahmad hugged his two siblings. “We had a brother who left Kurdistan voluntarily,” he said as everyone began to cry, “and now Allah has taken him from us.”
The news was kept secret from Saeed’s mother and sister for as long as possible. But when they all arrived at the airport to collect his body, it was impossible to conceal his death any longer. “Who has come to collect the corpse?” shouted an airport official. And then his mother began to scream.Many were expecting to see Victor Moses go out on loan before the close of the transfer window and perhaps Demba Ba, but may have been surprised to see Romelu Lukaku’s late move to Everton.
Both Chelsea youngsters moved up to Merseyside for the season, with Moses linking up with former Blue Daniel Sturridge up in Liverpool and Lukaku to Everton.
Jose Mourinho has explained the moves by saying that the decisions made were in the best interests of the players as he was unable to guarantee either of them playing time and that they need minutes on the pitch at this time of their respective careers.
He told ChelseaTV:
“I think it’s time for everyone to stop talking about selling and buying players. “There are always little things to do on the last day, people to leave. We have to think about the club, but we also have to think about what is best for the players individually. “We decided Moses and Lukaku – two players we were more than happy to keep – that it’s better for the club and the future of the players if they go on loan. “With Lukaku, we have Fernando (Torres), (Samuel) Eto’o and Demba (Ba). Of course he would get playing time, but it’s the choice of playing basically every weekend. “He had lots of clubs and options, and we have to respect his decision.”
I don’t think anyone expected Moses to stick about as all of Eden Hazard, Juan Mata, Oscar, Willian, Kevin De Bruyne and Andre Schurrle ahead of him in the pecking order, but many thought that Lukaku may already be ready to challenge the likes of Torres for a place whilst hoping he’d at least be ahead of constantly offside Ba.
However, Lukaku seems happy with the switch he has made and if there’s a choice between him or Ba sitting on the bench/stands at Stamford Bridge I’d rather it be the latter.
Lukaku scored 17 Premier League goals for West Brom last season and one of the best conversion rates in the league, so I wish him all the best on his move and hope he finally gets the chance to prove himself in the blue of Chelsea next season.
Source: Sky Sports NewsPolice in London, Ont., are investigating a possible hate crime after an article appeared in an Arabic-language community newspaper that said Jews inflated the number of Holocaust victims from between “100,000 and 600,000” to six million.
Beneath the headline “The Question Which Everyone Ignores: Why Did Hitler Kill the Jews?”, the article in the June/July edition of Al Saraha also blames the Jews for Germany’s “economic collapse” in the 1920s and for promoting “promiscuity … homosexuality … every type of sexual deviance.”
“This Jewish propaganda succeeded,” the article says, “until it became prevalent throughout the media that six million Jews were victims of Hitler, even though the total number of Jews in Germany was less than a quarter of this figure that they say Hitler burned!”
The article was reprinted from al-Masry al-Youm, an Egyptian daily newspaper operating in a notoriously anti-Semitic media landscape.
Al Saraha is distributed in Middle Eastern restaurants and grocery stores throughout the Greater London area. It is recommended as a source for immigrant news by the London and Middlesex Local Immigration Partnership, a government-funded agency.
London Const. Chris Loizides said “steps” are being taken to see “whether (the article) qualifies as a Criminal Code offence inciting hatred, promoting hatred or, on the contrary, is it free speech.”
A local member of the Arab-Canadian community initially alerted B’nai Brith, the Jewish human rights and advocacy group, about the article.
After tipping off London police, B’nai Brith contacted Premier Kathleen Wynne’s office. In addition to ads for London real estate brokers, wellness clinics and divorce lawyers, the paper featured a full-page message from the “Ontario Liberal Caucus” offering the London Arab community its “best wishes” for Ramadan.
“You don’t even have to read the whole article, all you have to do is read the headline,” said Michael Mostyn, B’nai Brith’s chief executive. “To say that is offensive is to minimize the article. It is absolutely hateful rhetoric, and it is unacceptable that this is being published in a newspaper in Canada.”
Its publisher says he was unaware of the facts and apologizes to Jewish people.
“I didn’t mean to reject something that happened historically,” Abdul Haidi Shala, speaking in Arabic translated into English, told The London Free Press on Thursday.
“I was curious to know why Hitler killed Jews during the Holocaust, so I read through his article and I found information.”
“I don’t know. History knows,” he added. “I believe in the correct history. If someone told me the correct history was 10 million or 20 million people died, then I’ll believe it as long as it’s correct history.
It is unclear what the actual circulation number of the newspaper is, but what is clear, said Mostyn, and most worrisome in his view, is that only one community member came forward to complain about the story.
“We have new immigrants coming into our country all the time and I think, as Canadians, we want to always ensure that these new immigrants learn the language of tolerance,” he said. “Canada is the place where, while we may have our own opinions back home, and we may have our own prejudices back home, we don’t import those to Canada.
“We get along, we work together here. We live together here, and this (article) is completely antithetical to that.”
• Email: [email protected] | Twitter: oconnorwritesWASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama made a plug on Monday for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal to a group of 2,400 investors looking at locating business in the United States, saying the deal would help boost the global economy.
Trade has become a hot-button issue in the Nov. 8 presidential election campaign, with presumptive candidates from both parties voicing objections to the 12-nation TPP deal that Obama wants the U.S. Congress to sign off on before his time in office ends on Jan. 20.
Both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns have tapped into populist skepticism about the benefit of trade deals on jobs and wages, particularly in the manufacturing sector.
Obama tried to dispel the economic gloom-and-doom coming from the campaign trail, extolling the recovery of the United States from recession.
“I don’t mind being America’s pitch man,” Obama said in a speech at the SelectUSA Summit. “In seven months or so, I’ll be on the job market, and I’m glad I’m going to be here. I’m going to get on LinkedIn and see what comes up,” he quipped.
Obama argued that while there are legitimate concerns about boosting wages and improving working conditions, ultimately global trade can help connect people from around the world and reduce poverty.
“This is not just about jobs and trade, it’s not just about hard cold cash,” he said. “It’s also about building relationships across borders. When your companies come together you help bring countries and cultures together.”
American business lobby groups have been pushing the White House and congressional leaders to finish their work to ratify the TPP before the next administration takes office.
Obama’s top economic adviser sidestepped a question on a conference call about the timeline.
“We’re continuing to work with congressional leaders to find the right opportunity, the right window of opportunity, to get TPP passed this year,” Jeff Zients, the director of the National Economic Council, told reporters.
Slideshow (3 Images)
On Monday, Obama announced a $70 million matching grant to a Los Angeles “manufacturing hub,” a group of businesses and researchers piloting sensors and other technology to help factories cut costs and energy use.
It is the ninth of 15 planned hubs that the White House hopes will boost manufacturing across the country.
On Friday, Obama will continue his pitch for business, speaking about technology and the economy on a panel with Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg at another summit at Stanford University aimed at boosting entrepreneurs in developing countries."We have said repeatedly the next phase would be one of terrorizing people and when they have time they will begin destroying temples," Abdul Karim told Reuters.
"I am seeing Palmyra being destroyed in front of my eyes," he added. "God help us in the days to come."
A week ago, the militants beheaded Khaled Asaad, an 82-year-old scholar who worked for more than 50 years as head of antiquities in Palmyra, after detaining and interrogating him for more than a month.
Related: ISIS Beheads Archaeology 'Pioneer' Khaled al-Asaad in Palmyra
Before ISIS captured the city, Syrian officials said they moved hundreds of ancient statues to safe locations out of concern that the militants would destroy them. In June, ISIS blew up two ancient shrines in Palmyra that weren't part of its Roman-era structures but that the militants regarded as pagan and sacrilegious.
The militants were also beginning excavation for gold and giving licenses for illicit excavation of the city's treasures, Abdul Karim added.
Related: ISIS Second in Command Killed in U.S. Airstrike, White House SaysWhen we started what became Sencha, we made a bet on the web: a bet that modern application development didn’t need anything except the browser, a great set of frameworks and a great set of tools. With those three weapons in hand, we knew developers could build applications that would delight users. The advent of HTML5 upped the game and it gave developers even more tools to let them treat the browser as an application development platform and not a page rendering engine. Developers sprang at the opportunity and unleashed a torrent of apps — on both desktop and mobile — that leveraged the new HTML5 capabilities to build amazing applications using web standards.
So, when Mark Zuckerberg said HTML5 wasn’t ready, we took a little offense to the comment.
We thought to ourselves: HTML5 can’t really be the reason that Facebook’s mobile application was slow. We knew what the browser on modern smart phones was capable of and what kind of rich capabilities HTML5 offered. We saw the latest generation of mobile devices — running at least iOS 5 or Android 4.1 — push ever increasing performance and HTML5 implementation scores. But perhaps most importantly, we’d seen what our customers were building and the amazing things they were creating using HTML5.
“So, when Mark Zuckerberg said HTML5 wasn’t ready, we took a little offense to the comment.”
We had our suspicions about why Facebook’s mobile application team had problems, because it matched a common pattern. At Sencha, we build frameworks and tools for application developers, so we have pretty deep experience with development teams taking on HTML5 app projects. When a team has problems with HTML5, it usually stems from the fact that they take a “website” development approach to building an app, and often don’t use the right tools and architectures for application development. This is what we suspected about the Facebook HTML5 app. The way that app performed — slow loading, choppy user experience in the News Feed, low framerate — exhibited the usual symptoms.
In any event, we knew HTML5 was, in fact, ready, and we wanted to prove it. So we took it upon ourselves to rebuild the challenging parts of the Facebook mobile application in HTML5 in our spare time. Today, we’d like to introduce you to Sencha Fastbook, a technology proof of concept that shows how fast HTML5 can be, and demonstrates how readily HTML5 can be used to handle the toughest app challenges.
Learn the latest about Fastbook and the tech behind it at SenchaCon 2013. Register today!
This four-minute video gives you a quick overview of Sencha Fastbook, and shows you a side-by-side comparison of how well our HTML5 app performs against both the native iOS and the native Android Facebook apps (versions 5.2 and 1.9.12 respectively, the latest available when we made this video on December 10th). The rest of this post gets into the technical details of how we built Fastbook.
A Closer Look at the “Native” Facebook Application
We started the process of what became Fastbook by trying to understand the Zuckerberg claim that HTML5 “just wasn’t there”, and the best place to do that was to take a deep look into the latest native Facebook app on iOS. We connected an iPhone to a web debugging proxy, and started to look at the HTTP traffic the application pushed over the network. Our biggest shock: much of the application was still raw HTML pages. The News Feed had moved to native as had the profile page, but many of the other application UIs were simply HTTP GET requests to m.facebook.com. Today’s “native” Facebook application is a hybrid web / native application: there is content rendered on m.facebook.com and displayed in a UIWebView and native Objective C components mixed together.
Re-Implementing the News Feed
After we looked at how the native Facebook application worked, it was clear to us that the hardest part of the experience to build was the News Feed. Dealing with a billion content creators posting an unlimited amount of content in a completely unpredictable manner is a tough problem to solve even for the most seasoned developers, regardless of what technology they use.
We really wanted to ensure we had that smooth experience the News Feed should deliver when we re-implemented it in HTML5. To make that possible we added some new features and enhancements into the core of the current Sencha Touch framework.
It started with the implementation of an Infinite List Component that handles items with unknown sizes. Only a very small set of DOM nodes is actually created to fill in the actual visible screen area. They will then be constantly recycled to render next / previous data on-demand. As a result, memory footprint is kept minimal, regardless of the amount of data in the Store. Making this work is the easy part. Making it fast with the complexity and variety of items such as News Feed stories is the real challenge. The bottleneck lies within the core processes that a browser has to perform: layout and compositing.
Our experience with building frameworks has taught us that while a small demo component might work well on its own, it often then performs poorly when put into a much larger app. As an app grows, the DOM tree grows; and as the DOM tree grows it takes longer for the browser to calculate the layout, and the performance degrades. Moreover, as the number of visible layers increase, compositing performance for each layer also degrades dramatically. We needed a solution to make web apps more robust under large numbers of DOM nodes.
We do a side-by-side comparison of the native Facebook app and our Sencha Fastbook app.
So the Fastbook app is the first to make use of a brand new “Sandbox Container” which programmatically detaches complex views and renders them into their own iframes, and thus partitioning the DOM tree. This special container doesn’t need any extra handling at the application level, so it’s seamless to developers (i.e., any component added to this container will be sandboxed automatically). But it does come at a cost: events, positioning, styling, and JavaScript code have to be proxied between the parent window and the child sandboxes. This is complicated, so without a robust and properly architected framework, it is very difficult to implement. Sandboxing allows layouts to be isolated, and therefore keeps the primary DOM tree as light as possible. To bring balance to the Force, Sandbox Containers must be used wisely.
For Fastbook, the News Feed, Timeline and Story views are individually sandboxed. Since all DOM elements are re-used to render data on-demand at high frequency, reflows are inevitable. The key is to make that process as cheap as possible. Sandboxing enables the News Feed to perform as if it is standalone, while actually is still a part of the much bigger DOM tree.
“Sandboxing enables the News Feed to perform as if it is standalone, while actually is still a part of the much bigger DOM tree.”
Next, we added deeper integration to our TaskQueue, a feature we recently introduced into Sencha Touch. TaskQueue prevents the interleaving of read and write requests to the DOM, eliminating any unnecessary layouts. This, combined with the new sandboxing technique, significantly reduces costly layouts from complex views such as the Timeline and News Feed.
We then added the AnimationQueue, a new class that’s responsible for all animations and events, |
of all… it makes me want to cancel my Comcast service.
[Thanks Tokugawa!]After completing the 5 placement matches, I have been MISS-placed in GOLD 2 League, with a MMR of 4035. Last seasson I was placed on DIAMOND 1 League!
Here is the list of my 5 placement matches that I just played:
TvP (opponent: Dia 3) - Win
TvZ (opponent: Plat 2) - Win
TvZ (opponent: Dia 3 [6 times masters]) - Win
TvZ (opponent: not yet ranked, last seasson masters) - Win
TvT (opponent: Dia 2) - Lose
Apparently this has happened to another player that also reported the issue (http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/17614463430).
I think this is strange, because if this was a bug lots of people would be complaining/reporting it by now, but I am waiting a bit to write down my thoughts about it.
So I can't play the new patch now. Great.
EDIT: Ok, so it's not a BUG, it's a FEATURE. So, first they break the MMR system by poorly implementing the 3-race ladder feature, and the next patch (weeks later, yes, it's real life), they annoy players with this provisional bull!@#$ MMR.EDIT2: I love how this HUGE change is not even on the patch notes. Or at least I cannot see it on the web patch notes.------ORIGINAL POST:In this roundup, we are presenting free billboard mockups to present your designs. These mockups are perfect to present you advertising campaigns and poster designs. Many of these mockups offer changeable backgrounds and these mockups are easy to use through Smart Objects.
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Price: Free DownloadActually, it is not a knife and is known under the name of Finger Tree.
Update: In a personal communication with : In a personal communication with Eric Lippert it was revealed that, in his words:
" I worked up a full implementation as well but I decided that it was too complicated to post in the blog. What I was really trying to get across was that immutable data structures were possible and not that hard; a full-on finger tree implementation was a bit too much for that purpose. "
I am happy to correct my post and acknowledge that a previous C# implementation did exist. Hopefully, Eric will publish his implementation.
So, the work discussed here is most probably the first published Finger Tree implementation in C#.
Background:
Created by Ralf Hinze and Ross Paterson in 2004, and based to a large extent on the work of Chris Okasaki on Implicit Recursive Slowdown and Catenable Double-Ended Queus, this data structure, to quote the abstract of the paper introducing Finger Trees, is:
"a functional representation of persistent sequences supporting access to the ends in amortized constant time, and concatenation and splitting in time logarithmic in the size of the smaller piece. Representations achieving these bounds have appeared previously, but 2-3 finger trees are much simpler, as are the operations on them. Further, by defining the split operation in a general form, we obtain a general purpose data structure that can serve as a sequence, priority queue, search tree, priority search queue and more."
Why the finger tree deserves to be called the Swiss knife of data structures can best be explained by again quoting the introduction of the paper:
"The operations one might expect from a sequence abstraction include adding and removing elements at both ends (the deque operations), concatenation, insertion and deletion at arbitrary points, finding an element satisfying some criterion, and splitting the sequence into subsequences based on some property. Many efficient functional implementations of subsets of these operations are known, but supporting more operations efficiently is difficult. The best known general implementations are very complex, and little used.
This paper introduces functional 2-3 finger trees, a general implementation that performs well, but is much simpler than previous implementations with similar bounds. The data structure and its many variations are simple enough that we are able to give a concise yet complete executable description using the functional programming language Haskell (Peyton Jones, 2003). The paper should be accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of Haskell and its widely used extension to multiple-parameter type classes (Peyton Jones et al., 1997). Although the structure makes essential use of laziness, it is also suitable for strict languages that provide a lazy evaluation primitive."
Efficiency and universality are the two most attractive features of finger trees. Not less important is simplicity, as it allows easy understanding, straightforward implementation and uneventful maintenance.
Stacks support efficient access to the first item of a sequence only, queues and deques support efficient access to both ends, but not to an randomly-accessed item. Arrays allow extremely efficient O(1) access to any of their items, but are poor at inserting, removal, splitting and concatenation. Lists are poor (O(N)) at locating a randomly indexed item.
Remarkably, the finger tree is efficient with all these operations. One can use this single data structure for all these types of operations as opposed to having to use several types of data structures, each most efficient with only some operations.
Note also the words functional and persistent, which mean that the finger tree is an immutable data structure.
In.NET the IList<T> interface specifies a number of void methods, which change the list in-place (so the instance object is mutable). To implement an immutable operation one needs first to make a copy of the original structure (List<T>, LinkedList<T>, …, etc). An achievement of.NET 3.5 and LINQ is that the set of new extension methods (of the Enumerable class) implement immutable operations.
In the year 2008, Finger Tree implementations have been known only in a few programming languages: in Haskell, in OCaml, and in Scala. At least this is what the popular search engines say.
What about a C# implementation? In February Eric Lippert had a post in his blog about finger trees. The C# code he provided does not implement all operations of a Finger Tree and probably this is the reason why this post is referred to by the Wikipedia only as "Example of 2-3 trees in C#", but not as an implementation of the Finger Tree data structure. Actually, he did have a complete implementation at that time (see the Update at the start of this post), but desided not to publish it.
My modest contribution is what I believe to be the first published complete C# implementation of the Finger Tree data structure as originally defined in the paper by Hinze and Paterson (only a few exercises have not been implemented).
Programming a Finger Tree in C# was as much fun as challenge. The finger tree structure is defined in an extremely generic way. At first I even was concerned that C# might not be sufficiently expressive to implement such rich genericity. It turned out that C# lived up to the challenge perfectly. Here is a small example of how the code uses multiple types and nested type constraints:
// Types:
// U — the type of Containers that can be split
// T — the type of elements in a container of type U
// V — the type of the Measure-value when an element is measured
public class Split <U, T, V>
where U : ISplittable <T, V>
where T : IMeasured <V>
{
// ………………………………………………….
}
Another challenge was to implement lazy evaluation (the.NET term for this is "deferred execution") for some of the methods. Again, C# was up to the challenge with its IEnumerable interface and the ease and finesse of using the "yield return" statement.
The net result: it was possible to write code like this:
public override IEnumerable <T> ToSequence()
{
ViewL <T, M> lView = LeftView();
yield return lView.head;
foreach (T t in lView.ftTail.ToSequence())
yield return t;
}
Another challenge, of course, was that one definitely needs to understand Hinze’s and Ross’ article before even trying to start the design of an implementation. While the text should be straightforward to anyone with some Haskell and functional programming experience, it requires a bit of concentration and some very basic understanding of fundamental algebraic concepts. In the text of the article one will find a precise and simple definition of a Monoid. My first thought was that such academic knowledge would not really be necessary for a real-world programming task. Little did I know… It turned out that the Monoid plays a central role in the generic specification of objects that have a Measure.
I was thrilled to code my own version of a monoid in C#:
public class Monoid <T>
{
T theZero;
public delegate T monOp (T t1, T t2);
public monOp theOp;
public Monoid(T tZero, monOp aMonOp)
{
theZero = tZero;
theOp = aMonOp;
}
public T zero
{
get
{
return theZero;
}
}
}
Without going into too-much details, here is how the correct Monoids are defined in suitable auxiliary classes to be used in defining a Random-Access Sequence, Priority Queue and Ordered Sequence:
public static class Size
{
public static Monoid < uint > theMonoid =
new Monoid < uint >( 0, new Monoid < uint >. monOp (anAddOp));
public static uint anAddOp( uint s1, uint s2)
{
return s1 + s2;
}
}
public static class Prio
{
public static Monoid<double> theMonoid =
new Monoid<double>
(double.NegativeInfinity,
new Monoid<double>.monOp(aMaxOp)
);
public static double aMaxOp(double d1, double d2)
{
return (d1 > d2)? d1 : d2;
}
}
public class Key<T, V> where V : IComparable
{
public delegate V getKey(T t);
// maybe we shouldn’t care for NoKey, as this is too theoretic
public V NoKey;
public getKey KeyAssign;
public Key(V noKey, getKey KeyAssign)
{
this.KeyAssign = KeyAssign;
}
}
public class KeyMonoid<T, V> where V : IComparable
{
public Key<T, V> KeyObj;
public Monoid<V> theMonoid;
public V aNextKeyOp(V v1, V v2)
{
return (v2.CompareTo(KeyObj.NoKey) == 0)? v1 : v2;
}
//constructor
public KeyMonoid(Key<T, V> KeyObj)
{
this.KeyObj = KeyObj;
this.theMonoid =
new Monoid<V>(KeyObj.NoKey,
new Monoid<V>.monOp(aNextKeyOp)
);
}
}
Yet another challenge was to be able to create methods dynamically, as currying was essentially used in the specification of finger trees with measures. Once again it was great to make use of the existing.NET 3.5 infrastructure. Below is my simple FP static class, which essentially uses the.NET 3.5 Func object and a lambda expression in order to implement currying:
public static class FP
{
public static Func <Y, Z> Curry<X, Y, Z>
( this Func <X, Y, Z> func, X x)
{
return (y) => func(x, y);
}
}
And here is a typical usage of the currying implemented above:
public T ElemAt( uint ind)
{
return treeRep.Split
( new MPredicate < uint >
(
FP.Curry< uint, uint, bool >(theLessThanIMethod2, ind)
),
0
).splitItem.Element;
}
Now, for everyone who have reached this point of my post, here is the link to the complete implementation.
Be reminded once again that.NET 3.5 is needed for a successful build.
In my next posts I will analyze the performance of this Finger Tree implementation and how it fares compared to existing implementations of sequential data structures as provided by different programming languages and environments.Theory vs. Hypothesis… And Other Related Terms
Aaron Wright Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 12, 2016
This post first appeared on Lernabit.com. Lernabit helps you remember everything you learn about any topic.
In discussions about scientific concepts and research, people often use terms like “theory” and “hypothesis” interchangeably, or they use the terms incorrectly. But those terms each have their own meaning, so let’s look at each one and some other words related to them to understand what each one means.
Hypothesis — A hypothesis is simply a proposed explanation for some phenomenon or observation. It has little if any hard evidence to back it up, but it does intuitively make sense based on previous knowledge of the subject. A hypothesis is sort of like an educated guess. It is a claim that seems like it would make sense based on what you already know, but it still needs hard evidence to support it.
Once a hypothesis has been developed, the next step is to come up with some type of experiment to test it. Therein lies the importance of creating a good hypothesis. Often, people make an observation about the world and immediately jump to conclusions based on their own anecdotal evidence. But by developing a hypothesis, you get a clear and precise statement that can be tested to determine its validity.
Theory — There is perhaps no term in science that is more often misused and abused than the word “theory”, and this is largely due to the fact that the word has a very different meaning to scientists than it does to everyone else. To most people, a theory is something that is unproven or lacks evidence. But to scientists, a theory is exactly the opposite of that. In other words, a scientific theory is a claim that has rigorous evidence to support it.
As an example, consider evolution. Opponents of evolution state that it is “only” a theory, and is thus unreliable. But in science, a theory is a claim that has substantial evidence behind it. In the case of evolution, that evidence is everywhere. In fact, the evidence in favor of evolution can be found literally everywhere in biology, from the smallest molecular biology to the behavior of entire ecosystems. When people try to discredit evolution by calling it “only” a theory, they are misusing the word “theory”. When scientists call evolution a theory, they are stating that it is a well observed and strongly supported claim with mountains of evidence behind it.
Postulate — A postulate, also called an axiom, is a term used in math to refer to a claim that is agreed to be true and proven. Mathematicians would never accomplish anything if they had to re-prove everything before showing new breakthroughs. Instead, they simply state those existing proofs as postulates, which says, “we all agree that this is true. Based on that, here is my new work…”. The term “postulate” is mostly only used in math and philosophy.
Theorem — A theorem is a conclusion that has been proven based on given postulates. Because postulates are agreed to be true, a mathematical proof based on them can also be considered true. And, because a theorem is proven, it can be used as grounds for other theorems. As with the term “postulate”, the word “theorem” is typically only used in math.
Conjecture — A conjecture is a claim that is believed to be true, but has not been proven or disproved. This is different than a hypothesis. A hypothesis states: “This might be true, or it might not. We don’t know.” A conjecture says, “We think this is true, but we can’t prove it yet.” A hypothesis does not make assumptions about the truth or falsehood of a claim, it simply states a possible explanation that needs to be tested. A conjecture is believed to be true, but remains open to the possibility that it might be wrong. The term “conjecture” is mostly only used in math.
Law — In science, a law is a statement that is backed by substantial evidence and will always hold true given the conditions described in the law. That second part is very subtle but important. A law only applies when given a specific set of conditions, and may or may not hold up when those conditions are not provided.
As an example, consider what is perhaps the most popular scientific law; Newton’s law of universal gravitation. I’m summarizing it here, but the law basically states that every object in the universe exerts a gravitational pull on every other object in the universe, and the gravitational force between them is dependent on the mass of the objects and the distance between them. This law is backed by experimental evidence. However, in unusual conditions, there are situations where the law does not hold. For instance, the law starts to break down when the objects are moving close to the speed of light or if either of the objects is a super massive object like a black hole. In those unusual cases, Newton’s law of universal gravitation cannot be assumed to be true, because the law assumes certain conditions that are not met in those situations.
A law is different than a theory. Both are backed by strong evidence, but a law only describes some phenomenon without providing an explanation for it. For example, Newton’s law describes the force of gravity, but it does not attempt to explain how gravity actually works.
In contrast, a theory does provide an explanation of the phenomenon in question. For instance, evolution is not a law, it is a theory, because in addition to saying that species arise from other species, it also gives an explanation of how that happens. In effect, it explains evolution as the result of natural selection.
The definitions given here are those used by scientists to explain their work. But keep in mind that the terminology is often misused and misunderstood in normal conversations, so always be sure to take that into account and clarify the context in which they are being used.What would you do if you could actually visit Westworld? It's a question everyone who watched HBO's Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy drama asked themselves while it was on — and a few lucky Comic-Con attendees will soon have the chance to discover the answer.
For one extended weekend only, San Diego plays host to an immersive experience based on Westworld, the HBO breakout that earned more than 20 Emmy nominations for its widely acclaimed first season. The series takes place in a future where few things are certain (is the park on Earth? Mars? Another galaxy?), except for the following: Technology is so advanced that illnesses aren't much of a problem anymore, and oh by the way there's a massive amusement park filled with robots who think they're cowboys, Samurai, or some other highly specific profession from any of the unknown number of universes the Delos team has dreamed up.
In addition to its highly anticipated Hall H panel, which coincides with production beginning on season two, Westworld enters Comic-Con with an eye toward giving attendees a taste of what it might be like to spend a half hour or so inside the expansive park. Who could say no to such an opportunity? (Rhetorical question, and does not apply to anyone currently experiencing "Journey into Night.") Here's what happens when you step inside what HBO calls Westworld: The Experience.
First up: How to get to Westworld? A simple question, without a simple answer. Westworld: The Experience is open to all Comic-Con attendees (i.e.: badge holders), as long as they are 21 or older. What's more, the event can only be accessed by appointment. There's an appointment desk at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel, open from Thursday (July 20) through Saturday (July 22), from 9:30 a.m. until all available slots for the day have been filled. The event runs on 30-minute intervals of six people per session, which means it's going to be a tough ticket to get. Appointments are available on a first-come, first-serve basis — so if you want to see if Westworld: The Experience looks like anything to you, best to make that appointment ASAP.
When you arrive at the event's location (which HBO has asked attendees not to disclose), you're greeted by a representative from Delos, the fictional company that owns and operates Westworld. You're taken through a door marked with the Delos logo, and then into a great hall marked by bright white lights, not unlike the show's set design. An impressive array of outfits and weapons — multiple knives, revolvers and the like — are on display in a glass case. The faint and familiar sounds of a player piano call from the distance.
Just as the urge to break the glass and grab some firearms is about to become too powerful to resist, a Delos rep shows up to guide you into the next step. You pass through a hallway that culminates in two doors: one marked "WW" for Westworld, the other marked "SW" for... well, we're all pretty sure it means Samurai World, though this section of the park — which was briefly introduced in the season one finale — remains officially unnamed. Listen closely, and you can hear the clanking of swords. The Delos rep makes it clear that for today, you're only going to have access to Westworld. The mysteries of "Samurai World," if that is indeed its true name, will remain under lock and key for the time being.
Moments later, individuals are taken into small fitting rooms where well-dressed Delos employees begin what's essentially an interrogation. Questions include:
1. "Have you ever been to Westworld before?"
2. "Have you ever stayed at a luxury resort?"
3. "If you could push a button and cure all of the world's ails but you would have to cut the population in half, would you push the button, have someone else push the button, or destroy the button and the people who invented it?"
You know, softballs.
At one point, the representative asks you to raise a hand. You're then told to imagine that you're in a dire situation, and the only way out is to part with one of your fingers. Which one do you choose? When you make your selection, you're to mark the digit with a big, fat X. Spoiler alert: There is no discernible follow-up to the "sever the finger" question. As near as one can tell, you're just drawing an X on your finger for no reason, unless someone's coming for the digit in a few days. Will report back in case of any sudden finger departures.
The interrogation leads to the decision you knew was coming: white hat, or black hat. Much like an online personality quiz, it's possible to game the system. Watch the video below to see how it worked out for me:
Once your hat is selected (black hat, in my case; you know what they say: "When in Roman World..."), you'll stand in front of a full-length mirror to see what you look like as your new Westworld avatar. There's a flickering in the mirror, and something that looks like a humanoid figure on the other side of the glass. It happens so fast, that it's impossible to know what exactly is behind the mirror. Ask the Delos rep, and you will only receive a familiar refrain: "That doesn't look like anything to me."
With hat in hand (or on your head as it were), you proceed down a corridor toward a welcome video. It's similar to the one seen in the actual show, when visitors first arrive at the park. It soon becomes clear that something's wrong with the video: It glitches, and Evan Rachel Wood's Dolores Abernathy starts reciting bone-chilling verses that clearly stem from her new Wyatt personality. Toward the end of the video, you see what appears to be new footage from season two: the Man in Black (Ed Harris) sitting at a bar, blood spatter all over his face, but otherwise looking as cool and collected as ever. Not bad for a man now living in a park overrun by the hosts, not to mention sustaining a gunshot wound to the arm. (Pay close attention to your Host escort here.)
After the video ends, you're ushered into your final destination of the evening: the Mariposa Saloon. A robust bar staff works diligently to create compelling cocktails for you and the others in your party. In our case, a lovely host named Jewels struck up conversations with the various guests. (In case you're wondering, she's a whiskey fan.) The bartenders concoct three different cocktails: a Sherry Punch, a Blue Blazer (which includes a neat fire trick), and a Milk Punch. True to two of the drinks' names, all three beverages pack a punch. Free advice: Do not enter Westworld on an empty stomach.
Boozy drinks and nice company notwithstanding, the main draw of the Mariposa is one of the same things that made Westworld so memorable in the first place: the player piano, the same one heard briefly and faintly in the distance upon arrival. According to Jewels, the piano is operated by a ghost. The ghost does not have a name, which means this black hat had to give it one: Gary. Subsequent guests later revealed that Jewels continued to use the name Gary to describe the ghost. If you visit the Mariposa and you learn about Gary the ghost, you now know who to blame.
What he lacks in corporeal form, Gary more than compensates in his ability to play some killer tunes, including many that were featured during Westworld's first season: the Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black," Radiohead's "Exit Music (For a Film)," Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun." Gary even played a rendition of Ramin Djawadi's Emmy-nominated Westworld theme song, as well as another familiar Djawadi and HBO tune. Check it out in the video below:
After about 15 minutes inside the saloon, sipping beverages and soaking in music, a Delos rep arrives to take you home. That's it for the experience. No weapon selection, no shoot 'em ups, no side quests... just some fine booze and fine tunes, all gone in the blink of an eye. Much like a real vacation, it's all gone too soon — not unlike the actual Westworld experience, one imagines.
Oh, one more prize: the hat. You get to keep it. Choose wisely.
Follow THR.com/Westworld for all of our coverage of the HBO drama.
Special thanks to THR contributor Chris E. Hayner for video and photos.Tramaine Brock was arrested late Thursday night. (AP)
According to the city of Santa Clara, San Francisco 49ers cornerback Tramaine Brock was arrested Thursday and charged with felony domestic violence.
A few hours later, new 49ers general manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan cut Brock, a starter the last two seasons.
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At about 9:35 p.m. Thursday, authorities responded to investigate a report of domestic violence, and officers learned that an adult female had visible injuries. The report said she was in a dating relationship with Brock. Brock was booked into Santa Clara County Jail. Bail was set at $50,000, according to NBC Bay Area. Marks were found around the female’s neck, NBC Bay Area said.
On Friday afternoon, the 49ers announced they had cut Brock.
This was the first time the new 49ers power structure of coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch have dealt with a situation of this magnitude. Brock has been a starter for each of the past two seasons with the 49ers. He has been with the team since 2010.
The 49ers have had 15 arrests since 2012, according to the Sacramento Bee, but this was the first this offseason since Lynch and Shanahan were hired. By cutting Brock so quickly, the new brass sent a message to all current and future 49ers players.
Story continues
More 49ers news from Yahoo
– – – – – – –
Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!Theresa May has found new support for her Digital Charter plans to punish social media companies when they fail to remove abusive content. The Committee on Standards in Public Life is today explaining to Parliament how and why these companies should “do more” under the threat of sanctions.
Sounds fair enough – what could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot actually. Let’s remember, the core complaint here is that these private companies don’t want to invest time and money finding and removing bullying remarks, hate speech and extremism.
The contention is that if the government threatens them with fines for failing to remove content within say 24 hours, then the companies will do more to remove it.
I think that’s pretty clearly true. If the company faces a fine, then every complaint will be dealt with, so that the fines are avoided. The problem is that platforms will do it on the cheap, so that they also don’t have to spend millions of pounds getting people to check.
Companies apply rules and criteria, rather than make careful judgements, when removing material. This is so that human reviewers can make decisions in seconds, rather than minutes. Rules can be automated, potentially, so computers can maybe do some of this work.
Machines can be asked to look for patterns. So perhaps people from a certain part of town make dodgy posts; maybe this “helps” get posts removed. Machines correlate, but correlation is pretty much the same as a prejudice, when the result is a decision about an individual.
Machines in any case are a long way from understanding context. If a comedian says “I love ISIS” this is different from an extremist saying the same thing. A news outlet showing an ISIS video clip is different from the original video being posted by a propagandist. A machine can’t easily tell the difference, except by evaluating by correlation: in other words, by applying a prejudice.
Perhaps the worst aspect is that companies’ terms and conditions are much tighter than the law. If failure to enforce a platforms’ terms and conditions is the standard on which it is punished, we really are in immense trouble, yet that seems to be the intention. Should it really be the case that Facebook can be fined if a breast feeding picture including nipple isn’t removed within 24 hours?
In any case: everyone deserves due process. It’s vital that people who want to contest a decision can get to a court. There’s no sign this has been understood yet. Without courts as a backstop, we really will be handing justice over to corporations.Heavy rains triggered a landslide at a village near Pune on Wednesday, killing at least 18 people and burying about 150 under the debris.
Heavy monsoon rains have lashed the hills in the area the past few days, causing rocks and mud to loosen and tumble down on houses at Malin village, 80km from Pune. Authorities fear that the death toll could mount as most of the 67 houses in the village were buried under a 25 feet pile of rocks and mud.
Read: People died in their sleep, say survivors
“I have lost my house and 11 people from my extended family in this catastrophe,” said Savlaram Limbe, 60, who escaped the landslide with his wife, as they had left early for their farm. “When I left, there were houses out there, when I came back, there was nothing but rocks, debris and slush.”
Rescue workers struggled to pull out bodies from under the debris because of the heavy rains. Authorities sent at least 30 ambulances and heavy machinery to the village, but only three earthmovers could get there by late evening.
Read: Chavan says focus is on saving maximum lives
“I pulled out three bodies from the rubble,” said Sachin Divekar, one of the first to reach the spot. “All the bodies were unrecognisable.” Divekar, who lives on the outskirts of Malin, said he had not seen anything more horrific in his life.
Pune collector Saurav Rao said rescue work could take up to three days, adding the chances of survival of those buried in the debris were “very slim”.
“The houses are completely buried under the debris so that the land now looks like an elevated plain,” said Rao.
The state government asked district collectors of Pune, Satara, Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg to identify lanslide-prone villages and evacuate people, if necessary.
Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan said the state government would compensate all the families and if required, even rehabilitate the entire village.
Last year, torrential rains caused heavy landslides in the northern state of Uttarakhand, killing 5,000 people and displacing thousands others.
First Published: Jul 30, 2014 12:52 ISTWhy is it that people expect Disney cartoons to advance whatever agenda they personally have, despite the fact that it's impossible to advance every ideology in a single film?
The latest blow-up is over the upcoming film Moana.
In the film, the Polynesian demi-god Maui is a significant character. Voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, he boasts powerful arms, a thick neck, and carries a massive weapon resembling a fish hook (which makes sense considering the mythology surrounding Maui).
What he lacks is six-pack abs and 10 percent body fat. And that has some people bent out of shape:
The depiction of a Polynesian character in a Disney film has prompted anger across the Pacific islands, with one New Zealand MP saying the portrayal of the god Maui as obese was “not acceptable”. Jenny Salesa, who is of Tongan heritage, shared a picture on her Facebook account which said Disney’s rendering of Maui in the film Moana resembled a creature that was “half pig, half hippo”. “When we look at photos of Polynesian men & women from the last 100-200 years, most of our people were not overweight and this negative stereotype of Maui is just not acceptable -- No thanks to Disney,” Salesa wrote. According to 2014 data from the World Health Organisation nine of the ten most obese nations in the world are Pacific Islands. Samoan professional rugby player Eliota Fuimanono Sapolu also expressed his disgust at Disney’s portrayal of Maui, writing on |
We present a proof-of-concept demonstration of an all-printed temporary tattoo-based glucose sensor for noninvasive glycemic monitoring. The sensor represents the first example of an easy-to-wear flexible tattoo-based epidermal diagnostic device combining reverse iontophoretic extraction of interstitial glucose and an enzyme-based amperometric biosensor. In-vitro studies reveal the tattoo sensor’s linear response toward physiologically relevant glucose levels with negligible interferences from common coexisting electroactive species. The iontophoretic-biosensing tattoo platform is reduced to practice by applying the device on human subjects and monitoring variations in glycemic levels due to food consumption. Correlation of the sensor response with that of a commercial glucose meter underscores the promise of the tattoo sensor to detect glucose levels in a noninvasive fashion. Control on-body experiments demonstrate the importance of the reverse iontophoresis operation and validate the sensor specificity. This preliminary investigation indicates that the tattoo-based iontophoresis-sensor platform holds considerable promise for efficient diabetes management and can be extended toward noninvasive monitoring of other physiologically relevant analytes present in the interstitial fluid.In looking at the box score of the Atlanta Hawks’ thrilling, come from behind 109-105 victory over the Boston Celtics, one statistic stands out: 36 assists. Since coach Mike Budenholzer took over at the beginning of last season, no other team in the league has had as many 30+ assist games as the Hawks. Their closest competitor? Budenholzer’s former employer, the San Antonio Spurs.
Budenholzer spent 19 years with the Spurs, initially as a video coordinator, then as an assistant to Gregg Popovich for the majority of his NBA record 17 consecutive winning seasons. During that time, the team won 4 NBA Championships by way of their unselfish, team-oriented, efficient offensive attack reliant on constant ball-sharing and player movement.
When he made the move to Atlanta, there were rumblings around the league that the Hawks were destined to become the “Spurs East”, an Eastern Conference mirror of the Texas franchise. So far, they have in some respects.
The Hawks have finished second in assists per game each of the past two seasons to – you guessed it – the Spurs. This season, they’ve surpassed the Spurs and are second only to the up-tempo Golden State Warriors, who consequently are coached by Steve Kerr, who spent 4 seasons under Popovich as a player on those great Spurs teams.
Over the Hawks’ three game winning streak that has propelled them to third in the Eastern Conference standings, they’ve assisted on an astounding 76.9% of their made field goals, a far cry from the isolation heavy offenses that were common in Atlanta pre-Budenholzer (think Iso-Joe Johnson and Josh Smith).
The Hawks ball sharing has expectedly led to prolific shooting as well. Atlanta is 4th in the league in field goal percentage making 47.6% of their shots, just.9% behind the league leading Warriors, and every player on the roster – aside from maybe Elton Brand – is a capable three-point shooter.
Led by guard Kyle Korver, who is also leading the league in three-point percentage and is 4th in makes in shooting 57.8% on his 83 attempts from beyond the arc, the Hawks are shooting a respectable 37.1% from three as a team this season.
In addition to the gaudy team statistics, the individual player progression under Budenholzer has too been outstanding.
Forward Paul Millsap made more threes in his first season with the Hawks than he did his 7 seasons with the Utah Jazz, partly a tribute to him, but also a tribute to the open looks and opportunities Budenholzer’s system creates for its players.
Demarre Carroll, a former first round pick who failed to live up to those lofty expectations prior to joining the Hawks, also made more threes in his first season with the Hawks than he had over the course of his career, and set career highs in points per game, field goal percentage, and assists per game.
Korver – who is considered one of the best shooters in the league – has improved in each year with the Hawks and has scored at least 20 points while also making at least 4 threes 7 times this season as a career 9.9 points per game scorer.
Budenholzer’s system encourages ball movement, creates high-percentage shots, and also promotes balance. All five Hawks’ starters average at least 11.8 points per game, and bench contributors Mike Scott and Dennis Schroder are close, averaging 8.3 and 8.8 points per game respectively.
A machine is a device consisting of fixed and moving parts that modifies mechanical energy and transmits it in a more useful form. While the Hawks’ offense has more moving than fixed parts, its efficiency has been mechanical this season. If they can somehow muster a consistent defensive effort, the Hawks could be a real threat to win the weak Eastern Conference.Casey Jo was a high school swimming champ and freshman at North Dakota State University when she was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, an incurable inflammatory bowel disease. Crohn’s is a painful, debilitating disease, and Casey Jo was faced with several surgeries and extended treatment. Her doctor prescribed Oxycodone, an opioid painkiller, to help her deal with chronic pain.
Opioids are insidious: the more you take them, the more you need. Eventually Casey Jo was taking the recommended dosage of a 250-pound man. Her family doctor became concerned and tried to reduce her dosage. Casey fought her addiction, but ultimately turned to heroin as a substitute. Casey died last August, killed by her addiction. She was 26 years old.
Casey Jo’s story is not unique. Nationally, since 2000, deaths from opioid overdoses have increased 200 percent. In Minnesota, opioid deaths have increased 430 percent over the same period. Opioid abuse affects people regardless of their background or zip code. Almost every day someone dies from this scourge in Minnesota, disproportionately women and Native Americans. Eighty percent of Americans addicted to heroin started out taking prescription pad medications.
Opioid abuse is a health crisis that requires a coordinated response around prevention, treatment and recovery. Minnesota has taken some important first steps. We are working with medical professionals to improve opioid prescribing guidelines. We have developed a system that monitors provider prescribing practices to spot abuse. And we have greatly expanded access to naloxone, which blocks the effects of opioids overdose and saves lives.
In partnership with Minnesota’s 11 tribal nations, Gov. Dayton and I convened a Tribal Government Summit this fall to develop strategies for prevention, treatment and recovery. The results of this work will be organized into proposals for the 2017 legislative session.
These are good first steps, but a lot of mothers like Shelly are looking for more, and I agree.
One state can’t solve this problem alone. We are grateful for our partnership with Sen. Klobuchar, Sen. Franken and the rest of our federal legislative delegation on opioid abuse. This summer, Sen. Klobuchar helped lead a bipartisan effort to pass the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which will fight addiction through proven strategies like prescription drug monitoring programs and expanding first responders’ access to naloxone. She and Sen. Franken also are championing efforts to increase funding for substance abuse treatment programs.
However, we face powerful interests committed to maintaining the status quo at the expense of people already suffering from painful conditions and long-term injuries. Over the last decade, pharmaceutical companies spent nearly $1 billion to influence elections and attempts to improve regulations, while pocketing nearly $10 billion a year off of opioid painkillers.
The scope of this abuse has been simply stunning. In May, the Los Angeles Times reported that Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, filled fraudulent orders for over a decade, making $31 billion in the process. The Washington Post reported in October that 13 of the largest pharmaceutical distributors in the United States sold hundreds of millions of pills, knowing they would most likely end up on the black market.
These companies have done little to address the root causes of opioid addiction. Instead, they describe people suffering from opioid addiction as “expansion opportunities” and “growth drivers” to fuel corporate profits and share prices. Each year, the pharmaceutical companies make an additional $7.5 billion selling drugs to alleviate opioid side effects, while ignoring the underlying problems of misuse and overprescribing.
There will be no one answer to solving this epidemic, but we must aggressively expand our prevention, treatment and recovery efforts, and we should expect the companies who are profiting from this “market” to help.
It’s time these companies are held responsible for downplaying the risks of opioids to medical providers, using deceptive marketing practices, filling suspicious orders and interfering with reform efforts. States, counties and consumers across the United States already have filed lawsuits against drug companies demanding they put people ahead of profits.
As I heard at the Tribal Summit, “Long-term solutions for substance abuse need to have broad horizons because the roots of substance abuse go beyond the individual person, specific substance and specific community or Tribal Nation.”USAA, Navy Federal, and Marine Federal Credit Union emerge to the aid of military members if the government shuts down.
On September 30 at 11:59 p.m. if Congress has not reached an agreement on the continuing resolution, the government will shut down. When that occurs, the military’s October 15th paycheck may be delayed. We reached out to financial institutions to see what solutions they may have in place for their military members.
Roger Wildermuth, spokesperson for USAA, provided us with the following statement:
USAA is once again prepared to offer a zero-interest payroll advance loan to affected military members with existing direct deposit at USAA if military pay is interrupted by a government shutdown. We also have a number of other solutions, such as special payment arrangements, to help USAA members who receive government payments and find themselves in financial distress due to a shutdown.
Additionally, Scott Halliwell, a Certified Financial Planner practitioner with USAA, provides tips for how you can prepare for a potential government shutdown: USAA’s 5 Tip to Prepare for Government Shutdown.
Also, Navy Federal Credit Union provided us with an update that they will cover direct deposit for active duty military members. “Our number one concern is our members and their families. That’s why we’re pledging to cover the direct deposits for our active duty members,” said Cutler Dawson, Navy Federal president and CEO. “By covering their 15 October pay, our active duty members will not see a difference in their direct deposit amount-as if there were no shutdown.” Dawson also noted that members should know that their 1 October direct deposit will be processed normally. (Information was obtained by Michele Townes of the Corporate Communications department.)
Lastly, Marine Federal Credit Union released the following information via their website: “Should a government shutdown take place, Marine FCU will post government employee payrolls for members with direct deposit. This includes active duty and retired military, Department of Defense appropriated and non-appropriated, social security, and disability.”
UPDATE:
Service Credit Union: As per their website, they will automatically deposit the amount of your military or DOD GS pay based on the most recent amount you were paid. Reference: Service Credit Union
First Command Financial Services: In the event of a government shutdown they are offering the following 4 options to their members; information was sent to us from Mark Leach, Media Relations. Link to full explanation of services is: First Command services for potential government shutdown
Loan Assistance Penalty Free CD Withdrawals Secured Lines of Credit Special Handling of Credit Card Accounts
For more information on the government shutdown, our writer Rebekah Sanderlin breaks it down here: Government Shutdown – Will Military Get Paid?This video is no longer available
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TAKING OUT THOSE ZOMBIES! Ft AwesomeJenn! Ep 1 | Dead Rising 2 OTR
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We're surrounded by zombies and the world has gone insane! Is there a point? No. But we still have fun beating up the zombies! yay! Featuring the wonderful @AwesomeJenn! Check out her videos. ^_^ https://vid.me/AwesomeJenn Follow Linktheinformer ✪ Twitter ✪ - https://www.twitter.com/linktheinformer ✪ Twitch ✪ - https://www.twitch.tv/linktheinformer ✪ Beam ✪ - https://beam.pro/linktheinformer ✪ Instagram ✪ - https://www.instagram.com/linktheinformer #indie #gaming #steam #linktheinformer #awesomejenn #letsplay #videogames #vidme #vidmecommunity #vidmelove #vidmegaming #deadrising #zombies
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192UK immigration test to focus on Shakespeare and Christianity instead of human rights and civics
The UK Home Secretary has announced changes to the "Life in the UK" immigrant test. Instead of containing information on human rights, the nature of the political structure of the UK and the EU, and who has the legitimate right to access benefits, the test will focus on useful things that everyone in Britain really cares about: Shakespeare, Christianity, the Duke of Wellington and the Battle of Trafalgar.
I sat this test before I established my UK residence (I later became a citizen) and a large part of it is about UK culture: the history of women's suffrage, the law and norms around childrearing and work and tax, and more. Much of it is a bit tedious. Is it necessary to be able to rattle off the number of seats in each regional assembly? The multiple choice answers for Scotland were something like: a) 131, b) 130, c) 120, d, 100 -- surely knowing the number plus or minus 20 percent is enough for daily life. The legendary difficulty of the test is largely down to this sort of fine-grained multiple choice answers; it's important to know that women got the universal franchise in the late 1920s and the tradition is firmly established in the UK, but being able to name the exact year is beside the point, something that the test-designers clearly missed.
Being able to name the plays of Shakespeare, or the dates of Trafalgar are also beside the point. As a naturalised immigrant, I'm here to tell you that this sort of thing is an ocean away from the sort of knowledge that one needs to become a part of UK society. It'd be far more useful, for example, to teach us that when you turn on the BBC's "Today in Parliament" and hear the back-benchers braying a kind of well-bred, adenoidal "hnnneagh, hnnneagh" that this is the way what antique posh people say "hear, hear!" and not some kind of mass-poisoning.
Theresa May 'planning changes to immigrant test'WASHINGTON -- Simmering all year, the antagonism between Albert Haynesworth and Mike Shanahan finally reached the boiling point Tuesday when the two-time All-Pro defensive lineman was suspended by the Washington Redskins coach without pay for the rest of the season.
Citing a litany of acts that essentially add up to season-long insubordination, the Redskins suspended Haynesworth for "conduct detrimental to the club" and told him he's not welcome for the team's final four games -- and making it extremely unlikely he will play for the club again.
"Despite the club's numerous attempts to persuade Albert Haynesworth to abide by the terms of his contract, he has repeatedly refused to cooperate with our coaching staff in a variety of ways over an extended period of time," Shanahan said in statement released by the team. "Among other things, he has consistently indicated to our defensive coaches that he refuses to play in our base defense or on first-down or second-down nickel situations. He has also refused to follow the instructions of our coaches both during weekly practices and during actual games as well.
"Yesterday, when Albert was at Redskin Park, he told our general manager Bruce Allen that he [Haynesworth] would no longer speak with me. Although suspending any player is not a decision that a head coach enters into lightly, I believe the situation has reached the point where the club clearly has no alternative."
Allen informed Haynesworth of the suspension, the maximum permitted under the league's collective bargaining agreement. Haynesworth's agent, Chad Speck, said his client will appeal. Speck chided the Redskins for not giving any prior formal notice that Haynesworth's behavior was in question.
"The accusations made by coach Shanahan and Bruce Allen are vague and without merit," Speck said in a written statement. "Since training camp began, today's notice was the first that Albert received informing him that his conduct was not consistent with the 'terms of his contract' as coach Shanahan claims. Bruce confirmed to me today, that there have been no other letters or formal notices of any kind sent to Albert during the regular season suggesting that he was engaging in conduct detrimental to the team."
George Atallah, spokesman for the NFL players' union, said on Twitter: "All I can say at this time is that the NFLPA is reviewing the details."
It wasn't hard to see this coming. Haynesworth and Shanahan have been going at it almost from the day the hard-nosed coach who won two Super Bowls with the Denver Broncos was hired by the Redskins in January.
Haynesworth skipped offseason workouts because he didn't want to play nose tackle in the 3-4 defense the new coaches were installing, preferring instead to play in a scheme that would showcase his talent and help achieve his goal of becoming "the best defense tackle to ever play this game." Shanahan told Haynesworth to go find another team, contingent upon giving up a $21 million contract bonus due on April 1.In a previous article1 I discussed what is becoming a common complaint about schools, one that is reflected, for example, in the recent report of the Carnegie Commission: In school registered students submit to certified teachers in order to obtain certificates of their own; both are frustrated and both blame insufficient resources—money, time, or buildings—for their mutual frustration.
Such criticism leads many people to ask whether it is possible to conceive of a different style of learning. The same people, paradoxically, when pressed to specify how they acquired what they know and value, will readily admit that they learned it more often outside than inside school. Their knowledge of facts, their understanding of life and work came to them from friendship or love, while viewing TV, or while reading, from examples of peers or the challenge of a street encounter. Or they may have learned what they know through the apprenticeship ritual for admission to a street gang or the initiation to a hospital, newspaper city room, plumber’s shop, or insurance office. The alternative to dependence on schools is not the use of public resources for some new device which “makes” people learn; rather it is the creation of a new style of educational relationship between man and his environment. To foster this style, attitudes toward growing up, the tools available for learning, and the quality and structure of daily life will have to change concurrently.
Attitudes are already changing. The proud dependence on school is gone. Consumer resistance is increasing in the knowledge industry. Many teachers and pupils, taxpayers and employers; economists and policemen would prefer not to depend any longer on schools. What prevents their frustration from shaping new institutions is a lack not only of imagination but frequently also one of appropriate language and of enlightened self-interest. They cannot visualize either a de-schooled society or educational institutions in a society which disestablishes school.
In this essay, I intend to show that the inverse of school is possible: That we can depend on self-motivated learning instead of employing teachers to bribe or compel the student to find time and the will to learn; that we can provide the learner with new links to the world instead of continuing to funnel all educational programs through the teacher. I shall discuss some of the general characteristics which distinguish schooling from learning and outline four major categories of educational institutions which should appeal not only to many individuals, but also to many existing interest groups.
An Objection: Who Can Be Served by Bridges to Nowhere?
We are used to considering schools as a variable, dependent on the political and economic structure. If we can change the style of political leadership, or promote the interests of one class or another, or switch from private to public ownership of the means of production, we assume the school system will change as well. The educational institutions I will propose, however, are meant to serve a society which does not now exist, although…
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Copyright © 1970 by Ivan IllichThe writing has been on the wall for a while now but Google is finally breaking up with Google+.
In a Monday morning post, Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of Streams, Photos, and Sharing, announced that the company will continue to migrate Google+ features out of the social networking service and into other Google products. In March, Google Photos shed the Google+ name and soon, according to Horowitz, YouTube and several other Google services will no longer require a Google+ account.
By this point, Google’s social networking site has been falsely declared dead more times than Sir Paul McCartney but, with these latest changes, the social media network may well become a thing of yesterday. Google+ will remain online—Horowitz expressed his hope that the changes “will lead to a more focused, more useful, more engaging Google+”—but in essence, it has been thrown out of Google’s house with its clothes already strewn on the lawn.
But I can’t help but wonder: What if Google+ turns out to be the one that got away?
As Facebook and Twitter become increasingly cumbersome and borderline unusable, I find myself drawn to the serenity of the Google+ ghost town. It’s a serenity that, ironically, is only possible for the same reason that it’s being downsized: Almost no one is there.
There’s no denying that Google distancing itself from an unpopular brand makes sense from a business perspective. Touted during its 2011 introduction as a Facebook killer, Google+ only managed to acquire a small fraction of Zuckerberg’s 1.44 billion monthly active users. By last count, Google+ boasted a mere 300 million monthly active users. For the Google-owned YouTube—which, by some measures, may be more popular than Facebook—the Google+ requirement was dead weight that had to be dropped.
No amount of business acumen, however, can prevent me from wondering what life could have been like if we had only moved to Google+ when we had the chance.
Google+ remains appealing for all the same reasons that it was back in the heady days of 2011. Sorting friends and family into “Circles” is easier than digging into the labyrinthine bowels of my Facebook settings to create a few custom “lists,” all so I can hide a few vacation photos from the distant cousins that I neglected to visit while I was in town. The Google+ user interface is also cleaner and less cluttered by creepy ads for egg donation and the takeout place from which I just ordered too many dumplings.
In the past four years, using Google+ has only grown more appealing from a tech perspective: Google Hangouts allows video calls with multiple friends at one time while Facebook’s video chat is stuck in the past. I keep up with my family on Facebook, sure, but when we need to do the annual Mother’s Day group call, everyone dusts off their Google+ login. When we want to go back to hollowly emoting at each other with meaningless streams of cartoon animals, Facebook’s always there.
Whatever its quirks, the problem with Google+ has always been a population problem, not a functionality problem. In fact, Google+ users have consistently reported greater satisfaction than Facebook users for the past three years, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Google+ is like the unpopular rich kid at school who had a hot tub that no one used because he didn’t have any friends. If you ever went over to his house, you probably would have enjoyed yourself but you never did because no one wanted to go with you.
As proof, ask any disgruntled Facebook user why they’re still on the service and the answer is usually the same: Everyone else is on it. From an economic perspective, that’s called a “network effect.” From a social perspective, it’s a silent, mutual, and simultaneous agreement to remain in the Internet equivalent of prison so long as enough people stay with you.
In the absence of a powerful-enough network effect, the only way Google+ may have ever boasted active user numbers above half a billion was by requiring some of the very cross-service integrations that Google is in the process of stripping away.
For those of us who do remain on Google+, the service is one of the last quiet and civil corners of an increasingly contentious Internet. I don’t post on it much myself but when I do read my feed or glance at a community, I’m always impressed by the abundance of quality discussion and the absence of people who make $1,000 per day working from home. People who disagree with each other on Google+ are more inclined to use strong words than slurs.
And while Twitter continues to struggle with its massive harassment problem, Google+ is relatively and mercifully free of the most vicious forms of abuse and dog piling. True, this is largely a result of the fact that there aren’t enough dogs to form a pile, but Google+ does have a key feature that Twitter should have implemented long ago: Blocked users on Twitter can still @ mention your handle, effectively creating a hyperlink for their followers—whom you likely haven’t blocked—to harass you in their stead. Blocked users on Google+ can’t mention you afterward. Their social media pit bulls could still look you up by name, sure, but the lazier ones tend not to type the few extra keystrokes necessary to reach you.
That’s not the only edge that a quickly shrinking Google+ has over larger competitors. Google+ completely abandoned its real name policy in 2014, while Facebook still asks some users to display ID to prove their identity—a requirement that has taken a disproportionate toll on domestic violence survivors, drag performers, Native American users, and transgender people.
The central stream on Google+ is also miles more cohesive than Facebook’s algorithm-driven News Feed nightmare. I still remember the golden age of Facebook when I could actually use it to keep up with my friends: I’d log in, scroll down to the last post I remembered seeing the day before, and sign off content in the knowledge that I hadn’t missed anything important. Now, I log into Facebook and I’m instantly lost in a discontinuous mess of cat photos and political arguments. Whatever devilish equation Facebook is using, it’s almost certainly designed to keep you on the website longer, not to let you see everything you want.
That old saying about looking for answers at the bottom of a glass is doubly true for your News Feed, which has no answers and no bottom.
But the golden age isn’t over on the less populous Google+, where you could still theoretically stay on top of your social life. The only problem is you’d have to actually use it. As its pieces get stripped away and sent elsewhere, that possibility seems less and less likely. Core users have been expressing their adoration for the service in comments on Horowitz’s original post but, in the future, their numbers are sure to shrink and they will be joined by fewer users who stumble onto Google+ after making a YouTube account.
Perhaps that’s for the best. Who knows? Maybe if we had all migrated in 2011, it would have become the unnavigable morass that Facebook is today. For now, we’ll only have the dream of what could have been if we had only embraced Circles and quit playing Farmville.
Goodbye, Google+. +1.As if we needed another reason to worship athletes, select Olympic hockey players will wear state-of-the-art, 3D-scanned uniforms custom-fitted to their body parts. That's right, like superheroes.
Hockey equipment manufacturer Bauer officially unveiled the new line of high-tech hockey equipment, called "OD1N," in December. CEO Kevin Davis has touted the gear as the "concept car" of hockey equipment. Pouring a cool million dollars into outfitting six elite hockey players, Bauer used a tech-friendly combination of composite materials, compression-molded foam and 3D optical scanning to personalize the equipment, while lightening the skates, protective gear and goalie pads by one-third.
Hockey enthusiasts will see the line in action on the ice when it debuts at the Sochi Winter Games in February. The equipment will be worn by the NHL's Jonathan Toews (Chicago Blackhawks/Team Canada), Patrick Kane (Chicago Blackhawks/Team USA), Nicklas Backstrom (Washington Capitals/Team Sweden) and goaltender Henrik Lundqvist (New York Rangers/Team Sweden). Claude Giroux (Philadelphia Flyers/Team Canada) and Alex Ovechkin (Washington Capitals/Team Russia) round out the group of six players who worked with Bauer to test the equipment.
Lundqvist has been practicing and playing with the Od1n goal pads since November, while Toews, Kane and Backstrom are sporting elements of the protective body suit.
Bauer's new line of hockey equipment comprises skates, goal pads and protective base-layer suits molded to each player's form. Image: Bauer
The equipment's weight reduction should provide a significant on-ice advantage. The skates alone, with their lighter, carbon-composite blade holders, amount to roughly 1,000 fewer pounds of lifted weight during a regulation game, according to Bauer. Lundqvist will lift 180 fewer pounds with the Od1n goalie pads, which replace traditional layers of synthetic leather with compression-molded foam that can be modified depending on the goaltender's style of play.
"The benefit is not only in the quickness to the puck but in their ultimate endurance and stamina going into the third period," says Craig Desjardins, Bauer's general manager of player equipment and project leader for Od1n. "For [Lundqvist], that was the difference between getting a block or getting scored on."
Like many a concept car, Bauer also drew on new technologies via its designs. Using 3D optical scanning borrowed from the automotive industry, it manufactured protective base-layer suits molded to each player's physique. The scans generated computerized models, from which Bauer designed custom equipment.
"Being able to customize, for example, a shin guard or elbow pad based on the individual geometry of a player, we've taken the guesswork out completely," says Desjardins. "It's going to better protect you if it stays in place."
It's all very spiffy, but in automotive terms, a concept car showcases radical new developments in technology and design that make it prohibitively expensive for consumers. The cars don't often make it to mass production. The cost of Bauer's own "concept car" design, with its attendant technological advancements, places the equipment well out of reach of all but the most elite hockey players.
Much like BMW's shape-shifting sedan, the idea is to ogle Od1n, not to own it — although, Bauer will likely outfit a few more NHL bodies in the future.
Its creators are optimistic that certain elements will make their way to mass production, however.
"We're trying to invent the future of hockey equipment, to show the industry and consumers where it could go, where it will go," says Desjardins. "In the next few years, we'll be able to take that technology down into multiple price points."
So if, a few years from Sochi, your neighborhood is teeming with hockey prodigies, you'll know why.
BONUS: Sochi 2014 Opening CeremoniesDAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — An 18-year-old woman has been arrested after police in Florida say she used her 6-month-old son to batter her boyfriend, officials said Tuesday.
Beach Safety Ocean Rescue Captain Tammy Marris tells local news outlets the boy was taken to a hospital Monday afternoon where he was reportedly doing OK.
The mother, Tatyana Allen, is expected to be charged with battery and child infliction of physical/mental injury, according to Volusia County Corrections.
Officers responded shortly before 4:30 p.m. Monday to a beach in Daytona Beach, where Marris says responders found Allen had battered her boyfriend, also the baby’s father, with the child.
Details about the altercation were not released, but according to a 911 call obtained by local TV station WFTV, the mother initially reported her boyfriend was drunk and high on marijuana, and had been hitting her.
As a baby is heard crying in the background, Allen was allegedly unable to convey her location to the dispatcher until a passerby offered assistance.
At no point did the mother say her son was injured, and she declined an ambulance when it was offered by the dispatcher, WFTV reported.
Allen remained in custody and was being held without bail as of Tuesday.
It is unclear whether Allen has an attorney.Photograph by Brynn Anderson — AP
The racial fears and economic frustration surrounding Trump’s political momentum do not form in a vacuum. Here’s h ow the angry white tornado formed, and where it goes next.
When the 2016 election is over—when the months of debates, nonsensical Tweets, and bizarre news appearances have faded into the annals of history—many will try to pinpoint the moment that best summarized the mood of the country in 2015 and 2016; the one event that encapsulated the emotions that have enveloped the American electorate as they watched nearly two dozen people try to succeed Barack Obama as president of the United States.
Here’s one contender. During a Fox Business Network Republican debate in South Carolina in January, just a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses, moderators asked Donald Trump about South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union, where she cautioned voters from being drawn like moths to “the angriest voices.” Amid Trump’s usual bluster was a potent message that has resonated with his supporters:
“I’m very angry because our country is being run horribly and I will gladly accept the mantle of anger. Our military is a disaster. Our healthcare is a horror show. Obamacare, we’re going to repeal it and replace it. We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people. And yes, I am angry. And I won’t be angry when we fix it, but until we fix it, I’m very, very angry. And I say that to Nikki. So when Nikki said that, I wasn’t offended. She said the truth. One of your colleagues interviewed me. And said, well, she said you were angry and I said to myself, huh, she’s right. I’m not fighting that. I didn’t find it offensive at all. I’m angry because our country is a mess.”
If anything, Donald Trump’s diverse range of backers are united by their anger. They’re angry at big companies for moving overseas and taking jobs with them. They’re angry at banks for offering predatory loans and not being there to help clean up the mess. They’re angry that they can’t seem to lead the middle class lives their parents and grandparents enjoyed.
Trump has offered voters a simple way to channel that rage. He provides a litany of targets—immigrants, Muslims, refugees, Democrats—and he tells these people that their anger is okay, that it’s understandable, and that even if no one else with power is going to feel that anger alongside them, he will.
We’ve seen this before, notes sociologist Michael Kimmel, who is the author of Angry White Men, which traces the paths of marginalized men who turn to racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Kimmel notes that Trump “represents a long tradition” of populist politicians using race and national identity to win supporters, from William Jennings Bryan to Huey Long. Trump also invokes the nostalgia that populism thrives on, the idea that things were much better “back then.”
But this kind of anger doesn’t form in a vacuum. Here is how we got there.
America’s Face Is Changing
In Trump’s first address as a political candidate—the one where he rode majestically down his golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York City and announced that he was running for President—the real estate mogul took aim at illegal immigrants from Mexico, stating plainly that those new arrivals brought crime with them and that many of them were rapists. Later, in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernadino, Calif., Trump issued a press release advocating for a ban on Muslim entry to the United States.
“I’m watching this circus unfold on the Republican side and [seeing] the amount of permission that people are feeling finally to express the deep and abiding racism and rage,” Kimmel says.
Trump’s focus on race has won him support from white supremacists, or “race realists,” as they refer to themselves. He got attention in the weeks leading up to his second place finish in the Iowa Caucuses when he retweeted a supporter with the handle “WhiteGenocideTM.” (“White genocide” is a term far-right Internet denizens use to describe the trend of increased immigration and multiculturalism in both Europe and the U.S.)
"@WhiteGenocideTM: @realDonaldTrump Poor Jeb. I could've sworn I saw him outside Trump Tower the other day! pic.twitter.com/e5uLRubqla" — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2016
The Trump campaign did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment on this story.
Despite taking flack for the move, Trump didn’t delete the tweet.
Jarred Taylor, the founder and editor of American Renaissance and a dedicated white supremacist, recorded a robocall urging Iowa voters to support Trump in the caucuses. Taylor says that while he’s voted for Republicans in the past, Trump is the first one he’s actively campaigned for. Taylor is plain in his conviction that Trump is good for white Americans. “It’s his approach to immigration. That’s his No. 1 thing,” he says. “I’m sure that’s what is the central aspect of his appeal to most people who support him.”
Taylor maintains that most people like to live near others who are like them. “We are supposed to be rejoicing at demographic change,” he says, but he and others like him don’t feel the joy.
But America’s racial identity is changing, no matter how anyone feels about it. The share of America’s Hispanic population is expected to increase by 2030 in much of the country |
were happening in homes across the country and across everyone’s social media. He then admitted that the liberal media were asking the same questions, but not how you would expect them to be.
“These conversations are happening in news rooms and T.V. studios as well. It’s usually after the microphones are off, of after the stories been filed, after the paper has been put to bed, people’s concerns and fears and questions come out,” he claimed. “Questions that often feel out of bounds, off limits, too hot for TV.”
But Stelter was being far from honest. Although he claims that such questions were “out of bounds, off limits, and too hot for TV,” they’re not because his colleagues have been pushing them since before Trump was elected. They have even been pushed in front of Stelter on his own show several times and on CNN. He even hyped a Democrat bill that would require Trump to get a mental evaluation.
Back in February 2017, he brought on washed up reporter Carl Bernstein who claimed Trump’s thoughts were his brain tumors. “His words are an MRI of his mind. And so far that MRI is showing all kinds of masses in the brain that ought to concern not just reporters but people all over this country,” he told Stelter. And during the election, Bernstein described Trump as a “neo-fascist … sociopath.”
Bernstein had also claimed to Stelter, without citing a source, that military leaders were asking such questions about his sanity. “I think it also goes to the question that many military leaders in this questions raised by military leaders in this country now,” he smeared. “By the intelligence community. By people in Congress, about the stability of the President of the United States. This is an index of his state of mind, visually.”
And on MSNBC, Morning Joe diagnosed the President with a mental disorder while serial liar Brian Williams and his band of late-night misfits slammed Trump as a madman.
<<< Please support MRC's NewsBusters team with a tax-deductible contribution today. >>>
“My impression has been since President Trump's inauguration, there's been a lot of tiptoeing going on. His actions have been described as un-presidential, as unhinged, and sometimes even crazy,” Stelter himself touted during his anti-Trump rant. “That word crazy can be interpreted several different ways.” He then proceeded to run clip after clip of people questioning Trump’s sanity, including late-night comedians and liberal newspapers.
As for questions about Trump’s view of race, accusations of him being a racist date back to before he decided to run for president. The sheer quantity of reporters and commentators calling Trump and his cabinet racists is too many to count. Although, Stelter’s buddy Bernstein has done an unhealthy amount of both.
And just before Stelter wrapped up his opening diatribe, he had one more question to add to the tough ones: “Is it time for objective journalists, I don't mean opinion folks I mean down the middle journalists to address these questions head on. And if so, how in the world should they do they do that?” Clearly, he’s not being close to honest with the public given what has been exposed by the MRC.
With a serious tone and a straight face, Stelter opined about how tough such questions were to ask. “But we in the national news media can't pretend like our readers have viewers aren't already asking. They are asking,” he suggested. But if Stelter is to be believed, are they asking questions because of the President’s actions, or have they just been getting it pounded into them for over a year?
Transcript below:PALANPUR: Tragedy struck Khariya village in Gujarat’s Banaskantha on Wednesday when 18 bodies — all close relatives — were recovered from a river bank, taking the flood related death toll since the beginning of monsoon to 119. The toll may go up as rescue operations are on.Villagers in Khariya watched in disbelief as the bodies were found one after another from the slush and placed in a line. The victims, all from the OBC Thakor community, included eight women and an eight-year-old girl.Khariya was among 30 villages where an alert had been sounded after water level in the Banas river swelled due to influx of water from the dams following heavy downpour. “We suspect that they people were swept away after Tuesday midnight,” V M Patel, deputy mamlatdar, Kankrej, told TOI.Two Army columns, three NDRF teams and a BSF team are engaged in the rescue and relief operations, and are being aided by 10 IAF choppers in Banaskantha.The Bhavnagar-Ahmedabad highway was flooded after several villages near Dholka were inundated following release of 1.24 lakh cusecs water from the Dharoi dam. Ahmedabad collector Avantika Singh Aulakh said at least 3,858 people in 20 villages had been taken to safer locations in the district.Three days after their village, Dabhipura in Dantiwada taluka of Banaskantha, was inundated, families returned home on Wednesday. “We have lost everything. Our grain stock and utensils have been washed away. Our houses have been severely damaged,” said one of the villagers.On Wednesday, at least 650 people were rescued from villages of the district. Of these, 272 were airlifted to safety.At least 500 medical professionals, including doctors, paramedics and health workers, have been pressed into service in the district to distribute chlorine tablets and ORS packets to ensure that there is no outbreak of any epidemic. Medical staff from other districts have also been deployed in Banaskantha. Though water receded in Dhanera town, one of the worst-hit in Banaskantha, people witnessed the trail of destruction left behind by the nature’s fury. Sacks of grains rendered useless were lying on the road and people struggled to remove water from their houses.Visit our Re-post guidelines This article is copyrighted by GreenMedInfo LLC, 2015
In the Age of Toxicity one of the most common deficiencies and most life-threatening is magnesium. The good news is that it is easy to remedy...
Stress, Magnesium & Disease
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that about 60% of adults in the United States do not consume the estimated average requirement for magnesium. What they don't tell us is that this 60% is based on minimum daily estimates set by the Department of Agriculture are set terribly low, so actually the number is much higher. In the best of times magnesium intake from white processed foods is on the level of starvation of this precious and very necessary mineral. Most Americans are actually malnourished and diseased because of it and because of the toxic loads they carry in their cells and blood.
The normal accepted recommended daily dietary amount of magnesium is only 300-400 mg. Many professionals feel this to be a bare minimum. Some would say that 1,000 mg is probably more in the range of what most people need due to stress (measured by cortisol levels) causing magnesium to be dumped into the sweat in increasing quantities. Actually there are all kinds of cellular stresses that drive down magnesium levels including chemical stress.
Radiation, chemicals and heavy metals put enormous stress on organs, tissues and cells. Magnesium mediates a good part of our body's ability to deal with and remove such toxic insults. Toxicities actually increase as magnesium levels fall. In plain language that means we have more allergic reactions, come down with the flu more often (never listen or trust anything the World Health Organizations says about the flu for most cases are actually not caused by a virus but by chemical stress), suffer from diabetes (diabetes is largely a result of these toxic stresses combined with overall malnutrition especially magnesium deficiency). Magnesium is the Ultimate Heart Medicine for you will always see deficient cellular magnesium in each and every case of heart disease, stroke, cancer and neurological decline.
In the Age of Toxicity we are suffering to live through we are from conception being exposed to poison and increased radiation exposure from medical tests, constant microwave exposure, and strong increases in environmental background radiation that has increased because of the American militaries passion for depleted uranium weapons, which they use on every major battlefield in modern times.
Magnesium levels thus fall through the years and it is not easy to reverse this decline. Oral supplementation is chancy at best because high dosages loosen the intestines. My book Transdermal Magnesium Therapy was a landmark medical text in that it presented what is commonly known as magnesium oil and how it can be applied directly to the skin or put into medical baths for transdermal absorption. The second edition of this in print text will be out in late November.
Mg deficiency increases susceptibility to the physiologic damage produced by stress. The adrenergic effects of psychological stress induce a shift of Mg from the intracellular to the extracellular space, increasing urinary excretion and eventually depleting body stores.1 - Dr. Leo Galland
Recently the British Journal of Psychiatry published that people with a diet heavy in processed food had a 58% higher risk of depression. What they don't say is that the reason for the depression was lack of dietary magnesium in such diets and that depression can easily and best be treated with magnesium. What they do say is that a "whole food" diet protects against depression because of the combined effect of consuming nutrients from lots of different types of food, rather than the effect of one single nutrient. Though there is a glint of truth to this statement it hides the well-researched reality that it is magnesium levels that provide the key to our mental and emotional states.
In today's stressful world magnesium levels get driven further down. Not only does the stress eat up our magnesium stores at an accelerated pace but how we deal with our stress is also telling. For instance it's generally understood that liquor sales spike during an economic slump. According to a recent poll by Gallup Americans are downing more booze – 67% of Americans report that they consume alcohol on a regular basis. Increased alcoholic intake, which happens frequently in times of stress for some people, depletes magnesium in our bodies. Alcohol increases urinary magnesium excretion by as much as 260% above baseline values; this occurs within minutes of ingestion.2 Often by increasing magnesium, the perceived need for alcohol decreases while some of the depression and anxiety are alleviated.
Research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2002 shows that when the diets of 2,566 children ages 11-19 were studied, less than 14% of boys and 12% of girls had adequate intakes of magnesium.
We can actually see the hate and foul viciousness of some of the richest people and companies on earth in this story because the truth and facts about magnesium are well known by researchers around the world. Magnesium is one of the most well studied nutrients and smart doctors reach for it quickly for patients suffering from heart attacks or strokes. We would have an entirely different world if governments got behind magnesium supplementation. People would be healthier and happier, would miss less days of work, would be less stressed and would be able to work harder and enjoy life more. We would also cut the world's medical bill down by a trillion or two dollars. This would upset people like Bill Gates and others like him who want to cut population not increase it.
Pharmaceutical companies especially don't want us to know anything about using simple minerals to help depression, reduce violence, reduce stress or stay healthy and out of the doctor's office and out of hospitals. Since the arrival of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors antidepressants (SSRIs) and atypical antipsychotics on the market, countless studies have shown the so-called "new generation" of psychiatric drugs to be ineffective and dangerous but exceptionally profitable. There is no such thing as a substitute for the mineral magnesium.
Worldwide, sales of anti-psychotics went from $263 million in 1986 to $8.6 billion in 2004 and antidepressant sales went from $240 million in 1986 to $11.2 billion in 2004. For these two classes of drugs combined, sales went from $500 million in 1986 to nearly $20 billion in 2004, a 40-fold increase, according to Robert Whitaker, best-selling author of Mad in America.3 And God only knows how high these numbers have climbed to in the year 2010 when stress, mental and emotional disturbances are going off the charts.
Despite a dramatic increase in treatment of psychiatric disorders during the past 10 years, there has been no decrease in the rate of suicidal thoughts and behavior among adults, according to a federal study primarily funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. - The Washington Post
Police Chief Nannette H. Hegerty of Milwaukee said a few years ago that, "We're seeing a very angry population, and they don't go to fists anymore, they go right to guns," she said. "When we ask, 'Why did you shoot this guy?' it's, 'He bumped into me.' or, 'He looked at my girl the wrong way.'" said Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson of Philadelphia. "It's not like they're riding around doing drive-by shootings. It's arguments – stupid arguments over stupid things." While arguments have always made up a large number of homicides, the police say the trigger point now comes faster. In robberies, Milwaukee's Chief Hegerty said, "Even after the person gives up, the guy with the gun shoots him anyway. We didn't have as much of that before."
A marginal deficiency can easily be transformed into a more significant problem when stressful events trigger additional magnesium loss. In the extreme situations stressful events trigger sudden drops of serum magnesium leading to cardiac arrest. Even a mild deficiency of magnesium can cause increased sensitivity to noise, nervousness, irritability, mental depression, confusion, twitching, trembling, apprehension, and insomnia.
In recent years we've seen an increase of all kinds of weird violence as magnesium levels are driven lower and lower. Almost every week now we hear reports of people walking into schools in China stabbing teachers and children and in America also mass killings are slaughtering people and there they hide the fact that most of these assaulters are on pharmaceutical medications that drive their magnesium levels to the bottom.
I am in no way saying that magnesium is the answer to every problem in the world but it would go a long way to calm people down and reset the trigger points much higher. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended drinking water containing 25-50 mg of magnesium (Mg) per liter to prevent deaths from heart attack and stroke. American bottled water contains about 5 mg of Mg per liter, well below the 20 mg/l in the rest of the world's bottled water, according to the WHO. If the WHO was really interested in helping Americans, like they want to help with their dangerous vaccines, they would make sure that the government implemented these kinds of recommendations that would save countless lives.
Magnesium deficiency causes serotonin deficiency with possible resultant aberrant behaviors, including depression suicide or irrational violence. - Paul Mason
The Department of Family Medicine, Pomeranian Medical Academy, states that dietetic factors can play a significant role in the origin of ADHD and that magnesium deficiency can result in disruptive behavior.4 Even a mild deficiency of magnesium can cause sensitiveness to noise, nervousness, irritability, mental depression, confusion, twitching, trembling, apprehension, and insomnia. A significant number of researchers have shown that as much as 60-90% of illnesses are directly caused or exacerbated by stress. And in fact, numerous studies have shown that stress is related to major illnesses like heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
There is now little question that stress can kill, meaning that magnesium deficiencies can put you in your grave. Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon recognized 90 years ago that when confronted by a threat – physical or emotional, real or imagined – the body responds with a rise in blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension and breathing rate. We now know that this physiological "stress response" involves hormones and inflammatory chemicals that can foster everything from headaches to heart attacks in overdose.
It is clear that magnesium deficiency or imbalance plays a role in the symptoms of mood disorders. Observational and experimental studies have shown an association between magnesium and aggression,5,6,7,8,9 anxiety,10,11,12 ADHD,13,14,15,16 bipolar disorder,17,18 depression,19,20,21,22 and schizophrenia.23,24,25,26 So you tell me who the real terrorists are? The sea is full of magnesium and it is easily sourced and applied orally, transdermally, through IVs and even nebulized directly into the lungs.
Patients who had made suicide attempts (by using either violent or nonviolent means) had significantly lower mean CSF magnesium level irrespective of the diagnosis.27
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[2] With chronic alcohol intake, body stores of magnesium become depleted. Reasons include inadequate intake, starvation ketosis, vomiting and diarrhea, and urinary excretion. www.mgwater.com/adequate.shtml
[4] The effects of magnesium physiological supplementation on hyperactivity in children with ADHD. Mag Res 1997; 10(2):149-56.
[5] Izenwasser SE et al. Stimulant-like effects of magnesium on aggression in mice. Pharmacol Biochem Behav 25(6):1195-9, 1986.
[6] Henrotte JG. Type A behavior and magnesium metabolism. Magnesium 5:201-10, 1986.
[7] Bennett CPW, McEwen LM, McEwen HC, Rose EL. The Shipley Project: treating food allergy to prevent criminal behaviour in community settings. J Nutr Environ Med 8:77-83, 1998.
[8] Kirow GK, Birch NJ, Steadman P, Ramsey RG. Plasma magnesium levels in a population of psychiatric patients: correlation with symptoms. Neuropsychobiology 30(2-3):73-8, 1994.
[9] Kantak KM. Magnesium deficiency alters aggressive behavior and catecholamine function. Behav Neurosci 102(2):304-11, 1988
[10] Buist RA. Anxiety neurosis: The lactate connection. Int Clin Nutr Rev 5:1-4, 1985.
[11] Seelig MS, Berger AR, Spieholz N. Latent tetany and anxiety, marginal Mg deficit, and normocalcemia. Dis Nerv Syst 36:461-5, 1975.
[12] Durlach J, Durlach V, Bac P, et al. Magnesium and therapeutics. Magnes Res 7(3/4):313-28, 1994.
[13] Durlach J. Clinical aspects of chronic magnesium deficiency, in MS Seelig, Ed. Magnesium in Health and Disease. New York, Spectrum Publications, 1980.
[14] Kozielec T, Starobrat-Hermelin B. Assessment of magnesium levels in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Magnes Res 10(2):143-8, 1997.
[15] Kozielec T, Starobrat-Hermelin B. Assessment of magnesium levels in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Magnes Res 10(2):143-8, 1997.
[16] Starobrat-Hermelin B, Kozielec T. The effects of magnesium physiological supplementation on hyperactivity in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Positive response to magnesium oral loading test. Magnes Res 10(2):149-56, 1997.
[17] George MS, Rosenstein D, Rubinow DR, et al. CSF magnesium in affective disorder: lack of correlation with clinical course of treatment. Psychiatry Res 51(2):139-46, 1994.
[18] Kirov GK, Birch NJ, Steadman P, Ramsey RG. Plasma magnesium levels in a population of psychiatric patients: correlations with symptoms. Neuropsychobiology 1994;30(2-3):73-8, 1994.
[19] Linder J et al. Calcium and magnesium concentrations in affective disorder: Difference between plasma and serum in relation to symptoms. Acta Psychiatr Scand 80:527-37, 1989
[20] Frazer A et al. Plasma and erythrocyte electrolytes in affective disorders. J Affect Disord 5(2):103-13, 1983.
[21] Bjorum N. Electrolytes in blood in endogenous depression. Acta Psychiatr Scand 48:59-68, 1972.
[22] Cade JFJA. A significant elevation of plasma magnesium levels in schizophrenia and depressive states. Med J Aust 1:195-6, 1964.
[23] Levine J, Rapoport A, Mashiah M, Dolev E. Serum and cerebrospinal levels of calcium and magnesium in acute versus remitted schizophrenic patients. Neuropsychobiology 33(4):169-72, 1996.
[24] Kanofsky JD et al. Is iatrogenic hypomagnesemia common in schizophrenia? Abstract. J Am Coll Nutr 10(5):537, 1991.
[25] Kirov GK, Tsachev KN. Magnesium, schizophrenia and manic-depressive disease. Neuropsychobiology 23(2):79-81, 1990.
[26] Chhatre SM et al. Serum magnesium levels in schizophrenia. Ind J Med Sci 39(11):259-61, 1985.Mike Trout is a dude. The total package. He combines the abilities to hit for average and power and play impact defense at a premium position, with top of the charts speed that he uses both prolifically and efficiently. While metrics now exist to measure the effect of speed on player defense and baserunning, it is less simple to measure how speed contributes to one’s batting line. Let’s attempt to separate the impact of Trout’s speed on his slash line, and then do the same with a very different player with whom Trout is often compared, for MVP reasons.
Here is Trout’s 2013 performance by major batted ball types. (Popups are included in overall totals, but are not listed separately for purposes of this exercise.)
TYPE # % AVG SLG FREQ PROD Trout Mike FLY 138 31.29% 0.362 1.080 111 191 LD 107 24.26% 0.645 0.944 114 106 GB 174 39.46% 0.356 0.391 93 228 ALL BIP 0.410 0.711 178
The 3rd and 4th columns list AVG and SLG by BIP type, the 5th lists the frequency of each type relative to the MLB average, scaled to 100, and the 6th lists run value production by batted ball type, also relative to the MLB average, again scaled to 100. Trout’s strengths are numerous and obvious – he hits plenty of fly balls, many of them hit very hard, and lots of line drives too. His production on fly balls and ground balls are both about double the MLB average, thanks to his exceptional power/speed combination.
To determine how much his speed contributes to these figures, we must do both of the following:
1) Approximate how many extra hits his speed provided, and
2) Approximate how many additional total bases on existing hits his speed provided
The answer to the first point lies entirely within his population of ground balls. MLB hitters batted.237 and slugged.257 on ground balls in 2013. Trout, because of his speed, should be expected to exceed those marks, but based on his hard and soft ground ball rates, not nearly to the extent of the.356 AVG and.391 SLG he actually posted. Based solely upon the authority with which he hit the ball on the ground, Trout’s projected AVG-SLG line on grounders in 2013 would have been.267-.287. That means that Trout got approximately 16 more hits and 20 more total bases than he would have if he had league average speed.
Now let’s move on to the line drives and fly balls. Here we are not talking about adding to or subtracting from the hit total. Instead we are looking for the difference between the actual and projected spread of singles-doubles-triples within that batted ball population, based upon the relative authority with which the player being evaluated hits the ball. Trout’s isolated power on line drives is pretty much in line with what it should be, but the average hitter with this level of isolated power hit more than the single line drive homer that Trout hit in 2013. What the average player is accomplishing by hitting the ball out of the park, Trout is doing while keeping the ball inside it. Trout’s actual 1B-2B-3B line on liners was 43-21-4, the typical spread by a hitter with similar power would be 43-24-1 – that’s a difference of three total bases attributable to Trout’s speed. Essentially, three doubles turned into triples. Let’s do the same with fly balls. Trout’s actual 1B-2B-3B split on flyballs was 8-11-5. The typical split for an MLB hitter with similar projected isolated power on fly balls would be 9-14-1, resulting in a net difference of five total bases attributable to Trout’s speed.
Overall, we’ve come up with 16 additional hits and 28 additional total bases attributable to Mike Trout’s speed. Let’s look at what this does to his overall BIP batting statistics by category below.
TYPE # % AVG SLG FREQ PROD Trout Mike FLY 138 31.29% 0.362 1.043 111 183 LD 107 24.26% 0.645 0.916 114 103 GB 174 39.46% 0.267 0.287 93 126 ALL BIP 0.376 0.650 150
Trout’s overall slash line goes from.323-.432-.557 to.295-.409-.509 – still pretty darned good. It’s pretty handy, however, to be able to isolate the impact of his speed upon his raw numbers. This enables to separately age his pure batting ability and the speed component as the years go by. Trout is obviously a great hitter with or without his speed, but there are other speed-oriented players whose offensive value essentially disappears once you peel away the speed. Past and present BABIP overachievers like Ichiro Suzuki or Michael Bourn, among others, could be more accurately evaluated using such an approach.
As a point of reference, let’s do the same exercise for another great hitter, who just happens to be a slow baserunner. He also just happens to be Trout’s immediate neighbor in the MVP voting the last two years, Miguel Cabrera.
TYPE # % AVG SLG FREQ PROD Cabrera Miguel FLY 141 31.06% 0.475 1.475 110 347 LD 107 23.57% 0.672 0.836 111 100 GB 174 38.33% 0.283 0.289 90 136 ALL BIP 0.415 0.762 194
The fundamentals are actually quite comparable to Trout’s. Their fly ball and line drive frequency are almost identical, while Cabrera’s fly ball production is far superior, mainly because his ability to pull the ball in the air is far advanced compared to his younger counterpart. (Pulling the baseball in general will be examined in greater detail in an upcoming post.) Cabrera’s actual ground ball production is much lower than Trout’s, at least before we adjust for speed.
Cabrera’s hard and soft grounder marks are both far superior to Trout’s, and just about anyone else’s for that matter. So much so that Cabrera’s projected AVG-SLG on grounders would be.337-.368, meaning that his lack of speed cost him nine hits and 13 total bases on ground balls alone in 2013. Cabrera’s actual isolated power on line drives is a relatively meager.164, a little more than half of Trout’s actual mark. This makes little sense, as Cabrera impacts the baseball even more than Trout does. Cabrera’s actual 1B-2B-3B split on liners was 63-13-0; the typical spread for a hitter with similar power would be 48-27-1, for a whopping loss of 16 total bases attributable to Cabrera’s lack of speed. As for fly balls, Cabrera had an actual 1B-2B-3B split of 11-13-1, while a hitter with similar projected isolated power would have a 6-18-1 spread, a loss of five total bases attributable to his lack of speed. As great as he was and is, upward adjustment for those bases lost turns him into an even greater hitter – from a.348-.442-.636 line into a.364-.456-.697 Hornsby-esque monster. His adjusted BIP numbers appear below.
TYPE # % AVG SLG FREQ PROD Cabrera Miguel FLY 141 31.06% 0.475 1.511 110 358 LD 107 23.57% 0.672 0.974 111 114 GB 174 38.33% 0.337 0.368 90 203 ALL BIP 0.434 0.836 223
This is an imperfect but advantageous method to approximate the effects of player speed on their slash lines. My gut, and the scout in me surmises that it might be overstating the ground ball impact, and understating the line drive/fly ball impact, while coming pretty close overall. The essence of player evaluation is peeling back as many layers as possible to identify the true player within, and this is just another small step toward that end.Maryland police charged a black man with a hate crime after he allegedly spat in the face of a disabled white man and shouted “all white people are evil.”
Marquis Evans-Royster, 27, walked up to a 52-year-old homeless disabled white man while on a city bus, WJLA-TV reported Monday. Authorities maintained Evans- Royster told the man he owed him because of slavery.
“You owe me for making my grandmother a slave,” Evans-Royster said to the man. According to police, he also turned to other passengers on the bus and yelled, “All white people are evil.” He also allegedly told two of the bus’ white passengers they should be dead.
Evans-Royster spat in the man’s face and decided to go through the man’s pants pockets. At one point during the exchange, he warned that he would throw urine in the man’s face.
The police charged Evans-Royster with a hate crime for his actions, an ABC 7 journalist reported
A New York City elderly man was allegedly attacked by a young black teenager while the two shared an elevator at the New York Subway earlier this month. The teen reportedly expressed a hatred for white people before punching the man in the face.
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Screenshot:There are articles floating around the internet suggesting that the Russian government has claimed that America never landed on the moon. This is absolutely ridiculous. Neither the Russian government nor any of its representatives have alluded to this. They are, however, calling for an international investigation regarding “murky details” that surround the U.S. moon landings between 1969 and 1972. (source)
Why a mainstream news outlet like the Washington Post would title an article “Russian official wants to investigate whether U.S. moon landings actually happened ” is curious, to say the least (source)
Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s official government Investigative Committee, has argued that such an investigation could bring to light what’s been kept in the dark for a number of years with regards to these trips into outer space.
Markin and the Russian government are referring to the disappearance of film footage from the original moon landing in 1969. They are also referring to the (approximately) 400 kilograms of lunar rock that was obtained during multiple missions between 1969 and 1972.
“We are not contending that they did not fly (to the moon), and simply made a film about it. But all of these scientific – or perhaps cultural – artefacts are part of the legacy of humanity, and their disappearance without a trace is our common loss. An investigation will reveal what happened.” – Vladimir Markin (source)
From the U.S. side, NASA did admit that the original recordings of the first moon landing had been completely erased. Despite this, they also said that they had managed to remaster the original television broadcast of the landing.
According to Bob Dean, United States Army Command Sargent Major, who also served at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) of NATO as an intelligence analyst, there is more footage that has been erased and hidden than we’ve not been told about:
“Ladies and gentlemen, my government, NASA, which many of us in the United States say stands for Never A Straight Answer, proceeded to erase 40 rolls of film of the Apollo Program — the flight to the Moon, the flight around the Moon, the landings on the Moon, the walking guys here and there. They erased, for Christ’s sake, 40 rolls of film of those events. Now we’re talking about several thousand individual frames |
reads.
That sign has gone viral with many applauding the dealership.
The panhandlers responded with their own signs, including one that read, 'You can't afford a one-bedroom apartment on $10 per hour.'
They were eventually arrested on vagrancy charged after a call to Brighton Police.HAD the images from the jail in New Orleans been part of a film, people would have accused Hollywood of sensationalism. As cameras rolled in the cell block, inmates openly shot up heroin, smoked crack, snorted cocaine, swallowed pills, gambled with dice, guzzled beer and even brandished a loaded handgun. In another video, an inmate who had worked out a way to come and go at will offered a guided tour of Bourbon Street, reminding viewers that he was supposed to be locked up.
The videos, apparently shot by inmates in 2009, were shown on April 2nd in a federal courtroom amid a bitter fight over conditions in Orleans Parish Prison (OPP). Within hours, it seemed, everyone in New Orleans had seen them, and they were getting heavy play on CNN and elsewhere as well.
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If the videos were the talk of the town, some of the other testimony was more disturbing, if less entertaining. Thirty-two stabbings were reported in the prison last year, and nearly 700 assaults. Forty prisoners have died since 2006. Suicides are frequent; homosexual rape is said to be common.
The court battle revolves around mandatory reforms at OPP that have already been agreed to by the city’s jailer, Sheriff Marlin Gusman, the Justice Department and the Southern Poverty Law Centre. The objecting party is Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who will have to pay for the required changes, at a cost that he says could run to $22m annually for the next five years. The city has already agreed to clean up its beleaguered police department under a similar consent decree; the bill for that is expected to reach $55m over five years. Taken together, Mr Landrieu says, the two pricey decrees will force him to make severe cuts to city services.
Mr Landrieu is not arguing that all is well at the jail, but he says the city should not have to give Mr Gusman a blank cheque to fix it. He believes the real problem is mismanagement, not lack of money; as evidence, he cites the videos and a federal corruption investigation that has already snared two jail officials.
It will be up to Lance Africk, a federal judge, to decide whether to approve the consent decree, how much the reforms will cost and who should oversee them. A decision may be a couple of months away. In the meantime, New Orleans has burnished its reputation as America’s most lawless city.One of Thailand's most exotic looking residents is the endangered Malayan Tapir, Tapirus indicus. It is also known as the Asian Tapir as it is the only species of tapir native to Asia. Despite their extended prosboscis resembling a small trunk they are in fact most closely related to horses and rhinoceroses.
They are a very shy and cryptic animal and little is known about their full status in Thailand. A gentle herbivore that can be found in peninsula and western Thailand only, with Huai Kha Kaeng Wildlife Sanctuary and isolated sections of Mae Wong National Park thought to be the northern most limit of their Thailand range [source: IUCN]. They have protected status in Thailand and are very rarely physically seen. Although some wildlife photographers have photographed them through the lens such as Bruce Kekule.
They eat fruits, leaves, roots and tubers, wood, bark, and bryophytes although have 3 known predators themselves: tigers; leopards; and of course, man. The biggest known threat to their continued survival in Thailand is real and potential habitat loss from human expansion and deforestation.
A camera trap video of Malayan Tapirs in Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand.
As you can see in the video one of the tapir is significantly larger than the other, this is a female. Malayan tapirs have large, stocky bodies with a prominent, prehensile proboscis formed by an extended nose and upper lip. Individuals range from 250 to 540 kg, with a length of 1.8 to 2.5 m and a height of 0.9 to 1.1 m. Females are larger than males by up to 100 kg.
Tapirs are known to be solitary so this may be a courtship pairing, but then again it may not, as no specific courtship behaviour is evident in the footage. One hopes.
The sneezing is a very interesting observation, of course all mammals sneeze, but what are the chances of catching a wild animal doing it?Although it wasn’t the first time he came out against fighting in the NHL, Mike Milbury took a strong stance in opposition of it last week when he said it was time for the league to “grow up and get rid of it.”
You can view that exchange below:
Milbury might be against fighting now, but he was involved in more than 70 brawls over the course of his NHL career, per HockeyFights. Because of that he knows first-hand what these fights can do to a person to a person and over the years, he feels he’s gained a greater perspective.
“I’ve been TKO’d before and missed games because I’ve been dizzy, lost in space, tired,” Milbury said, per the Los Angeles Daily News. “I just can’t imagine that being somebody’s condition for most of the days of the rest of their lives.
“I mean, I’ve been out as a player since 1987 and fortunately haven’t had any issues – although some may disagree (laughing). … The fact I can still count and put a sentence together, sure, I feel fortunate. No one was worried about all that when we played. We saw the older players hobble around, but we were chasing the dream, chasing glory and we felt it was worth that price.”
That being said, Milbury felt players like him knowingly agreed to the possibility that they would suffer broken bones and almost any injury, but they weren’t “really signing up to be mentally incapacitated in some form or another for the rest of our lives.”
He knows of other former NHL players that haven’t been as fortunate as him. Former San Jose Sharks and Colorado Avalanche forward Scott Parker is just 36 years old and has difficulty getting out of bed. Meanwhile, concussions ended the careers of players like Marc Savard and Chris Pronger.
The counterargument in favor of fighting is that it helps police the game and might even serve as a deterrence against big, high hits, but he doesn’t buy into that philosophy.
“Back when the big, bad Flyers won (the Broad Street Bullies of the early 1970s), intimidating teams physically with their fighting, the league took steps appropriately to curb that,” Milbury said. “And since that time it’s been slowly diminishing.”
He pointed to the decline of pure enforcers in the NHL as a sign of that.
At the end of the day, he realizes that some people will question his stance based on his history, but he feels that it was appropriate for him to adjust his opinion over the years in light of new information.
Follow @RyanDadounCanal History
The New York State Canal System is not only rich in history, but also culture. Many immigrants worked long and hard on "Clinton’s Ditch" to create this magnificent waterway. Folklore, songs and speech lingo emerged from those individuals working along the Canal. As the population grew and the Canal prospered, it became not only a transportation waterway, but also a vacation area for the well-to-do.
At one time, more than 50,000 people depended on the Erie Canal for their livelihood. From its inception, the Erie Canal helped form a whole new culture revolving around canal life. For many, canal boats became floating houses, traveling from town to town. The father would serve as captain, while the mother cooked for the family and crew and the children, if old enough, would serve as "hoggees" and would walk alongside the mules to lead them along at a steady pace.
For those who traveled along the Canal in packet boats or passenger vessels, the Canal was an exciting place. Gambling and entertainment were frequent pastimes on the Canal and often, families would meet each year at the same locations to share stories and adventures.
Today, the Canal has returned to its former glory and is filled with pleasure boats, fishermen and cyclists riding the former towpaths where mules once trod. The excitement of the past is alive and well.
The Erie Canal: A Brief History
"Traveling on the Erie Canal"
The original Illustration was taken from Graham's Magazine, 1828. The source image was Handset and Letterpress Printed at the Printing Office of the Farmers' Museum, Cooperstown, NY.
Begun in 1817 and opened in its entirety 1825, the Erie Canal is considered the engineering marvel of the 19th Century. When the federal government concluded that the project was too ambitious to undertake, the State of New York took on the task of carving 363 miles of canal through the wilderness with nothing but the muscle power of men and horses.
Once derided as “Clinton’s Folly” for the Governor who lent his vision and political muscle to the project, the Erie Canal experienced unparalleled success almost overnight. The iconic waterway established settlement patterns for most of the United States during the 19th century, made New York the financial capital of the world, provided a critical supply line which helped the North win the Civil War, and precipitated a series of social and economic changes throughout a young America.
Explorers had long searched for a water route to the west. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the lack of an efficient, safe transportation network kept populations - and trade - largely confined to coastal areas. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Allegheny Mountains were the Western Frontier. The Northwest Territories that would later become Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio were rich in timber, minerals, and fertile land for farming. It took weeks to reach these precious resources. Travelers were faced with rutted turnpike roads that baked to hardness in the summer sun. In the winter, the roads dissolved in a sea of mud.
An imprisoned flour merchant named Jesse Hawley envisioned a better way: a Canal from Buffalo on the eastern shore of Lake Erie to Albany on the upper Hudson River, a distance of almost 400 miles. Long a proponent of efficient water transportation, Hawley had gone bankrupt trying to get his product to market from what is now Rochester. Sent to debtor’s prison as a result, Hawley wrote a series of essays which were published in the Genesee Messenger beginning in 1807, describing in great detail the route, costs, and benefits of what would become the Erie Canal.
Hawley’s essays caught the eye of Assemblyman Joshua Forman, who submitted the first State legislation related to the Erie Canal in 1808, calling for a series of surveys to be made examining the practicality of a water route between Lake Erie and the Hudson River. Forman even traveled to Washington to make a case for federal support for the Canal, at which point Thomas Jefferson described the proposal as “a little short of madness.”
In 1810, Thomas Eddy, Treasurer of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company and State Senator Jonas Platt, hoping to get plans for the Canal moving forward, approached influential Senator De Witt Clinton -- former mayor of New York City and a rising political star -- to enlist his support. On March 13th, a measure was introduced in the State Senate naming a Canal Commission and directing the commissioners to survey a route for the Canal which would connect the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. With Clinton’s support, the measure passed, and the Erie Canal era had begun.
Though Clinton had been recruited to the Canal effort by Eddy and Platt, he quickly became one of the Canal’s most active supporters, and went on to tie his very political fate to the success of the Canal. Today, De Witt Clinton and the story of the Erie Canal are inextricably linked, and there is no doubt that Governor Clinton grasped at the time the revolutionary impact the Canal would have once it opened:
“The city will, in the course of time, become the granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of manufactures, the focus of great moneyed operations,” said Clinton. “And before the revolution of a century, the whole island of Manhattan, covered with inhabitants and replenished with a dense population, will constitute one vast city.”
Though the War of 1812 created a lengthy interruption in the project’s progress, Clinton and his fellow Canal proponents continued to work to build support for the waterway. In 1816, as a sitting Canal Commissioner, DeWitt Clinton submitted a formal petition to a joint committee of the New York State Senate and Assembly to create a canal system between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. This document, known as the "New York Memorial", generated a series of public meetings in support of the Canal’s construction and effectively began the movement in the state to build the waterway. Ultimately, over one hundred thousand New Yorkers would sign the petition, helping to build a ground swell of public support for the project.
On April 15th, 1817, the New York State Legislature finally approved construction of the Erie Canal, which Jesse Hawley had written so compellingly about just a decade earlier. The bill authorized $7 million for construction of the 363-mile long waterway, which was to be 40 feet wide and four feet deep. Construction would begin on July 4th, in Rome, NY and would take eight years. Also in 1817, Clinton would leverage his success championing the Canal’s construction into the Governor’s office, his election culminating his meteoric political rise over the years.
The completion of the Erie Canal spurred the first great westward movement of American settlers, gave access to the rich land and resources west of the Appalachians and made New York the preeminent commercial city in the United States.
“The Marriage of the Waters”
A mural decoration in the DeWitt Clinton High School, New York City, showing a scene connected with the ceremony of opening the Erie Canal in 1825. - Copyright 1905, C.Y. Turner
A mural decoration in the DeWitt Clinton High School, New York City, showing a scene connected with the ceremony of opening the Erie Canal in 1825. - Copyright 1905, C.Y. Turner
In 1825, Governor Dewitt Clinton officially opened the Erie Canal as he sailed the packet boat Seneca Chief along the Canal from Buffalo to Albany. After traveling from the mouth of the Erie to New York City, he emptied two casks of water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic Ocean, celebrating the first connection of waters from East to West in the ceremonial "Wedding of the Waters".
The effect of the Canal was both immediate and dramatic, and settlers poured west. The explosion of trade prophesied by Governor Clinton began, spurred by freight rates from Buffalo to New York of $10 per ton by Canal, compared with $100 per ton by road. In 1829, there were 3,640 bushels of wheat transported down the Canal from Buffalo. By 1837 this figure had increased to 500,000 bushels; four years later it reached one million. In nine years, Canal tolls more than recouped the entire cost of construction.
Within 15 years of the Canal's opening, New York was the busiest port in America, moving tonnages greater than Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans combined.
The impact on the rest of the State can be seen by looking at a modern map. With the exception of Binghamton and Elmira, every major city in New York falls along the trade route established by the Erie Canal, from New York City to Albany, through Schenectady, Utica and Syracuse, to Rochester and Buffalo. Nearly 80% of upstate New York's population lives within 25 miles of the Erie Canal.
The Erie Canal's success was part of a Canal-building boom in New York in the 1820s. Between 1823 and 1828, several lateral Canals opened including the Champlain, the Oswego and the Cayuga-Seneca.
Between 1835 and the turn of the century, this network of Canals was enlarged twice to accommodate heavier traffic. Between 1905 and 1918, the Canals were enlarged again. This time, in order to accommodate much larger barges, the engineers decided to abandon much of the original man-made channel and use new techniques to “Canalize” the rivers that the canal had been constructed to avoid the Mohawk, Oswego, Seneca, Clyde and Oneida Lake. A uniform channel was dredged; dams were built to create long, navigable pools, and locks were built adjacent to the dams to allow the barges to pass from one pool to the next.
With growing competition from railroads and highways, and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, commercial traffic on the Canal System declined dramatically in the latter part of the 20th century.
Today, the waterway network has been renamed again. As the New York State Canal System, it is enjoying a rebirth as a recreational and historic resource. The Erie Canal played an integral role in the transformation of New York City into the nation's leading port, a national identity that continues to be reflected in many songs, legends and artwork today.
The Story of the New York State Canals
The account of the history of the Erie Canal and the “lateral” canals, as referenced by Roy Finch, was written in 1925 in celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the Erie Canal. Mr. Finch was employed with the New York State Engineer and Surveyor, a defunct governmental agency that managed the Canal System from the 1850’s to the mid-1900’s. He was intrigued by the canals and, in celebration of the birth of the canal, thought it useful to share his knowledge and experience with all.In the past few years, products at CES have increasingly focused on putting the Internet in everything, no matter how "dumb" the device in question is by nature. It's how we've ended up with stuff like this smart hairbrush, this smart air freshener, these smart ceiling fans, or this $100 pet food bowl that can order things from Amazon.
Now that phenomenon is reaching its logical endpoint: during the company's CES press conference today, LG marketing VP David VanderWaal says that "starting this year" all of LG's home appliances will feature "advanced Wi-Fi connectivity." One of the flagship appliances that will make good on this promise is the Smart Instaview Refrigerator, a webOS-powered Internet-connected fridge that among other things supports integration with Amazon's Alexa service.
Alexa isn't an inherently bad fit for a refrigerator, which like the Amazon Echo itself can just sit in the corner of your kitchen awaiting your command. The main problem there is that LG hasn't announced how much this fridge will cost; it's almost certainly going to be more than the cost of adding an Amazon Echo to your current kitchen setup or even the cost of an Echo plus a new dumb fridge that just sits there and keeps food cold without connecting to your network. Other potentially useful additions include "stickers and tags" you attach to specific items in the fridge to denote what food is stored where and when it expires, which lets the fridge generate alerts when foods are close to spoiling. A wide-angle camera mounted inside the fridge lets you look inside your fridge remotely just in case you think you left something off your grocery list.
Things veer off track when you start talking about the fridge's other features. For instance, you can tap twice on its 29-inch 1080p touchscreen to turn the screen "transparent" and see what's in your fridge, something that would normally require grabbing the handle of the fridge and applying an amount of force sufficient to open the door. That the fridge is powered by webOS also opens it up to Internet browsing and apps, just in case the experience of standing in front of your regular fridge with a phone or tablet isn't enough.
The ongoing problem with all of these Internet-connected accessories is security, or the complete lack thereof. There's no Windows-esque unified platform driving these things that any one company can update. Companies that make appliances are typically pretty bad about keeping them updated, especially once the accessories are a few years old. The proliferation of all these difficult-to-secure endpoints makes large-scale botnets easier to build. Privacy is a concern, too—even without being compromised, companies can use their smart devices to serve up ads or give audio or video recordings to law enforcement.
But anyway, have fun ordering groceries by yelling at your fridge.
Listing image by LGWith Election Day almost upon us, there's been a lot of complaining about the integrity of the voting process. While our current system is cumbersome, it's pretty darned good at maintaining the integrity of everyone's vote. The thing is, you have to trust the system—that your paper vote was counted correctly—because there's no way to go back and check.
In a perfect world, though, we would be all be able to independently verify that everyone's vote was accurately recorded while keeping everyone's vote private, and all without making the voting process too cumbersome. Don't think it's possible? It could be done by cleverly using encryption methods, as this video from Numberphile explains:
One system that works is to encrypt everyone's vote using a homomorphic encryption algorithm. If something is homomorphically encrypted, then arithmetic operations like multiplication or addition will have the same effect as on the unencrypted value. So for example, using a homomorphic algorithm, if you encrypt a 5 and a 2, multiply the encrypted values together and then decrypt the result, you'll get a 10. Watch the full Numberphile clip for a full explanation of this.
The important thing to know here is that this technique can be used to determine the result of an election without decrypting any one person's vote. Because everyone's vote is encrypted, then everyone's result can be made publicly available. This way, you could check to see if your vote was recorded correctly, and everyone can verify that the math to get the vote total was done correctly. Then election officials can publicly decrypt the total to see who won.
This method is more transparent and more secure than our current voting method. Everything is simultaneously completely public and completely encrypted so there is never any doubt that the system works. And it just might become the way we vote in the near future.
Source: Numberphile(CNN) Despite a positive public front, congressional Republicans are quietly voicing frustration that President Donald Trump's big tax announcement Wednesday emanated from a disjointed process -- and lacked crucial components necessary in the push to secure the first major tax reform in more than 30 years.
Administration officials say the White House wanted to take the lead on this -- rather than wait for the Hill -- to garner headlines ahead of Trump's 100th day in office.
It will be "the biggest tax cut and largest tax reform in history of this country," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said earlier Wednesday, describing the proposal to The Hill.
House Speaker Paul Ryan put a positive spin on things during his own news conference Wednesday, noting that he saw the administration's announcement as a clear example that "progress is being made and we're moving and getting on the same page."
Indeed, House and Senate lawmakers all touted the administration's announcement and professed genuine enthusiasm for a big White House push on what will inevitably be a thorny and difficult process.
"The principles outlined by the Trump Administration today will serve as critical guideposts for Congress and the administration as we work together to overhaul the American tax system and ensure middle-class families and job creators are better positioned for the 21st century economy," Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said in a joint statement.
But the lead-up to the release was far from a smooth process behind the scenes. The Trump administration has ruffled GOP feathers on Capitol Hill by getting in the way of legislators' efforts to fix the tax system.
"It's not tax reform," said one senior GOP aide. "Not even close."
While GOP lawmakers and aides directly involved in the process acknowledge both publicly and privately they are happy the White House is kicking into gear, none of the key players were given a heads-up before Trump announced he would be releasing his principles last week, according to multiple House and Senate GOP aides.
"We get that they want make a big show of leading the way on this, but that's not how this is supposed to work," one aide told CNN, adding that discussions between House and Senate tax writers and their administrating counterparts had been ongoing, if still far from any concrete agreement or pathway forward.
The White House defended the plan, which was presented in a single-page sheet during a briefing Wednesday afternoon.
"This isn't going to be easy. Doing big things never is," said Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council. "We will be attacked from the left and we'll be attacked from the right, but one thing is certain: I would never, ever bet against this President. He will get this done for the American people."
The topline principles Trump is releasing leave out the important signs of actual reform, not the least of which include: how to pay for it, what's the pathway through the House and Senate, where the key players off the Hill that have enormous lobbying clout stand on things, and more.
For some aides and lawmakers involved in the process, Trump's approach is being taken as a direct affront to Ryan and Brady, who spent more than a year on their tax proposal with the repeatedly stated goal of "once in a generation reform."
"It's really easy to talk about big cuts," a senior GOP aide told CNN. "We're about solutions. They aren't to that point yet, either on the policy or on the personnel level, and it's both obvious and disruptive to the process."
As the tax debate intensifies, one question above all is sure to emerge: How would the President's plan affect his own taxes?
For that, there is no answer, given his refusal to release his tax returns. Mnuchin said the President had "no intention" of releasing them now.
"The President has released plenty of information and I think has given more financial disclosure than anybody else," Mnuchin said. "I think the American population has plenty of information on it."Good news! We want more submissions so we’re extending our team-up contest with Monday Night Magic through next weekend! The 24th is the last day to submit your drawings for our No, Seriously, You Draw the Card Contest!
Look at the first place prize:
1st Place—A signed print of Fauna Shaman by Steve Prescott and a brand new Hipsters of the Coast t-shirt, a Grand Prix Calgary Playmat, a three packs of Modern Masters!
A reminder: draw whatever the hell you think fits “Revenge of Necromancy” art-wise. Use pen and paper or maybe Microsoft Paint to generate your vision. You could sculpt it or photograph it or paint it or make a diorama and make a Vine video of it – just get it to us by THIS SUNDAY NIGHT!!!
Here’s the description of the scene on the card as Wizards imagines it:
Color: Black
Spell location: A nasty trash heap outside a small settlement
Action: We see a RAG MAN, a hunched and withered humanoid figure who appears to be held together by frayed ropes and worn leather straps. The being is standing triumphantly atop a heap of bones, broken armor and weapons, and other less identifiable trash. It is holding up a skull in one hand; the other hand clutches a filthy sack that is bulging with “treasures.” A glow of purplish power surrounds the Rag Man and the skull.
Focus: The glowing figure
Mood: Creepy yet eco-friendly
A pretty focused description for sure! So just go crazy. Totally ignore Wizards’ description if you wanna. Make whatever you think best illustrates the concept of the card. Draw someone reanimating bodies and storming a castle. Screen grabs of scenes from Army of Darkness are a great place to start!
Just get going! We’ve got prizes that keep getting better. LOOK!
1st Place—A signed print of Fauna Shaman by Steve Prescott and a brand new Hipsters of the Coast t-shirt, a Grand Prix Calgary Playmat, a three packs of Modern Masters (a draft set) from MNM!
2nd Place—Judge Promo Command Tower, and two packs of RTR!
3rd Place—A Huntmaster of the Fells, used by a real life Hipsters writer in a sanctioned event, and a pack of RTR!
(Prizes will increase as we get more prize donations and as we get more applicants!!!)
So get a move on! Email your submissions to [email protected] and we’ll get to judging.Two Michigan cities By Scott Sumner
Tyler Cowen recently quoted from a paper by Ed Glaeser and Wentao Xiong:
“In 1961, Benjamin Chinitz argued that New York City was more resilient than Pittsburgh during the 1950s, because New York City had a culture of entrepreneurship that meant that its business leaders were good at adapting to industrial decline. In modern language, we might describe New York as having a healthy endowment of entrepreneurial capital because its dominant industry, garment production, had limited-scale economies and few barriers to entry. In contrast, Pittsburgh had U.S. Steel, and the steel industry had large-scale economies, which meant that Pittsburgh trained company men instead of entrepreneurs.”
This reminded me of a very interesting study that compared two cities in Michigan, Flint and Grand Rapids:
In 1946, sociologist C. Wright Mills and economist Melville Ulmer concluded the fortunes of two of Michigan’s largest cities, Flint and Grand Rapids, were headed in opposite directions. Seventy years later, their predictions are getting new notice from academics. The researchers warned Flint was overly dependent on its big employers even though its workers made 37 percent more than the national average at the time. The warning seemed out of place. By 1950, Flint was labeled “the happiest city in Michigan” and the “epicenter of the American Dream,” thanks to its thriving auto industry. Grand Rapids, whose economy was defined by its numerous small businesses, was less flashy. But it offered its citizens more mobility and opportunity for its middle class that would help it survive tough times, the researchers concluded.
Flint was still booming in the late 1960s, so it looked like this 1946 prediction was wrong. But then the prediction suddenly came true. Flint’s metro population fell from 445,589 in 1970 to 410,849 in 2015. In contrast, Grand Rapids has been booming, with its metro population soaring from 539,225 in 1970 to 1,038,583 in 2015. And both of these places are in the rustbelt state of Michigan.
A 2016 paper by Michael DeWilde has lots of interesting things to say about this study, and the subsequent evolution of these two Michigan cities. Here’s one example, which reminded me of Tyler’s recent discussion of Utah:
If the Weberians are right and social capital comes first, where does it come from specifically? We can report that 90% of the business leaders we interviewed in West Michigan spoke, unprompted (though occasionally apologetically), about religion as the source for much of what was “uniquely good” about living in and doing business in the region. There was an understanding that, as one person put it, “maybe West Michigan isn’t for everybody and maybe that isn’t a bad thing.” What he meant was that it was alright with him that people self-selected to be here on the basis of shared values with roots in particular religious traditions. The cultural norms that expressed themselves in West Michigan because of those traditions were responsible, to some large degree, for our economic and civic success. This was a widely shared view, even if put more inclusively in other interviews. And there is a shared concern that as religion qua religion becomes less important to younger generations, much of what is uniquely good about the Grand Rapids area will ultimately be lost–work ethic, fair dealings without the added cost of legal oversight, stewardship, philanthropic spirit, and so on. Eighty percent of those same business leaders expressed this concern. As one CEO lamented, “The values that made West Michigan successful are in decline.” Interestingly, in his new book, Our Kids, Robert Putnam echoes this observation, citing declining church attendance and the diminished community role of churches as a factor in our collective decreasing social capital (affecting us all, but disproportionally hitting poor communities). The evidence suggests conservatives and fair-minded liberals are right to point out that there is a connection between religion and social capital (i.e., religious traditions are one source of social capital, an important though sometimes ambiguous one given temptations to exclusivity), but as formal religious institutions become less important to Americans, the question for many becomes: what might take those institutions’ places as it relates to the formation and extension of social capital?
Don’t take this the wrong way; I’m not suggesting that “religion” is good for growth. It may be in some cases, but there are many types of religious culture. I’d guess that Pakistan is more religious than San Jose, California, but that doesn’t make it more prosperous.
DeWilde’s report is not too long, and well worth reading if you want to know more about what’s going on in different parts of America.
Flint’s downtown is little changed from the 1960s:
While Grand Rapids is booming:
Other growing midwestern cities like Columbus, Madison and the Twin Cities tend to be state capitals and/or homes to major universities. Grand Rapids is probably the most successful midwestern city that is neither.Story highlights Robert Benson photographed a sex-doll factory in Southern California
The nine-person team at Abyss Creations produces 300-400 dolls a year
(CNN) Inside a nondescript building in a Southern California business park, a small team assembles some of the most expensive and sought-after sex dolls in the world.
Abyss Creations makes RealDoll, a life-sized silicone figure with a fully poseable skeleton, interchangeable faces and penetrable orifices starting at $6,500. The company says it rarely pays for advertising, relying on word of mouth and a steady stream of press coverage since its first celebrity endorsement: shock jock Howard Stern in 1996.
Photographer Robert Benson discovered the factory last year. He had been searching for a sex-doll manufacturer to photograph during a visit to Japan. Much to his surprise, one of the most famous manufacturers was just a few miles from his San Diego home.
During a shoot in April, Benson captured the process of making a single doll from mold to makeup, and he met the team of nine that produces 300-400 dolls a year.
Photographer Robert Benson
"Everyone was super passionate about what they're doing, and they take the work seriously," Benson said. "I guess the fascination wears off after a week and it becomes like any other job."
Read MoreSAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Gold futures rose 1.5% Tuesday after military hostilities on the Korean peninsula gave investors more reason to seek safety in the metal.
Gains in gold for December delivery GCZ10 accelerated during the session, and the metal settled up $19.80 to $1,377.60 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gold futures rose modestly Monday, helped by worries about European sovereign debt as investors wanted to hear more details about a bailout package for Ireland.
North Korea and South Korea, however, have become the latest focus of worry for investors.
The two countries exchanged artillery fire at a South Korean island near their western border, according to reports. South Korea’s military had gone to its highest state of alert.Read more on Korean tensions.
A rising dollar kept gold prices from ballooning even higher. The dollar index DXY, -0.04% which gauges the U.S. unit against a basket of six other currencies, gained 1.2% to 79.615.
The euro declined sharply, following comments from German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the European currency’s fragile state ahead of the Irish rescue. The single currency recovered somewhat later on. See more on trading in the dollar and other global currencies.
Silver, meanwhile, wobbled after opening higher, at times dipping in the red.
The December contract SIZ10 however, held on to gains to close up 11 cents, or 0.4%, to $27.57 an ounce.
Gold and silver are “profiting from the renewed rise in risk aversion, which has intensified again by an attack on a South Korean island by North Korea overnight,” analysts at Commerzbank said in a note to clients.
The silver contract had gained 1% on Monday. “Silver is still reaping benefit from robust [exchange-traded fund] demand,” the Commerzbank analysts said.
The iShares Silver Trust SLV, +0.27% had inflows of 27 metric tons Monday. Since the start of the month, 700 metric tons of silver found their way to the ETF.
By contrast, gold holdings of the SPDR Gold Trust GLD, +0.17% the largest gold-backed ETF, have fallen by 8 metric tons this month, and 4.2 metric tons of gold left the ETF on Monday.
Copper tracked equities and other commodities such as oil to end lower on Tuesday. December copper HGZ10 declined 5 cents, or 1.4%, to $3.71 a pound. That was copper’s second consecutive closing in the red, and it comes after the metal rose above $4 per pound earlier this month.
Platinum and palladium followed gold. Platinum for January delivery PLZ10 added $2.20, or 0.1%, to $1,657.70 an ounce.
Palladium for December delivery PAZ10 rose $6.40, or 0.9%, to $691.10 an ounce.
Providing critical information for the U.S. trading day. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Need to Know newsletter. Sign up here.Prominent British Green politics campaigner and former Green party leader Natalie Bennett has refused to accept that “anything significant had happened” on New Year’s Eve 2015/16 in Cologne, Germany, whilst speaking on British radio Tuesday morning.
Engaged in a conversation on mass migration to Europe with LBC host Nick Ferrari, Bennett was promulgating the repeatedly debunked notion that the majority of the millions of young men who had come to the continent over the course of the migrant crisis were “well educated”.
Challenging the claim, host Ferrari brought up the Cologne attacks, which Bennett dismissed as “entirely debunk |
resorted to legal action to prevent publication, but the case was lost. When the book finally saw the light of day, Malamuth cynically announced the publication was taking place “without censorship either by Trotskyists or by Stalinists”! The publication of Stalin was originally planned for 1941. But while the book was in the process of being printed and distributed to wholesalers, the US government intervened to halt publication. Following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Roosevelt did not wish to annoy his new ally – Joseph Stalin.
“It [Trotsky’s Stalin] was printed by its publisher, Harper and Brothers, but withdrawn by them prior to public sale late in 1941”, writes Frank C. Hanighen, feature writer for La Follette’s Progressive in the 1st May 1944 issue. “The publishers gave as the reason for withdrawal ‘a concern for the work’s adverse effect on international relations’ says Mrs Lombard…”
Mrs Helen Lombard, a Washington Evening Star journalist, exposed the book’s suppression.
“One member of Congress was asked not to let the book get out of his hands nor permit it to be examined by any other person … State Department officials have made informal suggestions that any quotation from the book would be harmful to Soviet-American relations…” explained Frank Hanighen. (Reprinted from the British Socialist Appeal, August 1944).
Only in 1946, after Britain and the United States had fallen out with Stalin, did the book finally appear. As expected, the publication of Stalin provoked outrage from the Stalinists. They had cheered the suppression of the book, which they hoped would be permanent. But the times had changed and the indignation of the Stalinists knew no bounds.
Five years after it had been withdrawn to avoid embarrassment to Stalin, it was now seen as a useful stick with which to beat him. And Malamuth’s insertions provided the necessary “adjustments” to turn Trotsky’s work into a weapon in the struggle not only against Stalinism but also against Bolshevism. For their part, Harpers were keen to make money from its delayed publication. The whole episode is characterised by the most blatant cynicism on all sides: the publishers, Malamuth and the US government all conspired to use and abuse this book for their own ends. The one voice that was silenced was that of the author, Leon Trotsky.
Malamuth’s omissions
When Stalin was finally published, a great amount of the material had been left out of the book, despite being translated by Malamuth who judged this material to be “superfluous”.
There was therefore clearly a great deal of work to be done in restoring as far as possible the original, although unfinished, text of Trotsky. The first task was to remove the political interpolations of Malamuth. In the archive, we again went through the text in order to identify the gaps and omissions. Fortunately, most of the missing material was numbered and could, with considerable detective work, be reunited with the original text to one degree or another.
On a visit to the archive in 2005, we purchased copies of the missing material in the form of microfilm. With assistance from Philip Wallace at the Trotsky collection at Glasgow Caledonian University, photocopies were produced from the film. Then these copies were meticulously typed up, including all the changes, comments and deletions.
This labour of love took a considerable amount of time. Once accomplished, we were then able to painstakingly piece together the original, but still unfinished, work and to slot together all the missing parts of the book. Any small gaps we missed initially were restored thanks to the help of Steve Iverson in Boston, who made visits to the archives on our behalf.
From the time we first obtained the necessary material to the moment we were ready to publish the new edition more than ten years has passed. We have had the benefit of a dedicated team of people who have sacrificed a great deal of their time and effort to ensure the success of this important project, none of whom were able to work on it full-time. The first task was to copy the missing material in a way that could be transferred to a computer, since the original was in too poor a state to be scanned. This onerous task took about two years and was carried out by Hazel Brookshaw, who struggled single-handedly to decipher and type up all the photocopies into useable word files.
The most complicated and time-consuming task was to find the most appropriate places to insert the new material. This actually involved completely reworking the text, work that proceeded painfully slowly. This was the task of Alan Woods who, using his political judgement and knowledge of Russian, managed to complete this important but extremely complicated and difficult work over a period of about three years. The task was further complicated by the discovery of new material, both in English and Russian. Other material, which did not fit, had to be placed in the most appropriate place and political context.
We would also like to thank Philip Wallace from Glasgow Caledonian Archive of the Trotskyist Tradition for his help in copying the microfilm. We must thank Hazel Brookshaw for typing up the photocopies and later proofreading the completed text. We also thank Ana Munoz for her efforts in typing up the corrections and proofreading. In addition, we wish to thank proofreaders Julian Sharpe, Sion Reynolds, Phil Sharpe and Guy Howie for proofreading. We must especially mention John Roberts for his valuable contribution of further proofreading, footnotes, suggestions and oversight. We would also like to thank Thomas Ford and the other librarians at Houghton Library, Harvard University, for their help and assistance. Thanks finally to Timur Dautov for his assistance in translations from Russian.
In publishing this book we have finally fulfilled the wishes of Trotsky’s widow, Natalia Sedova, to expunge all traces of Malamuth from the text. Trotsky’s critique of Stalin and Stalinism stands in its own right as a classic work of Marxism. We fervently hope that our decision to republish this important work by Trotsky, purged of the earlier distortions, will serve to restore Trotsky’s last work to the place of honour it deserves in the political literature of the 20th century.This richly spiced kale soup, redolent of cinnamon, saffron, and ginger, is as delicious as it is good-for-you. Two words: TRY IT.
If it seems to you like I’ve been making lots of soup lately, you’re right. Not that it’s been especially cool here, but once there’s even a hint of Fall nip in the air, I crave nothing more than a hot bowl of soup. I haven’t wanted to even glimpse a salad; give me all my veggies immersed in a comforting bowl of broth!
I firmly believe that simmering in soup is one of the healthiest ways to cook vegetables. Unlike boiling or even steaming, to a certain extent, all of the nutrients remain in the broth to be eaten along with the vegetables.
And did you know that cooking actually increases the nutrients available in some vegetables, including carrots? Lightly cooking carrots breaks down the cell walls, increasing the amount of absorbable beta carotene.
This particular soup is a nutritional powerhouse. The carrots provide beta carotene, the chickpeas offer protein, and the kale…well the kale is a powerhouse all on its own. It’s rich in Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, potassium, copper, manganese, and calcium. Plus, it’s one of the cruciferous vegetables proven to reduce the risk of a number of cancers as well as heart disease. Eat more kale!
But don’t try this recipe because it’s good for you; try it because it’s delicious: sumptuously seasoned with cumin, saffron, cinnamon, ginger, and allspice, yet not overwhelming or hot-pepper spicy.
And I hesitate to say this because I know my daughter’s tastes aren’t always in line with other 10-year-olds’, but she couldn’t get enough of it, even though her first look made her go, “Yuck.” But after the first bite, she was draining the entire bowl. We all were.
I count this one among my family’s favorite recipes. Do yourself a favor and give it a try!
Print 5 from 4 votes Add to Recipe BoxGo to Recipe Box North African Chickpea and Kale Soup Okay, I made up the North African part. This seasoning combination is of my own devising, but it conjures up images of Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt in my imagination. If you can get saffron, please use it. It offers a unique flavor that there’s just no substitute for. Prep Time 15 minutes Cook Time 55 minutes Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes Servings 6 Author Susan Voisin Ingredients 1 large onion chopped
2 carrots sliced or diced
4 cloves garlic minced or pressed
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/8-1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
generous pinch saffron lightly crushed
2 bay leaves
1 3- inch cinnamon stick
3 cups cooked chickpeas or 2 cans, drained and rinsed
8 cups vegetable broth or water plus bouillon
1 large bunch kale at least 8 cups, thick center ribs removed discarded, leaves chopped
about 2 cups water
salt to taste Instructions Heat a large saucepan or Dutch oven. Add the onion and carrot and cook over medium-high heat until the onion begins to brown (about 5 minutes). Add the garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Add the spices, including bay leaves and cinnamon stick, and cook, stirring, for another minute. Add the chickpeas and stir to coat them with the spices. Pour in the 8 cups of vegetable stock, bring to a boil, and reduce heat to a simmer for 20 minutes.
Add the chopped kale and stir. If necessary add water to cover the kale and cook until it is tender, about 10-25 minutes, depending on how cooked you like your kale. Check frequently to see if it is becoming dry and add water as needed. Add salt to taste and serve. Notes Under the new Weight Watcher’s Freestyle plan, this soup has zero smart points, as long as you use a low-calorie broth. If you add the optional quinoa, it’s 2 smart points per serving. For a delicious one-pot meal, add a half cup of uncooked quinoa with the vegetable stock.Under the new Weight Watcher’s Freestyle plan, this soup has zero smart points, as long as you use a low-calorie broth. If you add the optional quinoa, it’s 2 smart points per serving. Nutrition Facts North African Chickpea and Kale Soup Amount Per Serving (1 serving) Calories 199 Calories from Fat 27 % Daily Value* Total Fat 3g 5% Sodium 54mg 2% Total Carbohydrates 36g 12% Dietary Fiber 6g 24% Protein 11g 22% * Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. Tried this recipe? Post a photo and mention @susanffvk or tag #fatfreeveganStory by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore Screenplay by Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore First Draft September 29, 1995 1 A BLACK VOID 1 We can hear movement. Strange skittering sounds, like razor-claws on metal... the hiss of pneumatic hoses... the whirr and click of servos... liquid gurgling... an eerie, alien cacophony. 2 EARTH 2 appears, hanging now in the starry blackness. The alien noises continue, and far in the distance we hear the muffled THUMP of what could be a distant explosion. Alien TEXT suddenly appears next to Earth, and we REVEAL we are in -- 3 INT. BORG RECON CENTER 3 The image of Earth is actually on a monitor, which is only one of DOZENS of MONITORS covering a huge wall. We don't see anything of the rest of the room, but the technology in view is distinctly alien and bizarre -- a mixture of organic and mechanical elements. Circuitry and optical cabling are side-by-side with what looks almost like arteries and organs. We can still hear the creepy skittering and gurgling noises. Occasionally, a SHADOWY FORM sweeps past the camera, vaguely humanoid but we can't tell who or what it is. All of the monitors are active, and they present myriad IMAGES and SOUND -- all related to EARTH HISTORY. The screens show everything from written Chinese... to Renaissance paintings... to black and white newsreel footage of World War Two... to what look like clips of space battles from the 24th century. The entire range of human history dancing across the monitors. The effect is dizzying -- we get the feeling that whoever is watching this is studying the human race. There is another THUMP and the wall of monitors SHUDDERS slightly. We hear the VOICE of what we will come to know as the BORG COLLECTIVE -- thousands of voices speaking at once : BORG Restrict search parameters to 1-9- 9-8 through 2-0-8-4. The images on the monitors now change to show us images from 21ST CENTURY Earth history. Again, it's a collection of still photography, video footage, text, artwork, etc. We hear snippets of sound- bites, music, speeches from the period. A lot of enticing details. As the images race across the monitors, we should learn the following. -- The turn of the 21st century brought chaos. Regional wars, the collapse of the United Nations. Societal break-down. Crime, starvation, desperation. -- A Third World War. Nuclear explosions, environmental disasters, tens of millions dead. The United States ceases to exist. All political authority vanishes. Humanity teetering on the edge of the Second Dark Age. -- The image of a single man -- ZEPHRAM COCHRANE. A visionary scientist. He see the spacecraft he created out of a nuclear missile. He flies the first warp test, breaking the light barrier. It changes history. -- Grainy black and white images of a VULCAN SCOUT SHIP landing on Earth. They saw Cochrane's flight, followed him back to Earth, and made First Contact with the human race. -- Humanity turns the corner. First Contact with an alien civilization brings the planet together as never before. Humans and Vulcans working together, beginning to solve long-standing problems with new technology. We see an early replicator producing food for the starving millions. A new World Government is formed. -- People from planet Earth and people from Vulcan form an Alliance. They call it the United Federation of Planets. And they commission a fleet of starships for protection and exploration. They call it Starfleet. -- These are images recounting the birth of the Star Trek universe. Another muffled EXPLOSION, this one stronger, SHAKES the entire wall. One of the monitors BLOWS OUT in a shower of sparks. And now a new voice, a woman's voice, low, threatening, with a slight metallic inflection, speaks for the first time: WOMAN'S VOICE Stop search. Calculate temporal coordinates. J-Fourteen. Another explosion ROCKS the room and it takes us to: 4 EXT. SPACE - A BORG SPHERE 4 A huge, spherical Borg warship as it takes a phaser shot from an unseen vessel. The BLAST smashes into the Borg Sphere, but the massive ship continues. The Sphere returns FIRE. FOLLOW the Borg fire to -- 5 A FEDERATION STARSHIP 5 locked in battle with the Borg Sphere. The Borg fire DESTROYS the Federation ship in a fiery blast. 6 NEW ANGLE 6 as the Borg Sphere flies away from the wreckage of the decimated starship, and as it does, we reveal that this is just one small part of -- 7 A MASSIVE SPACE BATTLE 7 involving dozens of Starfleet and Borg vessels, engaged in a fierce FIREFIGHT as far as the eye can see. Ships turning, twisting, firing, exploding. Lots of movement. It's a spectacular sight. The Borg Sphere is moving away from the battle, heading off in another direction. 8 NEW ANGLE 8 In the middle of the battle. A BORG CUBE is attacking a smaller Federation starship. The starship is taking quite a beating... explosions all along the hull... it doesn't look like it can take much more of this. Suddenly a spread of FOUR TORPEDOES come blazing in from O.C. The torpedoes SLAM into the Borg ship, causing massive damage. 9 THE USS ENTERPRISE NCC 1701-E 9 SOARS into view and moves to protect the beleaguered starship. The Enterprise is Starfleet's newest and most powerful vessel. An elegant and majestic ship. But unlike the last Enterprise, Starfleet has opted for a more muscular vessel and the hull is studded with weapons and other defensive armory. We get the feeling this Enterprise is ready for anything. 10 INT. ENTERPRISE-E - BRIDGE 10 The Bridge has been redesigned. A single Captain's chair dominates the room, and surrounding consoles and stations all face inward instead of out, giving Picard instant access to his officers. PICARD in the Captain's chair. RIKER at a new Ops station. DATA at the helm. WORF at Tactical. TROI at Communications, various CREWMEMBERS at their posts. The ship is at Red Alert and everyone is tense. PICARD Signal the Endeavor to fall back. We'll cover them. TROI Aye, sir. She works her console. 11 EXT. SPACE - THE ENTERPRISE & BORG SHIP 11 The Endeavor moves off as the Borg FIRE at the Enterprise and BLASTS the saucer section. This should also produce an unusual effect -- instead of the traditional "bubble" shielding, the new armor of this Enterprise ABSORBS the blast and dissipates the energy across the hull. The ship is undamaged. 12 INT. BRIDGE 12 The ship is ROCKED by the blast. DATA Dispersive armor is holding. PICARD Bring us about. Target Borg ship alpha four, port side battery. WORF Port battery, ready sir! PICARD Fire. 13 EXT. SPACE - THE ENTERPRISE 13 As RAPID PHASER SHOTS leap out from half a dozen points along the ship's port side. (NOTE: The phasers also look different, more along the lines of a gatling gun). The Borg Cube EXPLODES. The Enterprise flies through the debris. 14 INT. BRIDGE 14 Including MAIN VIEWSCREEN, which has a view of the chaotic battle surrounding them. Another Borg vessel looms into view. PICARD Starboard battery -- fire. 15 EXT. SPACE 15 The Enterprise fires a burst of phasers -- but this time, the phasers have no effect. We see a strange SHIELDING appears around the Borg ship. 16 INT. BRIDGE 16 On the main viewer, the massive Borg ship looms closer. DATA The Borg ship has modified its shields, Captain. Our phasers will no longer be effective. PICARD Ready quantum torpedo. WORF Aye, sir. Only three left. Another JOLT as we're hit. GEORDI'S COM VOICE La Forge to bridge. PICARD Go ahead. INTERCUT: 17 INT. MAIN ENGINEERING 17 Where GEORDI and N.D. Engineers are rushing about, hard at work. Geordi is no longer wearing his VISOR -- he now has artificial ocular implants for eyes. They have a distinctive electronic look to them. GEORDI Captain, I'm starting to worry about the hull integrity. We've been running the support field at full power for three hours straight. I don't know how much longer it's going to hold up. PICARD Understood. Keep me informed. END INTERCUT: 18 INT. BRIDGE 18 The Borg cube is huge on the main viewer as the Enterprise rushes toward it. TROI Incoming transmission from the Borg. PICARD On screen. Data works and the viewer changes to a view of the INTERIOR of the BORG CUBE. A vast CHAMBER crammed with HUNDREDS of BORG DRONES standing upright in individual alcoves. They're everywhere -- on the ceiling, walls, floor. This is a BORG COLLECTIVE -- hundreds of Borg that form a gigantic "hive" mind. The Borg are half- man/half machine. No individual personalities. No feelings. They have only one goal in life: to assimilate new races into their collective. To become a Borg is to experience living death. When they speak, they speak as a collective -- thousands of voices speaking as one: BORG Your defense perimeter is useless. You will be assimilated. PICARD (to Borg) Break off your attack. By now, you must realize you can't win... BORG Your opinion is irrelevant. We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. PICARD We'll see about that... (to Worf) Fire. Worf works. 19 EXT. SPACE - THE ENTERPRISE - CLOSE ON TORPEDO BAY 19 A QUANTUM TORPEDO BLASTS out of the launcher and heads toward the Borg cube. This torpedo is completely different than the traditional photon torpedo. It oscillates and changes shape and color as it streaks toward the Borg ship. 20 THE BORG SHIP 20 as the quantum torpedo HITS IT. But instead of exploding on the surface, the torpedo PIERCES the ship like an armor-piercing shell and momentarily VANISHES from view. The ship then EXPLODES like a star going supernova -- bright light and shock waves. 21 INT. BRIDGE 21 The ship is ROCKED violently by the shock wave. People hanging on. DATA Main power still on-line, Captain. Riker looks at his console. RIKER Casualties are light, Captain. Minor buckling on the port nacelle. Nothing serious. WORF Incoming message from the Starship Intrepid. Admiral Hayes. PICARD On screen. The viewer shows ADMIRAL HAYES on the Bridge of his starship. ADMIRAL HAYES The new quantum torpedoes are doing the trick, Jean-Luc. We've destroyed forty-seven Borg ships so far... and only lost fifteen of our own. (beat) But one of the Borg ships has broken through our defenses, and it's heading directly for Earth. Can you handle it? PICARD Absolutely. ADMIRAL HAYES Good hunting. Hayes out. PICARD Mister Data, set a pursuit course. Maximum warp. 22 EXT. SPACE - THE ENTERPRISE 22 as it breaks away from the battle...and races INTO WARP. 23 EXT. SPACE - EARTH 23 There are Starfleet satellites and space stations in close orbit. The Borg Sphere seen before enters frame. The satellites open fire, but they have little effect on the massive Borg Sphere, which returns fire, EXPLODING them in orbit. The Sphere heads down toward the Earth... 24 INT. BRIDGE 24 DATA We are approaching the Terran System, Captain. PICARD Go to impulse. Where's the Borg ship? DATA It has entered Earth orbit. (off console) Correction -- it is not in orbit. It is heading directly toward the surface. PICARD What? Picard gets up, moves to Data's console. RIKER (incredulous) Some sort of suicide tactic? DATA Unknown, sir. Suicide tactics are not normally associated with the Borg. Data reacts to his console. DATA Sensors show a temporal signature emanating from the Sphere. High concentrations of tachyons... Picard studies Data's monitor. PICARD And chronometric particles... it's as though they're trying to create a temporal vortex... A beat as Picard makes a shocking realization. PICARD Time travel... they're attempting time travel... (beat) Full power, Mister Data. Worf, quantum torpedoes at my command! WORF Aye, sir. 25 EXT. EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE 25 The Borg Sphere GLOWING RED and beginning to burn with friction as it PLUMMETS toward Earth... 26 NEW ANGLE - THE ENTERPRISE 26 plunging down into the atmosphere, giving chase... 27 INT. BRIDGE 27 Urgent. WORF Range -- fifty kilometers. DATA A temporal vortex is forming directly ahead of the Sphere. 28 EXT. EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE 28 Just ahead of the Sphere we see a TEMPORAL VORTEX opening -- a maelstrom of light and energy stretching into infinity. ENERGY explodes from the vortex as the Sphere begins to go inside... 29 THE ENTERPRISE 29 as it's HIT by the tremendous energy blast from the vortex. The ship spins around, nearly rips apart. 30 INT. BRIDGE 30 Everyone THROWN to the deck. Consoles sparking. Power failing. SHAKING. RIKER Main power off-line! DATA Switching to emergency back-ups. Riker checks a console. RIKER We're caught in some kind of energy wake from the vortex... PICARD Worf... torpedo... now! Worf works... 31 EXT. EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE 31 Another QUANTUM TORPEDO is launched from the Enterprise. But just before it hits the Borg Sphere, the Sphere VANISHES inside the vortex. The torpedo hits the roiling energy of the Vortex and detonates with a harmless flash. The Vortex itself starts COLLAPSING... 32 INT. BRIDGE 32 The shaking subsides. DATA I have helm control. PICARD Where's the Sphere? WORF They have traveled into the vortex... through time. Disturbed reactions. DATA The vortex is collapsing, sir. PICARD Contact Starfleet Command. WORF No response. (reacts to console) I'm not reading any Starfleet com traffic in this entire sector. TROI (off console) Captain, I've scanned the planet. The atmosphere contains a high concentration of methane, carbon monoxide and fluorine. The oceans have been chemically altered, as well. PICARD On screen. She works, and on the View screen EARTH appears as seen from orbit. The crystal blue marble is now covered by a thick, turbulent DARK ATMOSPHERE -- polluted and ugly. Reactions. PICARD Life signs? TROI Population... thirty-five billion... (reacts) All Borg. A shocking moment. DATA (off console) The planet's surface is covered with Borg technology. (beat) So is the moon... and three other planets in this solar system. TROI But how? PICARD They must've done it in the past... they went back and changed history... RIKER (stunned) They did it... they assimilated Earth. WORF But if they changed history... then why are we still here? DATA We were caught in the temporal wake from the vortex. It must have protected us from any changes in the time-line. Worf's console sounds an alarm. WORF Captain, there are five Borg ships closing in on our position. PICARD (making a decision) Data, set a course for that vortex. TROI Captain...? PICARD We have to follow them back... repair whatever damage they've done to that time-line. DATA (working) Course laid in. Engaging impulse engines. The ship is suddenly ROCKED. 33 EXT. SPACE - ENTERPRISE & BORG SHIPS (OPTICAL) 33 The Enterprise is being chased by FIVE BORG SHIPS as it heads down toward the planet. The Borg vessels FIRE on the Enterprise. 34 INT. BRIDGE 34 As before. The ship is shaking. WORF Hull integrity down to thirty percent... PICARD Steady as she goes. 35 INCLUDE VIEWSCREEN (OPTICAL) 35 Ahead of the ship, we see the VORTEX collapsing. The shaking increases. A console EXPLODES. WORF Borg vessels are closing to two thousand meters. The ship is HIT AGAIN AND AGAIN. On the View Screen, we're nearly on the vortex, but it's closing fast. PICARD Take us in! 36 EXT. SPACE - ENTERPRISE & VORTEX (OPTICAL) 36 The Enterprise just barely makes it inside the vortex as it finally COLLAPSES. Both the Enterprise and the vortex VANISH. CUT TO: 37 EXT. SPACE 37 An empty star field. Suddenly, the VORTEX APPEARS and the Enterprise comes ROARING out into space. The vortex VANISHES behind the ship. 38 INT. BRIDGE 38 The shaking subsides. Everyone exchanges a look, tries to re-orient themselves. PICARD Report. RIKER We're still in Earth orbit. PICARD On screen. 39 INCLUDE VIEWSCREEN 39 Which shows Earth. The Borg pollution is gone. PICARD What year is it? DATA (working) According to our astrometric readings... the year is 2063. WORF Captain, I've found the Borg Sphere. It's on the far side of the planet...firing at the surface. PICARD (to Data) Intercept course, full impulse. (to Worf) Weapons status? WORF Phasers are off-line... we have two quantum torpedoes left. But the computer targeting system has been destroyed. PICARD Go to manual. Worf pops open a panel and a high-tech TARGETING console emerges with a small MONITOR and a traditional CROSS- HAIR in the center. Worf grabs the targeting hand- controls -- futuristic joysticks. 40 EXT. SPACE - THE BORG SPHERE 40 The ship is FIRING its weapons down toward the planet as the Enterprise comes up over the horizon. 41 INT. BRIDGE 41 As before. Worf works his controls. A complex array of grids, coordinate information, speed data, and other weapons info on the monitor screen. He begins trying to focus the cross-hairs on the Sphere. PICARD (over above action, to Troi) Track their weapons fire. TROI (off console) Western hemisphere... North American continent... DATA We are within torpedo range. RIKER They've seen us. They're taking evasive action. PICARD (urgent) Mister Worf? Worf struggles with the targeting system. WORF Target... The crosshairs keep missing the image of the Borg Sphere, which is now twisting and turning to evade us. Troi reacts to her console. TROI Captain, they're firing at a nuclear missile silo... in central Montana. WORF (struggling) Target... PICARD (worried) Montana... The crosshairs finally LOCK on the Borg Sphere. WORF Target locked! PICARD Fire! 42 EXT. SPACE - THE BORG SPHERE 42 The quantum torpedo streaks in from off-camera and slams into the Borg ship. It penetrates the Sphere as seen before... a long beat... and then it EXPLODES. 43 INT. BRIDGE 43 As everyone reacts to the destruction of the Sphere. But Picard has no time for celebration. PICARD (to Data) Mister Data, I want to know the exact date and time. (to Riker) Give me a damage report on that missile silo. DATA (works) Today is March second, 2063. The time in Montana is oh-eight-forty- five. RIKER (works) Looks like they damaged the silo... PICARD Life signs? RIKER Can't tell. Long-range bio- sensors are off-line. Picard thinks for a moment... makes an instant decision and turns to Worf. PICARD Worf, have Doctor Crusher, Mister La Forge and a security team meet me in Transporter Room Three. Civilian clothes. WORF Aye, sir. Worf works. Riker turns to him, curious. RIKER Captain? PICARD In twenty-four hours, Zephram Cochrane is supposed to conduct the very first warp test... from a missile silo in Montana. If I'm right, the Borg were trying to change the course of human history by killing him or destroying his ship. RIKER (nods in understanding) And if they succeed, humans won't make First Contact with the Vulcans tomorrow. (beat) As First Officer I should be the one beaming down... PICARD Normally, I would agree. But in this case, the mission requires a certain knowledge of 21st century history. You're many things, Number One, but you're not much of an historian. He grins slightly, has to agree. RIKER Good luck, sir. PICARD I'll keep in contact. You have the Bridge. Picard EXITS... CUT TO: 44 INT. TRANSPORTER ROOM 44 Picard, Geordi and THREE SECURITY GUARDS are checking their phasers and tricorders. Everyone is wearing civilian clothes. Geordi has a large engineering kit... Transporter Chief pulling on a civilian jacket. She looks a little frazzled - it's been a long day in Sickbay. BEVERLY Will somebody please tell me where we're going? Beverly joins them on the pad. PICARD Montana. (to Chief) Energize. BEVERLY Montana? Well, that answers everything. Why the hell are we -- They DEMATERIALIZE. CUT TO: 45 EXT. MONTANA PLAINS - CONTINUOUS - DAY 45 Picard, Geordi, Beverly and the Security Team MATERIALIZE on the vast, rolling plains of Montana. BEVERLY (continuing) -- going to Montana? Picard and Geordi take out their tricorders and start scanning the landscape. GEORDI (off tricorder) I have the silo, sir. Bearing three one zero... distance, three hundred meters. PICARD Let's go. They start walking... BEVERLY Go where? Hello? Is anyone going to tell me what we're doing here? PICARD We're here to find Zephram Cochrane. He may be injured or dead. BEVERLY Cochrane... the inventor of warp drive? PICARD Yes... BEVERLY But he's been dead for three hundred... (realizes, long sigh) Oh God... we've gone back in time again, haven't we? PICARD I'm afraid so. If the Borg succeed in preventing First Contact with the Vulcans... Earth will remain in the Second Dark Age... an easy target when the Borg arrive in the 24th century. BEVERLY Well, why didn't you just say so in the first place? Picard gives her a look. As they keep walking... CUT TO: 46 EXT. SPACE - THE ENTERPRISE 46 hanging in orbit of Earth. 47 INT. ENGINEERING 47 CLOSE ON A DEAD CREWMEMBER lying on her back. A sheet is covering her face. A hand reaches in, pulls back the sheet, revealing the face of a crewman. TROI Lieutenant Sandra Farrel. WIDEN to REVEAL Troi and Data. Data is holding back the sheet while Troi scans the body with a tricorder. There is repair work going on in the b.g. Two medical N.D.s stand by. TROI It appears death was caused by a plasma discharge. (beat) I'll note in her record that she never left her post. Troi glances at Data, who is clearly disturbed by the sight of the dead woman, holding his EMOTIONS in check with difficulty. TROI Did you know her? DATA Not very well. We met shortly after the Enterprise-E was commissioned. I found her to be a most... promising officer. Troi looks at him in concern. TROI Data... are you sure you're all right? DATA I am still having difficulty integrating certain emotions into my programming. Grief, loss, remorse... TROI We still have to make reports on ten more crewmen killed in action. Maybe you should deactivate your emotion chip until we're done. Data considers. DATA No. Human beings do not have that luxury, and neither should I. TROI I will admit... there are times when I wish I had an emotion chip I could turn on and off. RIKER'S COM VOICE Riker to Data. DATA (taps combadge) Go ahead, Commander. INTERCUT: 48 INT. BRIDGE 48 Riker, Worf, N.D.s at their stations. RIKER We're reading some kind of gas leak in the Environmental Control Room. Take a repair team down and check it out. DATA On my way, Commander. As Data EXITS... 49 EXT. SPACE - THE ENTERPRISE 49 A WIDE SHOT of the ship. CAMERA CLOSES ON the AFT SECTION of the ship, moving underneath of the hull, pushing in on an area at the very bottom of the Enterprise. 50 INT. ENVIROMENTAL CONTROL 50 Data and ENSIGN PORTER ENTER through a set of doors. The lights are off in the room, dim. This is a large room crammed with many conduits, gas tanks, 24th century machinery and monitors. It's normally unmanned -- this is where oxygen, gravity, heat, and other environmental conditions of the ship are controlled. In a far corner of the room a CONDUIT leading to a series of high-pressure TANKS labeled "D-O2" has ruptured and is SPEWING a corrosive, poisonous GAS. Data scans it with his tricorder. DATA (to Porter) One of the diathermic oxygen tanks has been damaged. PORTER (shocked) Diathermic oxygen? DATA It is a new subsystem of Nova Class ships. It regulates hydropressure and temperature variance. (beat) Remain here. The gas is highly corrosive to organic material. It would liquefy your flesh on contact. PORTER Be my guest, sir. Data walks over to the spewing gas tank, and without concern shoves both hands into the corrosive gas...... groping around for the broken conduit, finally grabs hold of it... and with android strength BENDS the metal conduit back into the bulkhead. The gas stops leaking. Data is completely unaffected by the corrosive gas. DATA (to Porter) Begin a diagnostic on the safety interlocks. There appears to have been some damage during the attack. PORTER Right. Porter moves around a corner, behind some equipment, out of Data's vision... 51 NEW ANGLE - PORTER 51 who opens a PANEL on the wall. But instead of the neat and orderly Starfleet technology, he is confronted by a bizarre amalgam of organic and mechanical cabling, diodes and what almost look like arteries. Some of the tubes are pulsing with fluids and energy. Porter reacts. PORTER What |
to inform them their accounts with the bank will be terminated. One such organization has carried out relief work in crisis-stricken Gaza for over a decade.
In formal letters issued to a think tank, a charity and a North London mosque, HSBC claimed continued provision of its services would counter its “risk appetite".
Family members of a man who runs the think tank have also received similar letters from HSBC. Butthe multinational bank reportedly offered no explanation for its decision to withdraw its banking servicesin these cases.
HSBC is closing down accounts of registered charities supporting civilians in Gaza http://t.co/mVIxEXXvsa#LobbyHSBCforGaza — Shahbaz Husain (@ShahbazWeb) July 30, 2014
Finsbury Park Mosque
Finsbury Park Mosque, the first of these charitable organizations,received a letter dated July 22 from HSBC confirming its bank account would be terminated. The bank notified the mosque’s treasurer that the account would officially close on September 22. The only explanation offered in the letter for this sudden termination was that the provision of such“banking services”now fell outside HSBC’s“risk appetite.”
Abu Hamza, who was convicted in the US of terrorist activities in May, formerly ran the mosque. Following Hamza’s departure from this role in 2005, the mosque's chairman, Mohammed Kozbar, insists a considerable degree of work was carried out to transform the establishment's image. Whether HSBC targeted the mosque as a result of Hamza's criminal conduct, however, remains unclear.
Mohammed Kozbar expressed disbelief that HSBC failed to offer him or the mosque’s treasurers an opportunity to address its underlying concerns. Insisting the organization’s financial flows are legitimate and firmly rooted in Britain, he is unable to comprehend the bank’s motivation for terminating the registered charity's account.
"For us it is astonishing - we are a charity operating in the UK. All our operations are here in the UK and we don't transfer any money out of the UK. All our operations are funded from funds within the UK,” he told the BBC.
"They have put us now in a very, very difficult situation - this is the only account we have,” he added.
Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour MP for Finsbury Park who has worked with the mosque since it was first built, condemned HSBC’s actions, stating he was “shocked” and “appalled” at the bank’s decision to withdraw the mosque’s banking services.
Ummah Welfare Trust
Another organization targeted by HSBC in this fashion is the Ummah Welfare Trust, an international relief and development charity that works to alleviate suffering and poverty throughout the world. Based in Bolton, the charity has channeled £70m to various projects in approximately 20 countries across the globe. It has also worked closely with the troubled Gaza Strip for a decade.
In a letter, also dated July 22, HSBC informed the trust its account would be terminated. The bank offered the same explanation it had given the Finsbury Park Mosque – the “provision of [such] banking services now falls outside our risk appetite.”
The charity has been an exemplary account holder at HSBC, according to the trust's directorMohammed Ahmad.In an effort to understand the motivations behind HSBC’s decision, Mohammed reportedly asked the bank's officials why the charity’s account was being terminated. He received no response.
@HSBC_UK_Press Its pretty shame HSBC targets Muslim Charities for their #SupportGaza. Israeli lobby group #HSBCpic.twitter.com/UNF2bSfdcq — Mohamed Roshen (@Mroshen) July 30, 2014
Ahmad alleges the charity has been targeted by HSBC as a result of its efforts to provide emergency relief to Gaza in the form of grants, food aid, medical aid, and ambulances.
“This is the second time a bank has done this to us. Barclays did the same thing during the last Gaza war”, he told RT on Wednesday.
HSBC's motivation to terminate the charity's account is a direct result of stringent influence exercised by an array of pro-Israel lobby groups that are “lobbying hard to cripple and stop our work in Gaza”, according toAhmad.Some of these pro-Israel groups are spreading damaging and inaccurate misinformation about the Ummah Welfare Trust, he claims.
One such group, Stand for Peace, has suggested on its website that the trust has links to Hamas. But Ahmad vehemently denies these allegations.
Because these nebulous organizations are “not newspapers or tabloids, we cannot take action”, Mohammad claims.And in the face of such blatant misinformation, the charity's reputation can be hard to maintain, he admits.
Mohammad emphasizes Ummah closely monitor organizations they work with to protect the integrity of their relief efforts, consciously avoiding any groups that have been blacklisted.
“We do a check on Thomson Reuters and make sure that there is no link whatsoever with blacklisted organizations. We don't want to damage our relief efforts. We have tried our best to be non-partisan as much as possible", he insists.
Cordoba Foundation
A third organization singled out by HSBC is UK-based think tank, the Cordoba Foundation. Run by Anas Al Tikriti, the Cordoba Foundation focuses on addressing the relationship between Europe and the Middle East. It was set up in 2005. HSBC's letter to the think tank was almost identical to that sent to the Finsbury Park Mosque.
But HSBC didn't just target the think tank's account. Al Tikriti claims his wife, himself, and his young sons alsoreceived personalized letters from HSBC informing them of their accounts' imminent closure. In the case of the Al Tikriti family, no explanation for HSBC’s decision was offered.
Originally born in Baghdad, Al Tikriti has lived in the UK for decades. Describing himself as a loyal and reliable account holder, he had banked with HSBC since the 1980s and had rarely been overdrawn. He has expressed grave concern that his entire family was targeted in such a flagrant fashion.
"It is unsettling. I am not used to being addressed in those terms. It's like I have done something wrong. The involvement of my family disturbs me,” he told the BBC.
Reflecting on the broader issue of Islamic organizations being singled out by HSBC, Al Tikriti observed that the majority of them are vocal on the issue of Palestinian rights.
‘Islamophobic campaign targeting UK Muslims'
This is not the first time HSBC had terminated swathes of bank accounts. In December 2012, the bank was forced to pay American authorities £1.2bn ($1.9bn) in a settlement relating to money laundering. HSBC had been accused of facilitating the laundering of funds emanating from drug cartels and states that were under US sanctions.
Following the settlement, HSBC requested over 40 consulates, embassies and High Commissions throughout the UK to terminate their bank accounts. The bank justified its actions at the time by claiming it had been “applying a rolling program of "five filter" assessments to all its businesses since May 2011, and our services for embassies are no exception."
Khalid Qumar, a trustee for the Finsbury Park Mosque, questions the motives behind HSBC’s decision to issue these letters. Qumar believes HSBC’s actions are indicative of an “Islamophobic campaign targeting Muslim charities in the UK".
But HSBC told the BBC the decision to close these accounts was "absolutely not based on race or religion".
HSBC has thus far been unwilling to clarify its precise motivation for targeting these Islamic charities. "We do not discuss relationships we may or may not have with a customer, nor confirm whether an individual or business is, or has been a customer”, a HSBC spokesperson said.
Gaza connection: politics or profit?
At present, the full extent of HSBC’s motivation for closing these accounts remains unknown. But a number of factors are worth noting. All charitable organizations recently targeted by the bank have Islamic roots. Both the Cordoba Foundation and the Ummah Welfare Trust are particularly vocal with respect to Palestinian human rights. And none of the organizations are currently being investigated by Britain’s charity regulator, the Charities Commission.
HSBC’s move to close these accounts follows Britain's Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s recent claim the UK’s anti-terror laws are currently too broad and should be retained for their proper purpose.
Whether HSBC’s actions have been influenced by UK government officials' enforcement of Britain's anti-terror legislation, however, is unclear. Probed on this issue on Wednesday, a UK government source declined to comment.
Britain’s Charities Commission believes HSBC’s actions were an “independent business decision”.But the Commission is concerned about the implications of the bank's closure of UK Islamic charities' accounts.“If these services are declined or withdrawn from a charity, harm could result to the effective delivery of its charitable work and its ability to operate transparently,”the Commission told RT on Wednesday.
Nicholas Wilson, a HSBC whistleblower and UK-based financial activist, argues HSBC is operating with a pro-Israel bias in an effort to protect itsfinancial interests.
“HSBC has a bank in Tel Aviv and have held a licence there since 2001. They claim on their website to be the only foreign bank in Israel offering private banking.It could therefore be possible that they consider being seen to bank for pro-Palestinian organisations puts them in conflict with their ambitions in Israel”, he said on Wednesday.
The British wistleblower - who is currentlypreparing a private prosecution against HSBC for its alleged role in widespread fraud -suggests the bank's decision to terminate these bank accounts may also have been influenced by the British government.
“The ex-head of MI5, Sir Jonathan Evans, is a non-executive director at HSBC on a salary of £150k per annum”, Wilson said. Evans' appointment was a"thank you for helping to protect Stephen Green from prosecution in the US over the Mexican drugs and sanction busting",he continued.
"The bank claims it’s useful to have someone with his intelligence and experience to protect them from risk but he’s obviously an establishment figure, with likely pro-Israeli views”, he added.
The director of the Ummah Welfare Trust stated on Wednesday he does not believe HSBC’s decision to close Islamic charities’ accounts was influenced by the British government. But he called for the coalition to intervene and stop this emergent trend. Such a move is both in the government and the wider British populace’s interest, he emphasizes.
Should further Islamic UK charities’ bank accounts be terminated, donors will employ other options to ensure their money reaches troubled Middle Eastern regions such as Gaza and Syria. Forcing them to direct their donations away from registered charities, will render such financial flows opaque, he warns.
When probed on whether HSBC’s targeting of Islamic charities’ accounts was political or profit-centred, Nicholas Wilson commented:"It’s a mixture of political pressure and realisation on the bank’s part that to be seen to be assisting pro-Palestinian organisations would damage their reputation in Israel and hence America."
Sarah Jane Brennan, RTI Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry is a 2007 American comedy film directed by Dennis Dugan. It stars Adam Sandler and Kevin James as the title characters Chuck and Larry, respectively, two New York City firefighters who pretend to be a gay couple in order to ensure one of their children can receive healthcare. The film was released in the United States on July 20, 2007, and was Sandler's first role in a Universal Pictures film since Bulletproof in 1996.
Plot [ edit ]
Chuck Levine, a womanizing bachelor, and Larry Valentine, a widower struggling to raise his two children, are two veteran New York City firefighters. During a routine sweep of a burned building, a segment of floor collapses on Chuck, but Larry saves his life. Chuck vows to repay Larry in any way possible. Experiencing an epiphany from the incident, Larry tries to increase his life insurance policy, but he runs into difficulties naming his children as primary beneficiaries. He is told he should remarry so his new spouse can be the primary beneficiary; however, no one specifies whom he has to marry.
Inspired by a newspaper article about domestic partnerships, Larry asks Chuck to enter a civil union with him. Although Chuck declines at first, he is reminded of his debt to Larry and finally agrees, entering a domestic partnership and becoming Larry's primary beneficiary in the event of his death. To their dismay, however, investigators arrive to inquire about their abrupt partnership, suspecting fraud. Chuck and Larry decide to enlist the help of lawyer Alex McDonough, who suggests they get married and move in together to prove they are committed; Chuck reluctantly agrees. The pair travel to Niagara Falls in Canada for a quick same-sex marriage at a wedding chapel and begin living together.
At a gay benefit costume party, the partygoers are confronted by homophobic protesters. Chuck is provoked into punching their leader, and the incident is picked up by the local news. With their apparent homosexuality and marriage revealed, Chuck and Larry are heckled, and their fellow FDNY firefighters refuse to work with them. Their only ally is Fred G. Duncan, an angry, intimidating firefighter who comes out to Chuck.
Chuck becomes romantically interested in Alex after the two spend time together, but finds himself unable to get close to her because she thinks he is gay. In another meeting at her apartment, Chuck and Alex are making charm bracelets. They soon kiss, but Alex, still believing Chuck is gay and married, is shocked and immediately distances herself from Chuck. Meanwhile, city agent Clinton Fitzer arrives to investigate the couple, and the strain on both Larry and Chuck causes them to fight. Larry learns about the kiss and confronts Chuck about it, asserting that Chuck's absence is jeopardizing their ability to maintain the ruse of their relationship. During the argument, Larry reveals that he is still in love with his deceased wife, Paula, and Chuck responds that he needs to move on for the sake of his children. Later that evening, a petition circulates to have Chuck and Larry thrown out of the firehouse. Upon discovering it, a hurtful Larry confronts the crew about personal embarrassments on the job that Chuck and Larry helped them overcome. Afterwards, Chuck and Larry apologize to each other and reconcile their differences.
Eventually, numerous women publicly testify to having slept with Chuck in the recent past, and the couple is called into court to defend their marriage against charges of fraud. They are defended by Alex, and their fellow firefighters arrive in support, having realized all that Chuck and Larry have done for them over the years. Fitzer interrogates both men, and eventually demands the pair to kiss to prove that their relationship is physical. Before they do so, Chuck and Larry are interrupted by FDNY Captain Phineas J. Tucker, who reveals their marriage to be a sham and that they are both straight. He then offers to be arrested as well, since he knew about the false relationship but failed to report it. This prompts each of the other firefighters to claim a role in the wedding in a show of solidarity. Chuck, Larry, and the other firefighters are sent to jail, but they are quickly released after negotiating a deal to provide photos for an AIDS research benefit calendar, and Chuck and Larry keep their benefits.
Two months later, Duncan and Alex's brother, Kevin, are married in Niagara Falls at the same chapel as Chuck and Larry. At the wedding party, Larry moves on from the death of his wife and talks to a new woman, while Alex agrees to a dance with Chuck.
Cast [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
Producer Tom Shadyac had planned this film as early as 1999. I Now Pronounce You Joe and Benny, as the film was then titled, was announced as starring Nicolas Cage and Will Smith with Shadyac directing. In the official trailer, the song "Grace Kelly" by British pop star, Mika, was included.[4]
Release [ edit ]
Critical response [ edit ]
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 14% of 157 reviews surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the rating is 3.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Whether by way of inept comedy or tasteless stereotypes, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry falters on both levels."[5] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 37 out of 100 based on 33 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[6] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[7]
USA Today called it "a movie that gives marriage, homosexuality, friendship, firefighters, children and nearly everything else a bad name."[8] The Wall St Journal calls it "an insult to gays, straights, men, women, children, African-Americans, Asians, pastors, mailmen, insurance adjusters, firemen, doctors -- and fans of show music."[9]
The New York Post called it not an insult to homosexuality but to comedy itself.[10] The Miami Herald was slightly less critical, calling the film "funny in the juvenile, crass way we expect."[11]
Nathan Lee from the Village Voice wrote a positive review, praising the film for being "tremendously savvy in its stupid way" and "as eloquent as Brokeback Mountain, and even more radical."[12] Controversial critic Armond White championed the film as "a modern classic" for its "ultimate moral lesson—that sexuality has absolutely nothing to do with who Chuck and Larry are as people".[13]
Box office [ edit ]
Chuck & Larry grossed $34,233,750 and ranked #1 at the domestic box office in its opening weekend, higher than the other opening wide release that weekend, Hairspray, and the previous weekend's #1 film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.[14] By the end of its run, the film had grossed $120,059,556 domestically and $66,012,658 internationally for a worldwide total of $186,072,214.[2]
Home media [ edit ]
The film was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on November 6, 2007.
Accolades [ edit ]
The film received eight Golden Raspberry Award nominations including Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Adam Sandler), Worst Supporting Actor (both Kevin James and Rob Schneider), Worst Supporting Actress (Jessica Biel), Worst Director (Dennis Dugan), Worst Screenplay and Worst Screen Couple (Adam Sandler with either Kevin James or Jessica Biel), but failed to win any.
Response from social groups [ edit ]
The film was screened prior to release for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). GLAAD representative Damon Romine told Entertainment Weekly magazine: "The movie has some of the expected stereotypes, but in its own disarming way, it's a call for equality and respect".[15]
Controversy [ edit ]
According to Alexander Payne, the writer of an initial draft of the film, Sandler took many liberties with his screenplay, "Sandler-izing" the film, in his own words. At some point, he did not want his name attached to the project.[16][17]
Critics have also said the character played by Rob Schneider is a racist caricature, and he was also criticized for donning Yellowface.[18]
In November 2007, the producers of the Australian film Strange Bedfellows initiated legal action against Universal Studios for copyright violation.[19] The suit was withdrawn in April 2008 after the producers of Strange Bedfellows received an early draft of Chuck & Larry that predated their film, and they were satisfied that they had not been plagiarized.[20]
See also [ edit ]SI.com’s Week in Wrestling is published every Wednesday and provides beneath the surface coverage of the business of pro wrestling.
News of the Week: The Latest on Neville & WWE
Nine days ago, 31-year-old Benjamin Satterley—better known to the wrestling world as Neville—reached an epiphany and made a bold, emphatic statement.
Frustrated by the dizzying direction of his character and the lack of pay-offs, as well as the notorious WWE grind on the road, Neville walked out of Raw last Monday after balking at the idea of losing to Enzo Amore.
But Neville has been miserable in WWE since January, and his walkout occurred nine months later than many people expected.
Neville’s decision to walk out remains complex. On one end, life after WWE will undoubtedly be better for his health and immediately gives him time off from the road to be with his wife.
Getty Images
In a move that meant far more than pay, Neville has been disheartened ever since his title match with Austin Aries at WrestleMania 33 was moved to the pre-show and even removed from the official DVD. In addition to costing one of their most valuable talents arguably his biggest check of the year, Neville was infuriated that his company—for which he would wrestle hurt, tired, and with minimal complaint—would disregard his service and value.
Aries, who worked closely with Neville in WWE, left the company on amicable terms. He has started to book himself on the independents, and Neville learned that Aries will make more in the next six weeks—which includes considerably less travel—than he will make in that same timespan on the WWE payroll.
Neville has wrestled for WWE since 2012, and dealt with the stresses and strains that come along with the main roster since 2015. He has an incredible look and, though it appeared WWE was building to something significant with him, Neville felt that he was viewed as nothing more than a very talented “get-over guy” used to enhance other talent.
The decision last Monday to walk out is a gamble. Neville is betting on himself to succeed in Ring of Honor or New Japan, but he also drew the ire of Vince McMahon with his departure.
In McMahon’s eyes, walking out of his company is the kiss of death. CM Punk is an obvious example of someone who walked out, but Steve Austin is another. Austin, who literally carried the company on its back during a time when it desperately needed a star, is on record stating that his decision to walk out in 2002 remains his most significant regret. Austin and Neville are two men in very different situations, but just like with Austin in 2002, McMahon holds the key to Neville’s future in 2017.
Will WWE allow Neville to walk away from his deal? Explore a breach of contract? Or make him wait until the deal officially expires?
Neville is gambling on himself, but he is going to need some help from the dealer—in this case, Vince McMahon—to cash out.
The Bullet Club Steps Up Its Feud With WWE
Courtesy of Cody Rhodes
The battle between WWE and the Bullet Club is far from over.
This past Sunday during Ring of Honor’s iPPV in Chicago, ROH world champion Cody Rhodes opened the show by mocking Roman Reigns’ signature vest, saying it is there to “hide that potbelly”.
Reigns responded to a tweet that same weekend about Rhodes’ drawing power, stating, “He’s just talking silly.”
Rhodes also noted during the ROH show on Sunday that Reigns was unlikely to reply, as he is too busy “failing drug tests”.
The trigger point in this entire WWE vs. Bullet Club battle occurred during the Being The Elite takeover of Raw in California. The Young Bucks were interviewing fans who said they received tickets to the show for free.
Exposing that the company was “papering”—in other words, giving out tickets for free—is a sin WWE will not soon forgive. Vince McMahon is infuriated when people try to devalue his product. Perception becomes reality, so, to McMahon, those were fighting words. Soon after that incident, WWE sent a cease and desist to the Young Bucks over their use of the “Too Sweet” hand gesture.
Roman Reigns is the leader of the WWE locker room, and has taken it upon himself to respond to both Rhodes and the Young Bucks. WWE talent is clearly limited in the depth of its responses, so it will be very interesting to see if the Bucks, Kenny Omega, or anyone else from ROH or New Japan further attacks WWE.
In other news…
• Nia Jax will return to WWE from her company-granted leave of absence, but make no mistake: Jax holds more leverage than many people believe.
Jax is unhappy with her current creative and pay scale. Her relation to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson—the two are cousins—provides her with leverage that many others would simply not have in this situation. Jax is 33-year-old Savelina Fanene, who flourished as a plus-sized model prior to her career in pro wrestling. Jax also has a very unique look, and could combine independent dates with a return to modeling. But the safe bet is that she will return to WWE, this time with a larger paycheck.
• The “Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase’s documentary, The Price of Fame, will be released on November 7 in theaters nationwide. The film shares the story of DiBiase’s career, his personal downfall, and ultimate redemption.
“I was drinking poison,” said DiBiase. “That was my price of fame. None of us choose the circumstances of our life. Some of us get a good hand, and some of us don’t. I’ve seen people with a great hand blow it, and I’ve seen people with nothing go all the way. So it’s all about your choices, and I made some bad choices.”
DiBiase followed in the footsteps of his wrestler father, “Iron” Mike DiBiase, and became a professional wrestler in the summer of 1975. The biggest break in his 25-year career came in the spring of 1987 when he became the “Million Dollar Man.”
“God has a sense of humor,” said DiBiase. “That’s why God showed me what I wasn’t supposed to be in the ‘Million Dollar Man’, and God is now transforming me into who I can be as a person.”
DiBiase, who is now a full-time evangelist and motivational speaker, literally paid the price of fame.
“It was a thrill to walk into a coliseum and have everyone know my name, but when that show was over, I went back to my hotel room, alone,” said DiBiase, who had six days off a month during his years with the WWF during 1988 and 1989. “Then I sauntered down to the hotel lobby and it had a bar, and that’s where it all began.”
An unsung hero in DiBiase’s journey is his wife, Melanie, who he has been married to for the past 31 years. DiBiase was unfaithful to his wife and caused her grief and years of humiliation.
“After I confessed my life to her in 1992, I came forward to the front of our pastor and his youth group at this big rally in Chicago with 15,000 people,” said DiBiase. “When the invitation was given to come forward and get right with God, I dropped to my knees, put my face in the ground, and wept. I didn’t care that there were 15,000 people in the room, and I haven’t cared since. It was a moment of genuine surrender.
“My wife witnessed all this, and she said, ‘I’m not going to make you a promise you can’t keep. And I want you to know you don’t deserve this. But I am going to be obedient to the voice in my heart telling me to give you another chance.’ It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t a fairytale, but I was on the receiving end of grace from my wife.”
A father of three and proud grandfather of two, DiBiase is hoping viewers are able to connect with his story.
“I want people to watch this film and know there is hope. I want people to realize that genuine happiness is when you have love and commitment.
“That’s what I want people to take from this. There is hope. When I die, and my sons stand over my grave and eulogize me, I don’t want to just be remembered as a wrestling star. I want to leave a legacy, and be remembered as a man who was appreciative of all he’d be given; that I served my family and went out of my way to serve others and give back. That is all more valuable than money.”
• Am I the only one not totally enamored with the reunion of The Shield?
From this perspective, the most compelling reunion in WWE would be that of The Club with AJ Styles, Luke Gallows, and Karl Anderson. The first feud could be with Finn Balor, who desperately needs to separate himself from Bray Wyatt.
• Jinder Mahal spoke to Sports Illustrated about “forcing the result” in his WWE career.
“There was originally no plan in place for me to become WWE champion,” explained Mahal. “It felt like I became the number one contender out of nowhere. I call what I did forcing the results. I wasn’t happy with my position. I was putting in the work, but I wasn’t getting the results. I was going to force the result no matter what the cost.”
Could Mahal be making the same attempt to prolong his title reign?
Mahal mentioned outlasting CM Punk’s 435-day title reign, but he is expected to lose the belt by January. Mahal’s reign, which currently stands at 151 days, is far from reaching Punk, who held the belt from November of 2011 to January of 2013. Mahal, who is slated to wrestle Brock Lesnar at November’s Survivor Series, also discussed wrestling John Cena at WrestleMania 34 in a title match, so regardless of WWE’s creative plans, he clearly has designs on holding onto the title for as long as possible.
• Tommy Dreamer’s House of Hardcore promotion has entered into an exclusive multi-year streaming partnership with social video service Twitch.
This is beneficial to wrestling fans as House of Hardcore will begin streaming all matches on Twitch, starting with House of Hardcore 35 on November 18 in, fittingly, Philadelphia, which was Dreamer’s home during his iconic run in ECW.
“I have been waiting for the right deal to take House of Hardcore to the next level,” said Dreamer. “I signed the deal with Twitch on the fifth year, to the day, of my first show. I only had the intention of doing one show, but just like the industry, we are evolving and changing. The deal with Twitch is everything I’ve wanted: we have a network behind us, they’re partners with Amazon, you can watch for free on your computer or television, and I’m entrusted with the wrestling.”
The November 18 House of Hardcore show will feature Austin Aries, MVP, Petey Williams, and Joey Mercury. The HOH channel will also host weekly content between matches including pre and post-match content and interviews.
“My company’s motto is, ‘No politics. No BS. Just wrestling,’” said Dreamer. “When the House of Hardcore show happens on November 18, I want you to forget about what is going on in the real world, sit back, and enjoy the greatest form of entertainment, which is professional wrestling.
“I’ve never lied to the fans and I will never let the fans down. I am going to continue to show my vision of pro wrestling. I have so many surprises for this show. I want to deliver for a whole new audience, and I’m going to have new weekly content with packages and profiles that build to the show on November 18. After that, we’ll build our storylines to the show on December 2.”
• For those who enjoyed Court Bauer’s MLW One-Shot show, there is more good news emanating out of MLW headquarters in Orlando, Florida.
MLW is exploring the possibility of expanding their return to presenting monthly events starting with the December 7 Never Say Never show. In addition to a solid foundation from Bauer, the central location of Florida is pivotal to the group’s success.
Many of today’s top talents live in Florida, including Ricochet, who headlined One-Shot, and there were multiple members of the WWE roster at the show this past October 5.
• Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard is back this Friday with a new podcast, which will be a detailed look at Vince McMahon’s creation of Doink the Clown.
Courtesy of Dave Silva
“Our show is a Vince McMahon story,” said Thompson. “It’s a look inside the WWE machine, and we’ll hear the insight from the inside. I’m fascinated to find out what Vince thought people would like about Doink. There is rumor and innuendo that he is based on Krusty the Clown from The Simpsons, and he began as an evil clown.”
The Doink character was originally designed for Matt Borne, and the episode will also delve into the development of the character and touch on the characteristics that allowed Borne to play the role.
“Doink is believable,” said Thompson. “A lot of wrestlers positioned themselves as carnies, and they positioned themselves one way when they were really something else. Doink is very much that, so Doink is more real to me than Kane or The Undertaker. We can go find real life Doinks in America today, and the character played on a natural fear of clowns, which is based in reality. What if that clown didn’t just look scary, but he was also a bad guy?”
Thompson is also eager to discuss the plan for the original incarnation of Doink in 1992.
“What was the original vision? What was the original idea? Who pitched it? How did the character evolve before it ever debuted? We’ll also talk about Crush doing the Hawaiian thing, and get into some of the silly Doink-Lawler stuff. We’ll get into all of that stuff; this show is about more than Doink. It’s about the creation of Doink and the company trying something new, as well as how the company was evolving. It’s a fascinating time in the era of WWE.”
A fascinating part of last week’s No Mercy ‘99 podcast was when Prichard noted that Vince Russo’s departure from WWE hurt Vince McMahon’s feelings.
“We also discussed the ramifications,” said Thompson. “Vince McMahon realized he put all of his eggs in one basket, and he made the decision to never put himself in that position ever again. He now has a team of writers. Because Russo walked out, now there is a staff of 30 writers, and they can fire Jimmy Jacobs because he took a picture with the Bullet Club and they don’t miss a beat. That wouldn’t have happened without Vince Russo walking out, which is a story you wouldn’t hear unless you listen to No Mercy ‘99. So listen to Doink, as the majority of the story will be about Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson.”
• The end of Lucha Underground’s third season is set to air tonight, and head writer Chris “DJ” DeJoseph, who starts writing each season at the end and moving backwards, is excited for people to watch the finale.
“We have some definite ideas on how to finish the ending, and there were some changes, but we finished strong,” said DeJoseph. “The action in the ring was on another level in Ultima Lucha. Not to mention some big surprises and some major twists and turns in the universe of Lucha Underground.”
Lucha Underground earned the status of becoming the first U.S. television series to screen in the immersive 4DX format, as Ultima Lucha Tres screened at a private event for media and fans last night in the 4DX auditorium in Los Angeles. The finale includes a steel cage match, three-way match, and career versus title match.
“Stay tuned for the end,” said DeJoseph, who is optimistic that there will be a fourth season of Lucha Underground. “In my opinion, this is one of the most revolutionary wrestling products ever, and it would be a shame if it didn’t continue. I’m a ‘Believer’ that there will be a fourth season.”
• New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV airs the third installment of the Kazuchika Okada-Kenny Omega matches this Friday night, with Jim Ross and Josh Barnett providing the commentary.
“There is less desperation from Kenny,” said Barnett, referring to the match that took place between Okada and Omega during the G1 this past July. “Okada was reeling some from his most recent title defenses, and that shows in the match in terms of his fatigue.”
• In addition to the upcoming ESPN 30 for 30 on Ric Flair and the Ted DiBiase documentary, there is also a new film on the life of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.
The project, Roddy Piper: In His Own Words, is directed by David Sinnott, and digs deep into Piper’s four-decade career that included the occasional foray into Hollywood, including a starring role in They Live.
“This project meant a lot to me to put together,” said Sinnott. “I have fond memories of working with Piper on another project and it didn’t sit well with me that so much great footage was locked away in a vault.”
Sinnott worked with Piper’s widow, Kitty Toombs, on the project.
“It’s not a story of his life, but rather like sitting at the table across from Roddy having a chat,” said Toombs. “He lets us into his mind and thoughts that guided some of his decisions.”
A percentage of all sales will be donated to the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, a hospital which resonated with Piper, who passed away in July of 2015.
“Roddy saw, first-hand during his decades in Portland, Oregon, the groundbreaking, good work being done at the Doernbecher Children Hospital,” said Toombs. “Throughout the years, he loved giving time volunteering as a celebrity during fundraisers but even more so, just stopping by to roam the halls and chat with the children. He shared with his family how those kids were the real heroes and what they gave him was far more than they ever realized.”
• Stat of the Week: Eighteen years ago, on October 17, 1999, Chyna defeated Jeff Jarrett for the Intercontinental title, becoming the first woman to ever claim the title.
• Al Snow’s weekly advice column, Inside Al's Head, explored the idea that some talent—namely, Neville and Nia Jax—are unhappy with the nonstop grind of the WWE.
“Everybody cites the travel as the biggest stress when you’re working for WWE,” said Snow, who worked an astounding 23 days a month for WWE when he was hired in 1995. “Without a question or a doubt, it’s hard. You give up a lot of your personal life because you’re on the road, and it’s certainly not easy, but that’s not the real issue.”
The most significant issues, Snow explained, are the physical and emotional stresses.
“Let’s say you’re on the road for five days, but you get to go home for a day-and-a-half,” explained Snow. “But you’ve got to go right back out for another four-and-a-half days. Then you’ll be home for a day-and-a-half. Then you’ll be gone for seven days. Then you |
.
Complement this particular portion of Warren’s thoroughly transcendent Democracy and Poetry with Walt Whitman on identity and the paradox of the self and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein on what makes you and your childhood self the “same” person despite a lifetime of change, then revisit Elizabeth Alexander on what poetry does for the human spirit.A church in the Nile Delta's Sharqiya Governorate was subject to intermittent attacks this week after a Coptic-Christian girl allegedly converted to Islam before mysteriously disappearing.
Rania Khalil, a 16-year-old Coptic Christian, is the daughter of a Coptic mother and a Muslim-convert father. Khalil has lived with her mother all her life except for the last six months, during which she moved to the home of her father, who converted to Islam some four years ago and married a Muslim woman.
According to residents of Mit Bashar village in the Sharqiya Governorate in which her father lives, Rania converted to Islam earlier this month and celebrated her engagement to a Muslim man.
On Sunday, however, she abruptly vanished.
So far, two explanations have been posited for the girl's disappearance. Some say she was kidnapped by her family and is being held against her will in the village's Virgin Mary Church; others suggest that she ran away from her father to live with her Christian mother.
"In either case, the church has nothing to do with the issue," Ishaq Ibrahim, a researcher at the Cairo-based Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said.
"We cannot consider a family member taking the child a kind of kidnapping," Nabil Gabriel, a lawyer close to the Coptic Church, told Ahram Online. "Egyptian law prohibits minors under the age of 18 from changing his or her religion."
The suggestion that Rania was being held in the Virgin Mary Church prompted several local residents to converge on the church on Monday evening. The following day, some 2000 people surrounded the building, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails and chanting sectarian chants.
For the next three days, the unrest continued, with cars in the area being set on fire and a fence surrounding the church being broken.
The missing girl, however, was not found inside the church building.
On Wednesday, Sharqiya Governor Azazi Ali Azazi declared that the girl had not in fact been kidnapped, but was being held at the local security directorate. "The escalation of this incident is an attempt to sow sectarian violence in Egypt with the aim of destabilising the country," Azazi said.
The situation eased considerably after members of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), along with the imam of a local mosque, urged village residents to exercise restraint. They also formed a human chain around the church to protect it from attacks by locals.
"What you're doing violates the rules of Islam," the imam told village residents on Wednesday. "The Church is God's home."
Nevertheless, several Coptic-Christians have taken refuge inside the church out of fear for their safety.
"I'm waiting inside the church with several others until we are guaranteed a safe exit," Emile, a member of the Maspero Coptic Youth Union, who declined to give his family name, told Ahram Online.
It is not the first time that rumours of a female Coptic convert to Islam have sparked controversy.
Eight Coptic families in Alexandria's Amerya district were asked to leave their homes earlier this month after an informal hearing held by a local sheikh.
The crisis erupted in late January when obscene footage of a Muslim woman was sent from the cell phone of a young Christian man. Brawls quickly ensued between local Muslim and Coptic youths, which escalated after several Coptic homes were set on fire.
And in March of last year, a church in the governorate of Helwan was set ablaze and eventually demolished as a result of sectarian tensions. This was followed shortly afterward by an attack on a church in Cairo's Imbaba district and another on the Merinab Church in the Upper Egyptian city of Aswan.
Last October, a protest march by Coptic-Christian activists was violently dispersed in Cairo's Maspero district by military forces, leaving scores of the former dead.
In most cases, the government either resorted to informal hearings to resolve the crises or failed to hold those responsible for the violence accountable.
Short link:She doesn’t consider it a donation (though she jokes the IRS might look at it that way). And she doesn’t think it makes her a saint of any sort.
For Christine Sleeter, it’s simply “returning what was stolen.”
On Monday morning, the retired professor transferred a quarter of a million dollars to the Ute Indian Tribe in east-central Utah. The money, Sleeter said, came from her family inheritance — generated by her great-grandparents selling off American Indian land more than a century ago and then investing the profits.
“Rather than just keep something when it’s become pretty obvious to me where that money came from that I inherited, I would rather give it back to the people who lost that land,” she said.
Sleeter, who lives in California and used to teach classes on social justice, first discovered the land sales as she compiled her family history over the past few years, digging through archived newspapers, stumbling across letters and Googling names. All of that led her to Colorado, where her ancestors settled when they moved West.
In 1882, after striking out in the search of gold, her great-grandparents were given a 160-acre plot of farm land by the federal government under the Homestead Act. They didn’t pay much, if anything, for the property.
The grassy fields, though, had previously been home to the Ute Indian Tribe, which was forcibly removed by an act of Congress in 1881 that authorized a violent “Utes must go!” campaign.
“They wanted to get their hands on more Indian land — and that’s exactly what they did,” said Luke Duncan, chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee and a descendant of White River Band members who originally lived in the area. Many tribal members, including his family, relocated to Utah at the time.
Sleeter’s great-grandparents (on her mother’s side) later sold their parcel outside of Craig, Colo., for a plot in Steamboat Springs. When they left that land in the early 1900s, the couple invested the money.
It has since been passed down three generations, landing in the bank accounts of Sleeter and her siblings.
“As a white person when you first think of that, it’s like ‘What can I do?’” Sleeter said.
She decided to turn that bit of guilt and hopelessness into action. At first, Sleeter donated some money to the Ute Indian Tribe Political Action Committee, or Ute PAC. Its director, Robert Lucero, later called her during a donation drive in May and asked how someone at California State University, Monterey Bay had found the webpage.
Sleeter, 69, explained the connection and ran her idea by Lucero to give $250,000 to the tribe — what she calls “an educated guess of what [the profits] would’ve added up to.” She’ll rely instead on retirement payments and Social Security.
“If you discovered that you had something in your house that belonged to somebody else and you knew who it belonged to, then you return it.”
On Monday, tribal leaders welcomed her to Fort Duchesne and accepted the check.
The money, Duncan said, will go toward building a new facility to replace Uintah River High School, which once was a fabrication shop for cabinets and woodwork and is now a decades-old space in a constant state of disrepair.
“It’s great that she felt that way and that she would do that. It’s something that surprised me,” he said. “She has a conscience, and I wish people had a conscience going way back.”
(Photo courtesy of the Ute Indian Tribe Political Action Committee) Christine Sleeter speaks to students at Uintah River High School on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017.
Sleeter toured classrooms and met with students, who Lucero said were excited by the discussion. He hopes it might encourage others to follow Sleeter’s lead.
Duncan hopes, most of all, that it might stop federal land policies that hurt tribes.Sign partially covered by snow Jan. 23 in D.C. during the storm named Snowzilla. (Rebekha Halseth)
Evidence is piling up that D.C. and other major northeastern cities have entered a new era of great snowstorms and that climate change may well play an important role.
In our planet’s most rapid period of global warming (in modern records), from the late 1970s to present, D.C. has witnessed more giant snowstorms than ever. The same holds true in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston.
[Global warming in 2015 made weather more extreme and it’s likely to get worse]
(Capital Weather Gang)
Seven of D.C.’s top 10 snowstorms since 1889 have occurred since 1979. Storms that unload at least 16 inches of snow are now happening every five or six years, nine times as often as they did before 1979 when they only occurred once every 45 to 50 years.
[Deep powder in the Blizzard of 2016, and so soon after the last historic snow]
As Capital Weather Gang’s Ian Livingston put it: “It seems the tempo of big storms for the city has increased.”
The flurry of recent blizzards is even more impressive farther north:
In all of the above megalopolitan cities, historical records date back to the late 1800s, yet the overwhelming majority of blockbuster snowstorms have occurred in the last 40 years.
This increase in such crippling events is incredibly consequential for society. These events often turn into multi-billion-dollar disasters, shutting down businesses and commerce for days, and restricting travel. They also frequently have auxiliary effects, such as costly coastal flooding and severe weather in the South.
More blizzards, but less snow?
While blizzards are booming, we note a paradox. D.C.’s annual average snowfall is steadily declining. In the early 1900s, D.C. averaged about 21 inches of snow per year. Today, it averages just 15.4 inches.
In this era of megastorms, the frequency of small snow events has decreased dramatically. Livingston, who has analyzed historical snowfall statistics, found that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, D.C. averaged more than six snow events of at least one inch per winter. Today, that number is down to about three.
[It’s increasingly difficult to get snow in D.C.]
As temperatures have risen, November and April snow events have practically vanished from the D.C. area. All five of D.C.’s latest measurable snows on record (in April) occurred before 1960. And D.C. has not experienced accumulating snow in November in the last 18 years, the longest stretch on record.
Climate change connections
Climate scientists say this new era of more blizzards but less snow is symptomatic of a warming world. Overall snow amounts decline because the cold season shortens and marginal situations for snow turn rainy. But, when big storms come along and the cold air supply is adequate, more snow falls as they draw increased moisture from a warmer ocean and atmosphere.
“For most conditions at sea level, there’s a rule of thumb that says the atmosphere can hold four percent more moisture per one degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth has written.
An MIT study conducted in 2014 found that while average snowfall could decrease by 65 percent by the late 21st century, amounts in extreme events would decrease little on balance and even increase in some cases.
“Shorter snow season, less snow overall, but the occasional knockout punch,” Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer told the Associated Press’s Seth Borenstein in 2013. “That’s the new world we live in.”
Climate scientists have also identified changes in the circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, linked to climate warming, that may be feeding into bigger East Coast snowstorms.
Rutgers professor of meteorology Jennifer Francis has proposed the idea that declining sea ice in the Arctic has set off a ripple effect that slows down the jet stream and more frequently positions it for monster East Coast storms.
The Post’s Chris Mooney recently wrote about a suggestion put forth by German climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf — that the meltwater from Greenland is slowing the North Atlantic ocean circulation, causing warm waters to accumulate off the East Coast, where big storms can draw moisture from.
Both the Francis and Rahmstorf hypotheses are new and must stand the test of time. But they suggest the planet may be changing in multiple ways to help intensify the most severe East Coast snowstorms, even as the climate warms and becomes less hospitable for snow.
Random chance probably plays some role as well, and climate scientists will surely work toward untangling the manic behavior of East Coast storms as we both trudge through knee-deep snow and leap over puddles of rainwater into a warmer future.
Read more:
Extreme snowfall events will continue even in global warming, says study
Does the “less snow, more blizzards” global warming theory hold up?
Shrinking Arctic ice and the wicked backlash on our weather
The surprising way that climate change could worsen East Coast blizzardsWe know all too well how children have been sexually abused in the Catholic Church and how kids have been killed (or nearly killed) because their Christian Science parents refused to take them to a doctor.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how children have been harmed by their religious families and communities.
Janet Heimlich, a former freelance reporter for National Public Radio, has documented this awful epidemic in her new book Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment.
It’s one freaky book, covering topics like physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and even circumcisions. (You can read Valerie Tarico‘s interview with the author here.)
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins talks about how indoctrinating children with a faith and labeling them with a religion before they’re old enough to even understand it (“a Catholic child”) should be considered “mental child abuse.” That’s arguable — I was raised in a religious faith and I don’t think my parents “abused” me in any sort of way. But Heimlich covers the spectrum of how religion can really hurt children and her examples are ones theists would have a hard time arguing against.
Two exclusive excerpts are below (reprinted by permission of Prometheus Books), as are instructions for how to enter to win a free copy of the book.
RELIGIOUS CHILD MALTREATMENT A subset of this larger phenomenon, religious child maltreatment is child abuse or neglect that is largely caused by religious beliefs held or propagated by perpetrators or a surrounding community. Religious child maltreatment manifests itself in many ways, including justifying abusive physical punishment with religious texts or doctrine;
having children engage in dangerous religious rituals;
taking advantage of religious authority to abuse children and procure their silence;
failing to provide children needed medical care due to a belief in divine intervention;
terrifying children with religious concepts, such as an angry and punitive god, eternal damnation, or possession by the devil or by demons;
making children feel guilty and shameful by telling them they are sinful;
neglecting children’s safety by allowing them to spend time with religious authorities without scrutinizing the authorities’ backgrounds;
inculcating children with religious ideas;
and failing to acknowledge or report child abuse or neglect to protect the image of a religion or a religious group. Religious child maltreatment happens for a host of reasons, some of which mirror general child maltreatment. For example, perpetrators may be responding to a desire to dominate and overpower victims. Mental illness can also be a factor. However, this book focuses on cases involving adults who are convinced that their acts are righteous expressions of piety. Phil Quinn gets across this point in Spare the Rod: “Too many parents are willing to do just about anything to their children if they believe… that it is God’s will… They most often appeal to a higher principle, such as religious duty or love of their child… My adoptive parents told me hundreds of times, during the endless beatings, that they loved me. If that was their way to love, they very nearly loved me to death!” FIRST STEPS Can religion be bad for kids? The answer to this question is a resounding yes. So where do we start to try to do something about it? The first step is to acknowledge the fact that religious child maltreatment exists and to learn how to recognize it. Of course, getting even that far means coming to grips with the fact that religion can be a force for both good and bad. This duality was made especially clear to me after interviewing two women, my friend Mary Ann and Cheryl, the woman who was molested by her minister as a teenager. Like Mary Ann, Cheryl told me that she, too, cries when she hears religious hymns. However, her emotions come from a very different place. Whereas Mary Ann’s reaction is one of overwhelming joy, Cheryl’s tears are of sadness and loss. Presbyterian minister Keith Wright explains this dichotomy well in Religious Abuse: A Pastor Explores the Many Ways Religion Can Hurt as Well as Heal: We need to give up the idea that religion is perfect — that the church of which we are a part is perfect or infallible. Religion, like our parents, has the capacity to bless us and to wound us and it inevitably does both at different times… Only when we are aware of the capacity of religion to abuse can we guard against that abuse and take steps to curb it where it exists. As I made clear in the introduction, this book is not a diatribe against all religion. It does not intend to praise one faith over another or to talk anyone into abandoning his or her beliefs. In the words of British actor and writer Stephen Fry, “It would be impertinent and wrong of me to express any antagonism towards any individual who wishes to find salvation in whatever form they wish to express it.” Americans have the right to practice the religion of their choice, and parents should be allowed to teach their children whatever faith gives their own lives meaning. Many children are raised in loving homes by responsible religious parents, and children certainly suffer abuse and neglect in nonreligious homes and communities. But there are times when the teaching and practice of religion crosses a line that should not be crossed — a line that the United States Supreme Court drew back in 1944. In Prince v. Massachusetts, the Court states, “The right to practice religion freely does not include the liberty to expose the community or child… to ill health or death.” With a renewed, realistic, and balanced understanding of faith’s capabilities, we can begin a discussion on how to raise children in a safe and healthy religious environment. Recognizing the connection between faith and child abuse and neglect is the first step to reducing the impact of religious child maltreatment and ensuring that a religious upbringing is a positive experience for all children.
Those excerpts are from Chapter 1. The entire 23-chapter book goes into much more depth.
I think there’s a general consensus among atheists that religion is harmful, period. So instead, I’m asking for your stories.
Was religion a bad thing for you growing up? If you feel comfortable sharing, how?
Or maybe, like me, it wasn’t such a horrible thing. It was just something you grew out of later in life. Was that the case for you?
If you’d like a chance to win a copy of the book, you must live in the U.S. and you must leave the words “Ken Ham” at the end of your comment. If you don’t wish to answer the questions but still want to win the book, that’s fine, too. Just say the magic words. If you’re the winner, I’ll email you next week.Tornadoes and violent storms raked through North Texas on Tuesday, crumbling the wing of a nursing home, peeling roofs from dozens of homes and spiraling big-rig trailers into the air like footballs. More than a dozen injuries were reported.
Preliminary estimates indicate as man as 12 tornadoes touched down in North Texas, senior National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Martello said. But firm numbers would only come after survey teams checked damage Wednesday, he said.
LANCASTER
In Lancaster, cars were overturned and roofs ripped from homes near Wintergreen and Roan. Initial estimates are than 300 structures including homes had been damaged and more than a dozen destroyed. Lancaster Police Officer Paul Beck said 10 people were injured, two of them severely.
Tornado Tosses Trucks 5 Years Ago Today
At 1:34 p.m., Chopper 5 shows 18-wheelers being thrown into the air by the tornado near I-20 and Bonnie View Road. (Published Monday, April 3, 2017)
NBC 5's Ken Kalthoff said some people suffered minor injuries and that people stumbled from their homes confused and scared following the storm.
Chopper 5 showed exposed homes without roofs and flattened buildings. Broken sheets of plywood blanketed lawns and covered rooftops.
Devlin Norwood said he was at his Lancaster home when he heard the storm sirens. He said he made a quick trip to a nearby store when he saw the funnel-shaped tornado lower, kick up debris and head toward his neighborhood.
Photos: Tornadoes Touch Down in North Texas
"I didn't see any damage until I got back home. We had trees destroyed, fences down, boards down, boards penetrating the roof and the house, shingles damaged," said Norwood, 50, an accountant and graduate student.
The storm pushed cars into fences and toppled trees. Branches and limbs scattered across lawns and residential streets, and in one driveway, a tow-behind RV was left torn apart and crumpled.
Tornadoes Tear Through North Texas
A pastor at one Lancaster church saw debris swirling in the wind and then herded more than 30 children -- some as young as newborns -- into a windowless room to ride out the storm. Nearby at the church's school, about 60 more children hid in another windowless room near the women's bathroom.
An entire wall of Cedar Valley Christian Academy wound up being taken out in the storm. Glenn Young, the pastor, said he didn't know when the school might reopen.
"I'm a little concerned," Young said. "This is our livelihood."
One-hundred-fifty people have taken shelter at the Lancaster Recreation Center at 1700 S. Veteran's Memorial Parkway.
DALLAS
Chopper 5 spotted trailers from big-rigs tossed end-over-end, hundreds of feet into the air, near Bonnie View Road and Interstate 20 as a tornado pushed through Dallas County.
Fifty tractor-trailer trucks were damaged at Schneider National.
"Obviously we're going to have a lot of assessments to make when this is done," Dallas County spokeswoman Maria Arita said.
In the Stagecoach Trail area of the city, 47 houses were damaged. The city deemed 40 homes were deemed uninhabitable, and seven were destroyed.
An apparent twister picked up a tractor-trailer and dropped it on a couple's home off Stagecoach Trail.
"On the weather station, you see devastation like this, but I've never seen it in real life, up close and personal," said homeowner Jesse Wilbur.
A set of tires sat in what was Wilbur's living room, and his kitchen was turned upside down. Clothes were about all he and his wife could salvage before they headed off to a nearby Red Cross Shelter.
"It's a lifetime of work -- it's gone," said Wilbur.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings toured the devastation Tuesday night.
"This is heartbreaking," he said. "The great news is everyone is alive, and we are thankful for that."
The city reported that seven houses had roof damage in the Tioga/Texas College neighborhoods.
Shelters were set up at Tommie Allen Recreation Center at 7071 Bonnie View Road and Kiest Park Recreation Center at 3080 South Hampton Road.
ARLINGTON
Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck declared a state of disaster because of tornado damage. An estimated 428 homes have been damaged, including a nursing home.
Three people were injured in Arlington, including two residents of a nursing home in the 3000 block of West Green Oaks Boulevard who were taken to a hospital with minor injuries after swirling winds clipped the building, Assistant Fire Chief Jim Self said.
"Of course the windows were flying out, and my sister is paralyzed, so I had to get someone to help me get her in a wheelchair to get her out of the room," said Joy Johnston, who was visiting her 79-year-old sister at the Green Oaks Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. "It was terribly loud."
Johnston said her sister was taken to the hospital because of her delicate health. Another resident at the nursing home, Louella Curtis, 92, said workers roused her out of bed and put her in the hall.
"The hallways were all jammed," Johnston said. "Everyone was trying to help each other to make a path for others. I'd say everybody was out of their rooms within 20 minutes."
The Salvation Army has set up disaster shelter at a community center at 712 W. Abram Street in Arlington. Officials said gas lines have been ruptured in the city and anyone who smells gas should call 911.
Beginning at 6 a.m. Wednesday, only credentialed residents will be able to gain access to some of Arlington's more heavily-damaged neighborhoods. Residents will be issued temporary permits valid for Wednesday only. Permits can be obtained at the controlled access points to the neighborhoods and residents must show proof of residency including a state identification card or utility bill. Permanent permits will be required beginning Thursday and those can be obtained at the Arlington West Police Service Station on 2060 W. Green Oaks Boulevard.
KENNEDALE
Debris littered neighborhoods in the city of Kennedale after an apparent tornado tore through the center of town.
"The officers were watching the tornadoes form and drop," Kennedale Police Chief Tommy Williams said. "It was pretty active for a while."
Only minor injuries were reported, but there was significant damage to residential and commercial structures.
NBC 5's Lindsay Wilcox showed at least one home where the tornado drove pieces of a fence into drywall on the interior wall of a home.
The National Weather Service will assess that damage to classify Kennedale's tornado on the Enhanced Fujita tornado damage scale.
FORNEY
The city of Forney in Kaufman County reported that 73 homes sustained damage after two tornadoes touched down. Of those, 22 homes sustained severe damage.
The area north of Highway 80 in the Diamond Creek Subdivision had the most damage. Crosby Elementary also had some roof damage. Children there were evacuated to nearby Criswell Elementary well before the tornadoes touched down, and parents picked them up from there.
The Forney Police Department is enforcing a curfew of 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Officers will be stationed at every Diamond Creek intersection to check identification. Only residents of the neighborhood will be allowed to enter during the curfew.
Seven people were injured. Three taken to the hospital, and all were said to be minor injuries.
Margarita Ventura, who has lived in the neighborhood for about six years, said she had a tough time getting to her home after police blocked off her street.
"This is ridiculous. My whole house -- it's gone," she said choking back her tears.
A few yards away, Chris Wilson's stairs could be seen with no roof above to shield the rooms on the second floor.
"My wife could have been in the bedroom -- it's gone. My son could have been in his bedroom -- that's gone," said Wilson, adding that it could have been worse.
In front of Crosby Elementary, a car was overturned and a roof air-conditioning unit was on the ground.
The school will be closed on Wednesday, and the mayor and city leaders will assess when to open it.
A shelter has been set up at Mustang Community Church at 13851 FM 548.
The city of Forney is taking donations of food, water and clothing for those affected by the storm. Donations can be dropped off at the C-Life Church at 204 FM 1641. Phone: 972-809-9709
DFW AIRPORT
American Airlines canceled more than 450 arriving and departing flights at it hub airport by late Tuesday afternoon.
DFW Airport spokesman David Magana said more than 110 planes were damaged by hail. It wasn't clear how many belonged to American Airlines, but American and American Eagle had pulled 101 planes out of service for hail-damage inspections.
Flights also were canceled at Dallas Love Field, which is a big base for Southwest Airlines. That airline canceled more than 45 flights in and out of the airport by Tuesday evening. For a short time Tuesday afternoon, controllers in the tower at Love Field spotted a tornado headed their way. Passengers and employees were sheltered in place.
THE TORNADO OUTBREAK
The confirmed tornadoes touched down near Royce City and Silver Springs, said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Bishop.
April is the peak of the tornado season that runs from March until June. Bishop said Tuesday's storms suggest that "we're on pace to be above normal."
Baseball-sized hail was reported in nearby Euless with ping-pong-ball-sized hail reported at locations throughout North Texas.
According to Oncor Electric Delivery, approximately 9,400 customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were without power shortly after 2 a.m. About 20,700 customers had been without power at 8 p.m. At the storm's peak, nearly 50,000 customers had lost power.
The Dallas Chapter of the American Red Cross has already begun calling on volunteers to help those in need. If you'd like to volunteer, click here.
Gov. Rick Perry has activated the State Operations Center to quickly mobilize any assistance that North Texas authorities may need.
Associated Press writers Terry Wallace and David Koenig in Dallas, Schuyler Dixon in Arlington, Texas, Betsy Blaney in Lubbock, Angela K. Brown in Fort Worth and Paul J. Weber in San Antonio contributed to this report.These apps and digital tools help reduce the time a solopreneur has to spend on mundane tasks.
January 27, 2017 6 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Solopreneurs are in a class by themselves. Given all the typical pressure of an entrepreneur that they're under, and the fact that they have little-to-no outside assistance, solopreneurs need tools to help them reduce the time they spend on mundane tasks.
Related: 5 Productivity Tools for Self-Employed Internet Entrepreneurs
Additional free time, after all, is a godsend: It allows solopreneurs to maximize their time and creative potential for tasks that actually help their businesses grow.
So, if you're one of those besieged solopreneurs, here are some suggested tools:
1. WiseStamp
WiseStamp makes it remarkably easy to create a professional email signature that will show your picture and automatically give recipients all your contact information, including links to your website and social media pages. There are several ways to customize the process that are all entirely free. For additional options, the site offers a yearly subscription.
2. Workflow Max
Workflow Max offers everything you need in a single integrated platform. This tool can be used on the computer or on whatever smart device you prefer. You can handle everything from lead and client management, to invoicing and time sheets, job costing, purchase orders and more. There are more than 30 add-ons you can use to adjust the workflow as needed.
3. Zapier
Zapier lets you automate tasks easily by teaching more than 750 apps to work together. The free plan allows you to build individual connections and create basic automation, while the premium plan allows greater customization of the automation processes.
4. Shake
Shake by Legal Shield provides free templates that can be filled in with your specific information and sent to clients or collaborators to sign electronically and return. There is absolutely no cost when you use one of Shake's free templates, or you can upgrade to the monthly plan to make extensive customizations. For most people just starting out, the free plan will be more than sufficient.
5. Square
Square gives you the ability to take secure payments anywhere you are and has zero fees to get set up. The company will send interested individuals the hardware that attaches to a smart device for free and then keeps 2.75 percent of any transaction that is completed. This gives solopreneurs the ability to accept debit and credit cards from wherever they have the opportunity to make a sale.
Related: 12 Tools for Running Your Business From Anywhere in the World (Infographic)
6. Adobe Spark
If you’ve read anything about using social media to grow your business, you already know how important it is to have high-quality graphics that are designed for the platform you are using. Adobe Spark lets you do this for free. The premade templates are sized appropriately for whichever platform you are designing for, and the site also gives you the ability to create stunning video with virtually no prior experience.
7. Hootsuite
Hootsuite makes managing all of your social media accounts as easy as delegating the process to a virtual assistant. The free version lets you connect three social media accounts, schedule messaging and see basic analytics information. Plans are available for people who need to organize more accounts and for those who already have a team.
8. GetResponse
Email marketing and connecting to prospective clients through those efforts is incredibly important to effectively grow your business. GetResponse helps businesses do this for as little as $15 per month and includes 1,000 subscribers. As the business grows, higher-tier levels are available within the service. Every company, no matter how small, can benefit from gorgeously designed functional email marketing. Plus, you get landing pages and marketing automation, too. Higher-tier plans include additional features, like webinars, Salesforce integration and campaign consulting.
9. Grammarly
Solopreneurs often begin by doing everything themselves, including writing their own copy for email, social media, website pages and advertising materials. This is an effective way to keep initial costs low, but not all solopreneurs have the requisite skill set to write beautiful copy. Grammarly evens the playing field by catching grammatical and punctuation mistakes often overlooked by word processor applications. The free version also allows you to check for plagiarism, to make sure nothing you’ve read for research accidentally makes its way into your finished product. The upgrade option catches more details.
10. WiseIntro
WiseIntro is a free way to build your online presence without any startup costs. As you gain traction and need more options, it is easy to upgrade to one of the tool's monthly plans to unlock additional features. This is an especially good choice for solopreneurs. This is because of the strong visual component they have to their work and their need to show prospective clients exactly what they can do while still avoiding -- at this early stage -- having to pay a graphic designer to create a custom website.
11. Sighted
Sighted is an online invoicing tool perfect for freelancers and solopreneurs. The free plan is perfect for a small business, offering 20 invoices per month in multiple currencies, for up to 10 clients. As the business scales, paid plans (starting at $4.99 a month) allow for unlimited invoices, expenses and 100 or more clients. All plans feature the ability to accept online payments and include a profit and loss report to make tax time a little easier.
12. Evernote
Evernote is a place to store all of those ideas, pictures, mind maps and other assorted information that you want to remember. It can be accessed from a smart device or computer, and when you input something in one location, it will be available from all of your devices instantly. This is a great tool for any planning you do on the go, and it comes with a ton of free storage. If you find yourself relying on it as an extension of your own memory, you can upgrade to a plan with more storage.
13. Portent Title Maker
Everyone gets stuck with creating a catchy title for a blog post or article at some point. Portent’s Title Maker takes your keyword and turns it into an interesting heading to give you a jumping-off point for your next piece of content. This tool can even help generate ideas for newsletters, brochures and emails.
14. Assistant.to
Just because you are a solopreneur doesn’t mean you want to do every single task for yourself. Most businesses owners would agree that having a secretary to take care of details is essential. Unfortunately, it isn’t affordable for everyone just starting out. Assistant.to sets up your appointments by working with your email recipient, automatically adjusting time zones and even rescheduling meetings if something comes up.
Companies have found that by offering a limited version of their services to small businesses and solopreneurs, they are able to develop lasting business relationships that will grow over time.
Related: 7 Useful Productivity Apps for Telecommuters
Then, as their business demands increase, loyal users are more willing to pay for services they have begun to depend on. Take advantage of this marketing tactic yourself, and put it to work for your business today.I am a short story apologist—as both a writer and a reader. Perhaps it’s because of a short attention span or because they are easier to digest on my commute into work. Like many short story lovers, I came to the form through some American masters: Carver, Cheever, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. Unfortunately, as a feminist writer, I confess it wasn’t until much later that I devoured the many important female short story masters. I plan to spend the rest of my life making up for this deficit.
“She Doesn’t Cry,” Naja Marie Aidt, from Baboon (trans. Denise Newman)
Aidt’s collection glimpses the mundanity of life—making jam, buying groceries, a bike ride with the family—and at the moment the reader least expects it, she infuses each story with violence. In “She Doesn’t Cry,” a girl of three waits at a train platform with her father. We see the world through her precocious eyes, as she grasps at the world of adults. Whereas most of the other stories in Baboon turn on an assault, here the great tragedy is the little girl’s realization that she has left her beloved doll behind on the platform as her train pulls away. Though more subdued than the other stories, the impact is felt no less because the reader knows this is the girl’s introduction into a life in which loss can happen at any moment. Our hearts break for the girl who doesn’t cry, as she steels herself for the many tragedies ahead of her.
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“The Miracle Worker,” Mia Alvar, from In the Country
Though “The Miracle Worker” is about Sally, a Filipina special education teacher living in Bahrain, the child under her care becomes the focal point of the story, a symbol of the collective hurting of the story’s cast of adult characters. Five-year-old Aroush suffers from many developmental challenges, including immobility and speechlessness. Her mother believes with the right teacher and the right amount of |
Lansman considers extremely low-risk for babies. For instance, she reasons that her patients have virtually no chance of catching hepatitis B, which is generally only transmitted through sex and intravenous drug use, “not something babies are commonly engaging in”—she advises parents to forego that vaccine altogether. She also suggests skipping the varicella (chicken pox) and rotavirus vaccines, because those diseases are not life-threatening for the vast majority of children. While she doesn’t list the polio vaccine among the shots she believes patients should skip, she tells parents that the risk of children contracting polio in the United States these days is essentially nonexistent.
And then there are diseases that fall into a grayer area: The risk is not high, but it’s not zero, either. For these, Kenet Lansman recommends a delayed schedule. Because the incidences of measles, mumps, and rubella in the Bay Area are very low, she suggests that parents put off the MMR vaccine for their kids, unless they are traveling to a place where these diseases are endemic. The federal guidelines recommend MMR at age one; Pediatric Alternatives typically waits until age three to administer the shot.
The main reason for the delay, Kenet Lansman says, is that she still believes there could be a link between vaccines and autism. She acknowledges that the scientific community has rejected this theory, yet she says she has seen children from her own practice who begin to show signs of autism shortly after being vaccinated. “My feeling is that if there is any risk that the vaccine is associated with autism, we should delay the vaccine during this vulnerable developmental window,” she says.
“Our office tends to be quiet during flu season,” Kenet Lansman says.
Several times during my visit, Kenet Lansman mentions that in her 16 years of offering alternative vaccination schedules, not one of her patients has come down with a vaccine-preventable disease. What’s more, she adds, she has noticed that patients in her practice actually seem healthier than most of their peers. “Our office tends to be quiet during flu season,” she says.
I have to admit she has a point. Where the risk of catching measles or mumps is practically zero, if there’s any possibility at all that vaccines could contribute to chronic health problems, then why not use them judiciously?
For a reality check, I call up some outside experts, including Alanna Levine, a pediatrician in Orangeburg, New York, and a spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, to ask what they thought of this boutique approach to immunizations. “My blood is boiling right now,” Levine replies. “I think that policy is dangerous. I think it puts children at risk when they are most vulnerable.”
Saad Omer, a professor of public health and vaccine expert at Emory University, holds a similar view. “There is a reason why we give vaccines to young children,” he says. “That’s because the risk of disease is higher for certain age groups. You want to give vaccines as early as possible to protect the child. If you delay, you are leaving the most vulnerable period for the child open.”
“Most practices don’t have a community surveillance system,” says one vaccine expert. “They don’t know whom these kids interact with or where they will travel.”
While Omer declined to comment on Pediatric Alternatives specifically, he points out that the group that comes up with the official vaccination recommendations is interdisciplinary; the resulting schedule reflects the perspectives of epidemiologists, microbiologists, policy experts, and others, in addition to pediatricians. “There is a reason why the advisory committees make schedules—not an individual,” he tells me.
Omer adds that he considers it very risky to vaccinate only against diseases that are prevalent in a particular community. “Most practices don’t have a community surveillance system,” he says. “They don’t know whom these kids interact with or where they will travel. Infectious diseases are by nature infectious, so it’s not just individual behavior that matters. It’s everyone’s vaccinations.”
The concept that a critical mass of vaccinated people shields the rest is known as “herd immunity.” Within every community, there are people—mostly infants under one year of age and people with compromised immune systems—who can’t tolerate vaccines. And there are others whose vaccines may have worn off, or for whom a particular vaccine never elicited a strong immune response. The pertussis vaccine, for example, has a relatively low rate of effectiveness: It confers immunity on just 80 percent of people who receive it. “Anyone could end up not being protected,” Omer says. “So their protection depends on other people’s behavior.”
Paul Offit, a vaccine expert and chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, tells me he often encounters parents who are afraid that too many vaccines will overwhelm their child’s immune systems. But the contents of the vaccine, he says, are nothing compared to all the germs one encounters daily. “The shots are a drop in the ocean of what your body does every single day,” he says. “It looks bad, because the kid is stressed out, but it is certainly not actually bad.”
Still, I wonder, how much can an individual pediatrics office matter? Even if Pediatric Alternatives’ vaccine practices aren’t ideal, would a few thousand unvaccinated toddlers in California really bring about an epidemic? Maybe not, says Omer. But if the alternative-schedule trend catches on, we could be in trouble. Beyond the skipped vaccines, the one-shot-per-visit policy means more visits to the doctor, “so the parents have to take more time off to bring the child to get the vaccines,” he adds. That creates more chances for missed appointments—which means more undervaccinated children.
Nationwide, 13 percent of parents use an alternative immunization schedule, according to one survey.
Pediatric Alternatives is hardly the only practice offering modified vaccine schedules. Dr. Robert Sears popularized the practice with his 2007 book, The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for your Child. A quick search of the Berkeley Parents Network, a local community forum, turned up recommendations for a handful of Bay Area pediatricians who don’t insist that their patients stick to the official schedule. A 2012 study in the journal Pediatrics found that the percentage of children in greater Portland, Oregon, receiving two or fewer immunizations per doctor visit tripled between 2006 and 2009, leading the authors to conclude that Portland parents had increasingly chosen to delay their children’s vaccines. A 2011 University of Michigan survey found that nationwide, 13 percent of parents use an alternative immunization schedule.
Not all pediatricians who offer delayed vaccines do so out of concerns about the shots’ safety. Some simply see the alternative schedules as a compromise. Janet Perlman, a pediatrician with offices in Oakland and Berkeley, figures late immunizations are better than no immunizations. “I will do anything to get the vaccines in,” she tells me. “I just want to get the kids vaccinated.”
But Levine, the New York pediatrician I spoke with, has a different approach: If parents won’t stick to the schedule, she just won’t treat their children. In the 11 years she has practiced, she’s had to convince many hesitant parents that vaccines are safe. “It’s a long conversation,” she says. “It takes time. But it is worth it, because most of the time, if you really listen to what their concerns are and address them, they end up vaccinating on time.”
At the end of my visit to Pediatric Alternatives, I found that I liked Dr. Kenet Lansman. I could tell that she was bright and caring and open-minded, and most impressively, she tried to think creatively about how to keep her patients healthy. She’s right that there is an epidemic of chronic autoimmune illnesses and autism among children, and a mounting body of research suggests that our aggressive pursuit of germs—both in our environment and in the human body—might have something to do with it: When we kill disease-causing germs, the theory goes, we kill beneficial bacteria, as well, making our bodies’ defense systems go haywire.
But there is no research supporting the notion that vaccines contribute to autoimmune disorders or autism—and plenty of evidence showing that diseases like measles can be deadly. By deviating from the scientifically proven vaccine schedule, Kenet Lansman is playing a dangerous game. No matter what she believes about children in her practice being exceptionally healthy, the threat of catastrophic infectious diseases is real—and outbreaks are very hard to predict.
So far this year, there have been 36 cases of measles in California and 20 in New York City.
So far this year, there have been confirmed clusters of measles in the United States—36 cases in California and 20 in New York City. The unvaccinated patients of Pediatric Alternatives don’t live in a bubble. People travel. Consider this scenario: A patient of Kenet Lansman catches measles from a visitor from a part of the world where measles is still endemic. He then spreads it to his neighbor’s newborn, who isn’t old enough to be immunized, or to the kid at school whose immune system is weak because she is going through chemo.
This scenario isn’t far-fetched. During the 2010 pertussis outbreak, 10 babies in California died of the disease.
I was glad to hear that none of Kenet Lansman’s patients have contracted vaccine-preventable diseases yet. I just hope her luck does not run out.Now that the air has cleared a bit, I feel like there's a lot of subjects that I need to clarify. As I've said before, my relationship with Sarah had absolutely nothing to do with the band breaking up. The band had dissolved prior to me and her ever being together, but it wasn't announced until much later. Secondly, the infamous Tumblr post that circulated the Internet was full of fudged facts in an attempt to embarrass Sarah and I. It was full of slanderous and untrue statements in an attempt to make a "good news story". In fact, much of it was directed at a person other than Sarah. It was blatantly made by a friend of my ex who did everything in their power to make us look like we were "horrible people". The fact that the post was magically deleted proves that the person knew I would find out their identity, and they would have faced serious consequences. Sarah and I didn't get together until I was already broken up with my ex, and there was no "cheating" involved. The instagram account Sarah had was set to private, and unlocked miraculously by somebody in an attempt to embarrass us further - hence how the instagram was found when only a few people knew who Sarah was in the first place. Its blatantly apparent who was involved in this. Regardless of all of this, it changes nothing. My fiance and I are the happiest family imaginable. All the social media bs, forum slander, internet gossip in the world can never and will never change this. People's opinions on the matter means zero to me. I just started to get fed up with one side of the story being considered factual, when in fact, it's the farthest thing from it.
Reply · Report PostChristopher Cantwell, 36, was overcome by tear gas during skirmishes after hundreds of white nationalists and white supremacists carrying torches marched through the University of Virginia campus on the eve of the Aug. 12 “Unite the Right” rally. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)
Christopher Cantwell, a self-professed white nationalist arrested in the days after the violent demonstrations in Charlottesville in August, has hosted an Internet radio show from the confines of a Virginia jail for more than two months.
Cantwell was prominently featured in a Vice News documentary about violence in Charlottesville, where another white nationalist allegedly drove into a crowd, killing a counterprotester during the Aug. 12 "Unite the Right" rally. Two state police officers who had been monitoring the protests also died when their helicopter crashed after leaving the scene.
[The rise and humiliating fall of Chris Cantwell, Charlottesville’s starring ‘fascist’]
After the rally, Cantwell was charged with one count of malicious bodily injury by means of a caustic substance and two felony counts of illegal use of tear gas. He has been at the Albemarle-Charlottesville jail since he turned himself in to police after posting an emotional video about his arrest warrant.
In response to the video, he was widely dubbed "the crying Nazi" on social media.
Since then, Cantwell, 36, has called into white nationalist Internet radio shows while also hosting his own from jail — all without violating jail rules. He discusses current events, solicits donations for his legal defense, refers to himself as a "talk-radio personality" and "political prisoner," and appears with other white nationalists such as David Duke, Mike Enoch and "Unite the Right" organizer Jason Kessler.
Cantwell's recordings are sometimes titled "Live from Seg" or "Letters from a Charlottesville Jail" — a take on Martin Luther King Jr.'s famed "Letter from Birmingham Jail," written in 1963 after he was incarcerated for participating in Alabama civil rights protests. In one episode, Cantwell says he was reading books sent by allies to "become a real expert anti-Semite" and describes seeing James A. Fields Jr., who was housed on the same unit. Fields is accused ramming his car into the crowd of "Unite the Right" counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
In his most recent recording, dated Oct. 26, Cantwell criticizes members of the alt-right who have distanced themselves from white nationalism in the wake of Charlottesville.
[Christopher Cantwell held without bond in connection with Charlottesville protest]
Christopher Cantwell (University of Virginia Police/University of Virginia Police)
"This is a war," he said. "You want to just play the center in a war between ideological extremes, all you're going to be doing is getting shot at by both sides."
Martin Kumer, the Albemarle-Charlottesville jail superintendent, said administrators know about Cantwell's recordings but can't stop them because inmates have a right to freedom of speech. He said Cantwell's calls, except for those to legal counsel, are monitored.
"We certainly don't allow a podcast from a cellblock. He merely calls someone else who's recording his phone conversation, they digitize the phone conversation, they put it on the blog," Kumer said. "It's not as though we provide him with equipment to assist in this matter or condone it, we just don't have any control."
Jonathan M. Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, said the First Amendment protects Cantwell's speech behind bars, regardless of how offensive some might consider it.
"Unless he's running a criminal enterprise using the telephone, or encouraging criminal conduct through broadcasts or phone conversations, there's very little that correctional officials can do to prevent it," he said.
Paul Wright, who was released from prison in 2003 after serving time for felony murder, is the editor of Prison Legal News, a magazine that reports on criminal justice issues. He said prisoners, from former Black Panther and convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal to white nationalists, are allowed to broadcast messages from prison in different ways. From about 1998 to 2000, Wright broadcast a radio show himself from a prison in Washington state.
"Just because we disagree with the guy, I'm not going to be the one that says, 'Let's shut him down,' " he said of Cantwell.
Cantwell and other white nationalists have been exiled from the Internet since the Charlottesville attack. Links from Cantwell's website to his Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube accounts indicate that the accounts are no longer available or were suspended.
In the Oct. 26 broadcast, Cantwell said he hoped to be released after a preliminary hearing on Nov. 9.“Latinas for Trump” co-founder Denise Galvez said people who are against President-elect Donald Trump “have been fed a load of bull” by the mainstream media and that “they need to re-examine their thoughts of” him.
Speaking with National Public Radio host Michel Martin on the show All Things Considered on Saturday, Galvez urged people to “go beyond those 30-second soundbites that, you know, that MSNBC repeated over and over again.”
Galvez’s comments came in response to Martin’s question about what her response is to “people who say they feel threatened by [Trump] and demeaned by [Trump],” particularly members of the Latino population.
Galvez had previously mentioned to Martin that she has personal friends who have told her their families are completely divided over the election and are left wondering how their are going to make it through the holiday season because some of their relatives supported Trump.
Martin, pressing further, asked Galvez what she thinks “will make it better.” Gavlez said:
“Time. I think that number one, him delivering on his promises and actually improving the economy and, you know, for things to start happening, you know that are positive changes. Once that starts happening, I think people will definitely change their opinion of him. But I think that will only happen with time… So come January, you know, in the first 100 days like they talk about so much, if he starts to, number one, eliminate and repeal all those executive orders that Obama put in place, I think that you know, people will start seeing that is a man of action. You know, I think people question whether he’s just all talk. I don’t.”
Trump received more Latino votes than former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who lost to President Obama in 2012.
Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter and Periscope @AdelleNazMaureen is the first Filipino to win the competition
Published 9:53 PM, June 28, 2017
MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines' bet Maureen Wroblewitz won Asia's Next Top Model season 5 in the Wednesday, June 28 episode.
Maureen won against Malaysia's Shikin Gomez and Vietnam's Minh Tu Nguyen in the finale challenge, where they had to walk at a fashion show in Singapore. The ladies wore X.Q.Zhang designs during the fashion show.
Before that, they had a photo shoot titled "Motherland," where they modeled traditional outfits from their countries.
@maurwrob we’re speechless. Definitely NOT #justaprettyface #AsNTM5 #AsNTM5Finale #ExpectTheUnexpected pic.twitter.com/kAfYwobf2l — #AsNTM (@AsNTM) June 28, 2017
"Maureen, your gorgeous face has been a great advantage to you, but you also worked hard to prove that you were worth more than just a pretty face as you finally broke free of that mold throughout the weeks," host Cindy Bishop said before Maureen was announced the winner. "You're not only the youngest, you're also the smallest of the competition. But you have stood tall, and silenced anyone who ever doubted you."
Maureen took to Instagram after her win was announced to give a message to her supporters.
"I still can't believe I'm saying this... but I'm Asia's Next Top Model!" she began. "It feels like a dream and I don't know when I'll ever realize that all this has happened to me. This has been such a crazy journey but definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience I'll never forget about."
Maureen continued, saying that in the beginning, she doubted that she would even get into the competition. She's learned so much since then, she said, mostly about herself.
"I was constantly called 'a pretty face with no skills.' But little did they know, it would just make me come out stronger and better. It became a perfect motivation for me to prove them wrong and to show them that being inexperienced doesn't mean you're a weak model," said Maureen.
Maureen also dedicated her win to the Philippines: "There were times where I felt like giving up, but I knew that it couldn't be an option. I was the last Filipina standing and a Filipina has never won before. I wanted to win this for my country – the Philippines and I'm so happy to say that I did. This is all for you guys."
Read her full message below:
As part of her prize, Maureen will appear on a cover of Nylon Singapore, receive a Subaru car, and will be represented by Storm Model Management.
Maureen was the last Filipino standing in the show after two other Filipino representatives, Anjelica Santillan and Jennica Sanchez, were eliminated early in the competition. – Rappler.comHow to Buy Ripple (XRP) Quickly: A Step-By-Step Guide
What do you get when you combine tech and currency? Cryptocurrency! You likely are familiar with the popular Bitcoin, but have you heard about Ripple (aka XRP)? Ripple has slowly been gaining traction over the past year, and recently has begun to shoot up in value. You can check out the chart for Ripple at the bottom of this article. Many think this coin has more potential than any other cryptocurrency out there due to its speed and backing by banks.
So how do you buy it? That’s the toughest part. Many sites do not currently allow the purchase of Ripple. Out of the limited sites that have it, they usually require ID verification that can take days to weeks (and more often it’s weeks with the volume of sign-ups lately). However, there is a way around this. I’m going to be showing you a step-by-guide on how to purchase Ripple within less than an hour.
First things first. You need to purchase another cryptocurrency to convert into Ripple. This sounds like it’d take longer than purchasing it directly, but this will allow you to avoid the lengthy verification process many sites require before purchasing Ripple with traditional currency (USD, EUR, etc.). We’re going to use Coinbase. No ID verification is needed to sign-up, but you will be limited to depositing no more than $400 per week until ID is provided. If you use this link to Coinbase to sign up, you’ll get a free $10 worth of Bitcoin once you deposit $100 or more (it’s a win-win: I’ll also receive $10). The whole sign-up process will take you around 10 minutes and you’ll have to answer a few questions to verify your identity (but no physical ID is required).
2. Purchase Litecoin or Ethereum
Using Coinbase, purchase however much worth of Litecoin or Ethereum that’ll you’ll want to convert to Ripple by going into the Buy/Sell tab. It doesn’t matter which one you choose; they end up taking similar amounts of time to convert to Ripple (Litecoin is a little quicker transferring, but requires an additional step at the end). Coinbase allows you to purchase with a credit/debit card. This is going to be the fastest method to purchase the coins (almost instant). Do not purchase Bitcoin for the sole purpose of converting to Ripple. Bitcoin transaction fees are sky-high. Both Litecoin and Ethereum transaction fees are kept to a minimum (around $1-2 in most instances). Plus the amount of time required to transfer these two cryptocurrencies that you’ll be doing in the next step is much shorter than with Bitcoin (a few minutes compared to several hours in my experience).
Head over to Binance and setup an account. Although other exchanges are available to convert Litecoin/Ethereum to Ripple, I have found Binance to be the quickest (transactions are almost instant). The sign-up will only take you a few minutes.
4. Send Your Litecoin or Ethereum from Coinbase to Binance
We’re going to be sending those Litecoins/Ethereum we purchased at Coinbase over to our Binance account. First we need to find the right address we’ll be sending these coins to on Binance by going to Fund -> Deposits Withdrawals on the drop-down menu at the top the page. Then scroll down to find either Litecoin or Ethereum depending on what you purchased. Click on Deposit to the right of the coin name, and it’ll pop up with a deposit address. Copy this address and head back over to Coinbase. Once into your Coinbase account, go into the Accounts tab. Click Send on whatever currency you’d like to send and paste the address from Binance into the recipient box. Then type in what value of coins you’d like to send (you can type in how many coins or just the value in USD to send). Then hit Continue. Before sending the coins, Coinbase will prompt you to enter a verification number sent to your phone as a text. Type this in and hit Confirm. The transfer usually takes 5-15 minutes (the longest wait time I’ve had is about 15 minutes).
If you want to keep track of your transfer, you can go to Funds -> History on the drop-down menu on Binance. This will show you it’s progress.
5. Convert Litecoin/Ethereum to XRP.
On Binance, go to Exchange -> Basic from the drop-down menu on top.
If you originally purchased Ethereum follow these steps: Click on ETH in the top right box on the page -> scroll down to XRP/ETH and click on it -> on the bottom of the page you’ll now be able to purchase XRP by typing in the amount you’d like to purchase and clicking Buy XRP (Binance will show you the max amount you are able to purchase).
If you originally purchased Litecoin follow these steps (there is an additional step since we first need to convert to ETH and then into XRP): Click on ETH in the top right box on the page -> scroll down to LTC/ETH and click on it -> on the bottom of the page you now will be buying ETH with your Litecoin (LTC) -> type in the amount of LTC to sell and click Sell LTC (it may take a few seconds to a minute to convert your LTC to ETH)-> Go back up to the box in the top right and click on ETH -> scroll down to XRP/ETH and click on it -> on the bottom of the page you’ll now be able to purchase XRP by typing in the amount you’d like to purchase and clicking Buy XRP (Binance will show you the max amount you are able to purchase).
So that’s it! You now own some Ripple. You may now keep your Ripple in Binance or transfer it to your own wallet for some added security (I’ll be discussing this in a future article).
Feel free to share this with any friends or family who might be asking about Ripple by using the Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or email share buttons to the left!
Where would you sell your Ripple at? Above $10
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RedditI try not to go bonkers when I see a ranking I disagree with. Whether it's a team power ranking or a player list, it usually isn't worth getting too wound up.
Someone writes Seattle is the best. Someone else says Denver. I say whatever. But I just couldn't stop myself from getting worked up Wednesday night.
After a great day and a delicious dinner, I settled in to watch NFL Network's "Top 100 Players of 2014" countdown to see who ranked 11 through 20.
Watch "The Top 100 Players of 2014" every week at 9 p.m. ET on NFL Network as we count down to the top player in the NFL. "The Top 100 Players of 2014 Reactions" airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET.
And then, about 50 minutes in, it happened. Aaron Rodgers was revealed as No. 11 on the list.
I nearly fell off the couch. My state of happiness shifted to confusion. Did they air the wrong episode or shift a week ahead? Confusion then shifted to anger.
"What the heck is going on here?!"
The best player in the NFL wasn't even voted into the top 10. It's wrong, an injustice, a disgrace. It's now the new low for rankings in the history of rankings.
And this wasn't a list voted on by the fans or the media. This list was picked by the players. These are the same players who watch Rodgers' genius on a weekly basis. These are the same players on defense who get beat by Rodgers' unstoppable back-shoulder throws.
Please, spare me the nonsense that Rodgers was injured for much of the season and shouldn't be voted in the top 10. In his eight full games under center, Rodgers posted a 17:6 touchdown-to-interception ratio, a 104.9 passer rating (fourth-best in the league), 8.74 yards per attempt (second-best) and a 65.5 completion percentage.
And let's not forget his triumphant Week 17 return. After missing the previous seven games with a broken collarbone, Rodgers, with the Packers' postseason life on the line in Chicago, placed a dagger through the hearts of the Bears and their fans.
Wesseling: Top quarterbacks Who are the top quarterbacks in the league? Chris Wesseling ranks them all.
Who are the top quarterbacks in the league? Around The League'sranks them all. READ
It was fourth-and-8 -- call it fourth-and-the-season -- with 46 seconds left in the game when Rodgers threw a gorgeous, pressure-packed touchdown pass to Randall Cobb to put the Pack up five and keep the NFC North title in Green Bay. I remember talking to the wide receiver the next day on my SiriusXM Radio show, "Schein on Sports," and he was getting choked up about Rodgers' greatness on the field.
Could it be that every single player who voted missed the play? What about the hundreds of other game-changing plays Rodgers has made since becoming Green Bay's starter?
Just thinking about the group of players he was ranked among irks me. Russell Wilson (No. 20 on the list) is a fantastic player who's clutch and only getting better. But he averaged 210 passing yards per game last season -- that's a typical first half for Rodgers!
Wilson's teammate, Marshawn Lynch, was voted the 14th best player in the league. That's right, Lynch ranked just three spots lower than Rodgers. Let's think about this for one second: If Lynch retired tomorrow, the Seahawks' 2014 win total might drop by a game, maybe; without Rodgers, the Packers go from Super Bowl contenders to postseason long shots.
If he was voted No. 2 behind Peyton Manning after the Denver Broncos quarterback put together arguably the greatest NFL season ever at the position, I'd get it. I would disagree with it, but I'd comprehend it.
If Rodgers wasn't the best player in the league before yesterday, he will be now. Let me tell you a little secret about the Packers quarterback: He loves the "chip on the shoulder" card. Rodgers entered the league with a giant chip on his shoulder after falling to No. 24 in the 2005 draft. That chip only grew as Favre got the nod for the next three seasons.
Do I think Rodgers watched the NFL Network special? I absolutely do. Do I think Rodgers, regardless of what he might say, is heated by it? I absolutely do. Is it worse that his peers disrespected him? You better believe it.
Rodgers will use this fuel -- not that he even needs it -- and slice apart defenses this year, leading the Packers to a division title and winning the league MVP award.
Maybe then the players will get it right in next year's "Top 100."
Follow Adam Schein on Twitter @AdamScheinThe terror suspect who allegedly attempted to detonate a suicide-bomb in New York came to the United States from Bangladesh as a “chain migration” relative of an individual who had immigrated earlier into the United States.
In October, President Donald Trump called for an end to this “chain migration” process in his immigration principles.
On Monday 27-year-old Akayed Ullah, a Bangladesh national, injured three individuals when he allegedly tried to detonate a suicide bomb in New York City in a planned terrorist attack.
Ullah, as confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), entered the U.S. in 2011 as a chain migrant.
Under “chain migration,” new immigrants to the U.S. are allowed to bring an unlimited number of poorly-screened foreign relatives with them, creating a never-ending flow of immigration from some terror-ridden countries.
Ullah came to the U.S. through the F43 visa, allowing him to obtain a Green Card simply because his father’s brother or sister had recently been naturalized as a U.S. citizen. This process is known as “extended-family chain migration.”
.@DHSgov can confirm that the suspect was admitted to the United States after presenting a passport displaying an F43 family immigrant visa in 2011. The suspect is a Lawful Permanent Resident from Bangladesh who benefited from extended family chain migration. — Tyler Q. Houlton (@SpoxDHS) December 11, 2017
JUST IN: 27 y/o Terrorist who is from Bangladesh and was living in Brooklyn, told authorities “They’ve been bombing in my country and I wanted to do damage here, Terrorist was also a cab driver. pic.twitter.com/vhtfzadgoc — NYC Scanner (@NYScanner) December 11, 2017
Trump has repeatedly demanded an end to chain migration, saying “Chain migration is a disaster for this country and it’s horrible.”
.@POTUS: "Chain migration is a disaster for this country, and it's horrible." | Catch the full interview TONIGHT at 10p ET on @FoxNews. pic.twitter.com/0It6tw2rWI — Fox News (@FoxNews) November 2, 2017
As Breitbart News reported, more than 140,000 Bangladeshi nationals — larger than the population of Dayton, Ohio — have entered the United States since 2005 for no other reason than to reunite with extended family members.
8,508 Bangladeshi nationals entered U.S. in 2005 as chain migrants
Bangladeshi nationals entered U.S. in 2005 as chain migrants 9,936 entered in 2006
entered in 2006 7,765 entered in 2007
entered in 2007 7,795 entered in 2008
entered in 2008 12,974 entered in 2009
entered in 2009 11,407 entered in 2010
entered in 2010 13,136 entered in 2011
entered in 2011 13,379 entered in 2012
entered in 2012 11,346 entered in 2013
entered in 2013 14,170 entered in 2014
entered in 2014 13,034 entered in 2015
entered in 2015 18,051 entered in 2016
entered in 2016 Since 2005, 141,501 Bangladeshi nationals have entered U.S. as chain migrants
This is the second time in three months that a foreign-born suspected terrorist entered the U.S. through an immigration program that Trump has called for the end to.
Another suspected ISIS-inspired New York City terrorist, Uzbek national 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov who is accused of murdering at least eight individuals, entered the U.S. in 2010 by winning one of the 50,000 visas randomly allotted every year under the Diversity Visa Lottery.
The Visa Lottery dolls out 50,000 visas annually to foreign nationals from a multitude of countries. The countries include those with terrorist problems, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.
Trump most recently slammed the visa lottery, saying:
We want a system that is merit-based. They come in on merit, they don’t come in on a lottery system. How about the lottery system? Folks did you see that? That’s the guy in New York City. The lottery system where they put names in a bin… so what they do, I would say but more than just say, they take their worst and they put them in the bin and then when they pick the lottery, they have the real worst in their hands… and we end up getting them. No more lottery system. We’re going to end that. We’ve already started the process. We want people coming into our country who love our people, support our economy and embrace our values. It’s time to get our priorities straight.
About 9.3 million foreign nationals have come to the U.S. as chain migrants between 2005 and 2016, Breitbart News reported. In that same time period, a total of 13.06 million foreign nationals have entered the U.S. through the legal immigration system, as every seven out of 10 new arrivals come to the country for nothing other than family reunification.
This makes chain migration the largest driver of immigration to the U.S. — making up more than 70 percent — with every two new arrivals bringing seven foreign relatives with them.
Currently, only one in 15 foreign nationals admitted to the U.S. come to the country based on skills and employment purposes. Though roughly 150,000 employment-based Green Cards are allotted every year, half of those Green Cards actually go to the foreign relatives of employees.
Since 2005, the U.S. admitted 80,252 chain migrants from Iran, despite the nation being listed by the U.S. State Department as a sponsor of terrorism.(Reuters) - Yellowstone National Park assured guests and the public on Thursday that a super-volcano under the park was not expected to erupt anytime soon, despite an alarmist video that claimed bison had been seen fleeing to avoid such a calamity.
The Yellowstone River winds through the Hayden Valley in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, June 9, 2013. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart
Yellowstone officials, who fielded dozens of calls and emails since the video went viral this week following an earthquake in the park, said the video actually shows bison galloping down a paved road that leads deeper into the park. (To see the video, click here
“It was a spring-like day and they were frisky. Contrary to online reports, it’s a natural occurrence and not the end of the world,” park spokeswoman Amy Bartlett said.
Assurances by Yellowstone officials and government geologists that the ancient super-volcano beneath the park is not due to explode for eons have apparently done little to quell fears among the thousands who have viewed recent video postings of the thundering herd.
Commentary with one of the clips by a self-described survivalist wearing camouflage, dark sunglasses and a black watch cap suggests the wildlife exodus may be tied to “an imminent eruption here at Yellowstone.”
The 4.8 magnitude earthquake that struck early Sunday near the Norris Geyser Basin in the northwest section of Yellowstone, which spans 3,472 square miles of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, caused no injuries or damages and did not make any noticeable alterations to the landscape, geologists said.
Though benign by seismic standards, it was the largest to rattle Yellowstone since a |
of individuals and seat them strategically throughout their audience. Most of these paid extras are aspiring actors.[6][20] Though tickets are not offered for the show, arrangements can sometimes be made with Sheindlin's production staff to allow fans of the show into the audience. The extras must not dress casually, and no logos or brand names may be visible on their clothing. Extras are also instructed to appear as if they are having discussions with each other before and after each case, so the bailiff may make such announcements as "Order! All rise."[21]
Audience members are not to make any noises during the proceedings and, unlike other court shows, may not applaud the judge or rightful litigant upon praiseworthy remarks; although on some occasions when Sheindlin delivers a crushing remark for a particularly egregious or ludicrous act, the audience is seen laughing or applauding without Sheindlin silencing them. For the most part, however, Sheindlin is seen bringing the audience to order (with a fountain pen; she never uses a gavel) and admonishing them for engaging in any such noise throughout the cases.
To acquire cases, the show generally uses one of the following three options:
Its 60 to 65 researchers, spread out across the country, enter small claims courts and photocopy numerous cases. These photocopied cases are then sent to Judge Judy producers, who review them all in search of lawsuits they believe will make for good television. According to the show's producers, only 3% of the photocopied cases are worthy enough for television. [6]
producers, who review them all in search of lawsuits they believe will make for good television. According to the show's producers, only 3% of the photocopied cases are worthy enough for television. Its telephone number posting/announcement presented on each episode for interested individuals to call in with lawsuits.
Its website whereby lawsuits can be written out and submitted into the show.[22]
After one of these three processes, if the producers are interested, their employees will then call both parties and ask them questions relating to their lawsuit, making sure they're suitable for Judge Judy. If the parties agree to be on the show and sign a waiver, agreeing that arbitration in Sheindlin's court is final and cannot be pursued elsewhere (unless Sheindlin dismisses the lawsuit without prejudice), their case will air on Judge Judy.[23]
The award limit on Judge Judy, as on most "syndi-court" shows (and most small claims courts in the U.S.), is $5,000. The award for each judgment is paid by the producers of the show from a fund reserved for the purpose.[24] Sheindlin rules by either A.) issuing a verdict of a specific dollar amount (not always in the full amount of what is requested and rarely if ever in excess of what is requested even if she believes complainants are deserving of more) or B.) by dismissing the lawsuit altogether. When ruled on in these manners, cases cannot be refiled or retried elsewhere. However, if Sheindlin specifically dismisses the lawsuit "without prejudice", that lawsuit may be refiled and retried in another forum. In some instances, Sheindlin has dismissed cases without prejudice deliberately so that complainants pursue defendants in an actual court of law so that the defendants themselves are held financially accountable, as opposed to on the show. In such cases, Sheindlin has expressed particular aversion to the defendants in question.[25] Further, Sheindlin has dismissed cases without prejudice when she has suspected both the plaintiff(s) and defendant(s) of conspiring together just to gain monetary rewards from the program.[25]
Both the plaintiff(s) and the defendant(s) also receive an appearance fee. The appearance fee amount has varied as between different litigants of the show: certain litigants have reported receiving a $500 appearance fee while others have reported receiving $100, and others $250.[26][27] In addition to the appearance fee amount, litigants are paid $35 a day by the show.[27] The litigants' stay lasts for the number of days that the show does taping for that week, which is two or three days.[28] In addition, the airfare (or other means of travel) and hotel expenses of the litigants and their witnesses are covered by the show, and the experience is generally treated as an all-expense-paid vacation outside of the actual court case.[27] If there is an exchange of property, Sheindlin signs an order, and a sheriff or marshal oversees the exchange.[29] Sheindlin sees only a half-page complaint and a defense response prior to the taping of the cases, sometimes only moments before.[30] Most of the cases, not including any footage deleted to meet the time constraints of the show, usually last anywhere from twelve to forty-five minutes.[31][32]
Judge Judy, like most court programs, is inexpensive to produce and thus creates considerable income. A budget for a week's worth of Judge Judy episodes is half the cost of a single network sitcom episode.[33]
Recordings and airings [ edit ]
Three days every other week (two weeks a month), Sheindlin and her producers tape the court show.[14] They usually produce ten to twelve cases for each day they tape the show. This makes for about a week's worth of episodes, all done within one day. Anywhere from thirty to thirty-six cases are taped over three days during the week. Sheindlin appeared as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on September 13, 2011. When asked by Kimmel how many days a month she works, Sheindlin replied, "Five days." [34] Sheindlin and her producers sometimes tape only five cases per day and two days per week.[35][36] The show has fifty-two taping days a year.[37] For each season, some 650 claims are brought to the set to be "presided" over by Judge Judy.[35] This means approximately 8,450 claims have been brought to Judy Sheindlin's Hollywood set as of the end of its thirteenth season (2008–09).
For the most part, cases are taped all throughout the year except for two breaks Sheindlin and all of the staff members of her show have for the year. One of the two breaks includes an extra week off in December, as the show is only taped one week out of that month because of the holidays. The other break is from mid-July (only taping one week in July) and all through August. According to members of the show, the reason for this break is that people are more interested in taking vacations than in filing lawsuits around that time.[38] When the show premieres in September, only the best episodes of the ones taped before Sheindlin's break are selected to begin out the season. Thus, the first few weeks (the first week in particular) will consist of what the show feels to be its best episodes. In Sheindlin's words, "It's like drinking wine. You don't serve the really good bottle of wine third."[39]
Altogether, there are 260 new episodes each season. There is at least one new episode for every weekday, with the exception of a few hiatuses during most of the summer, a couple of holidays, and as of more recent seasons, early spring as well (much of March and April).[40] The cases are all pre-recorded for editing purposes and will usually air one to three months after being taped. The cases are mixed up and not shown in order of when they were recorded.[41] While the cases taped in March end the seasons, the cases taped throughout April, May, June, and July start out each season in September and last through October.[42] Throughout the very beginning of each season, two new Judge Judy episodes air per day. After two weeks, this is reduced to one new airing a day, followed by a repeat. There are also various other moments throughout the year where two new episodes are shown for a few weeks. This has sometimes included January when the show returns from its winter hiatus. Two new episodes are also shown daily during the "sweeps" months of November, February, and May. Unlike other television programs, the Judge Judy season finale does not air in April or May; rather, it airs in June, July, or August. When the season finale is extended to July or August, most of the summer episodes preceding it are repeats with new episodes that are few and far in-between.
Two DVDs, featuring "memorable cases," have been released by the show: the first in 2007, "Judge Judy: Justice Served," and the second in 2008, "Judge Judy: Second To None."[43]
Location [ edit ]
Judge Judy tapes at the Sunset Bronson Studios on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California.[44] In alternating weeks, Sheindlin, who owns a home in New York among other cities/states, flies out on her private jet to tape Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.[14]
As of 2014, the Judge Judy set is located directly beside the set of the courtroom series Sheindlin created and produces, Hot Bench. Both shows are taped in the same studio. Previous to that, the space directly beside Sheindlin's set was used for the courtroom series Paternity Court for the 2013-14 season.[45] Prior to that, the space was used for Judge Judy's long-running sister show Judge Joe Brown until Judge Joe Brown's 2013 cancellation. Like Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown was also produced by Big Ticket Entertainment.[31] The two shows alternated taping weeks. Despite the show being taped primarily in California, it displays various images of New York City upon returning from commercial breaks, including a subway train and official signs bearing "State of New York" and "Family Court" (Sheindlin was previously a New York family court judge)[46] within the letterbox-like graphics used going to and from breaks since the ninth season. The set features a New York state flag behind Sheindlin's seat.
Remodeling [ edit ]
Over its existence, the show has changed very little from season to season.[47] Most modifications to the program have been done in minute detail, such as to the show's book shelf display seen near the courtroom entrance. Aesthetically, the show's theme song, graphics, and color scheme are the only aspects that have changed repeatedly over the course of its lifespan.[48] The ninth season (2004–05) is one of few seasons in which the show underwent major remodeling when music for the show's opening, closing, and to/from commercial portions were modified. A modern version of a melody from Beethoven's 5th Symphony was then adopted as the show's opening theme song. This arrangement was composed by Non-Stop Music Productions.[49] For its scenes, Sheindlin is shown in a different courtroom from her own (part of a proposed renovation to the courtroom that was rejected by Sheindlin for being too dark), approaching the camera, followed by folding her arms and smiling at the camera. This is followed by showing various scenes of her presiding over different cases. As part of these modifications, the show's introductory previews, graphics, and images all began showing up in falu red.
Prior to the ninth season, the show used an original tune for its theme song composed by Bill Bodine. From the show's debut through its eighth season, various versions of this original tune were used, the show making moderate modifications to the tune every few seasons, as shown here and here. The actual full-length version of this original musical, which never played during the show's intro, played during the lengthier litigant-afterthought-segments as shown (full-length musical used for 1999-00, 2000-01, 2001-02). From seasons five through eight, the opening music video commenced with an approaching scene towards a computer animated courthouse display up until that scene entered into the courthouse. From there, several shots of Sheindlin gesticulating from her bench—as though presiding over various cases—were displayed in motion. These motioning images eventually developed into the courthouse logo that represents the program (the logo always displayed within the letter "D" in "Judy") by the end of this opening music video. The music video in seasons prior to this used relatively similar music with disparities in scenes, images, instrumental sound type and theme song length.
Further, early seasons of the show used graphics and images that were sea green and saffron. Blue and saffron then came to represent multiple seasons of the show before the show's current color scheme. By the show's sixth season (2001–02), music and graphics used in the introductory previews no longer resembled the rest of the program as they had previously, but instead used a high blue color scheme and a different song for each episode/intro preview. While the introductory preview's inconstant tunes have continued to the present season, the color scheme in the introductory previews began resembling the color scheme used in the rest of the program (falu red) once again by the ninth season.
Each opening music video consists of Voice-Over Artist Jerry Bishop stating: "You are about to enter the courtroom of Judge Judith Sheindlin. The people are real. The cases are real. The rulings are final. This is Judge Judy."[50] Originally between the statements "The rulings are final" and "This is Judge Judy" was the statement, "This is her courtroom."[51] This was removed in 2004. Beginning in September 2012, the show made a switch to high definition with its 17th season. The bumpers between commercials are also in HD, although most on-screen graphics such as plaintiff and defendant descriptions are framed to fit a 4:3 aspect ratio.[52]
By the 20th season beginning in September 2015, the show began using a shortened, scanty version of the same intro it had been using for 10 years since its 9th season. Both the Beethoven remix and lyrics have been curtailed. The present lyrics state only "You are about to enter the courtroom of Judge Judith Sheindlin. This is Judge Judy." In addition to not using much of an intro theme any longer, a "20th anniversary" caption is depicted above the "Judge Judy" logo in the intro. These are the only two updates for season 20.
Episode specials [ edit ]
Primetime Judge Judy [ edit ]
On May 20, 2014, CBS aired a one-hour special called Judge Judy Primetime which aired at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The special was a combination of reshown clips from the 1993 60 Minutes Special on Sheindlin, as well as a few never-previously-seen cases. The special marked Judge Judy's first airing in primetime, a landmark for court shows which are typically limited to daytime or late night hours.[53][54] Although the special didn't rank nearly as high as Dancing with the Stars (14.86 million) and The Voice (11.57 million), it brought in 5.66 million viewers, enough to make it the night's top rated show on CBS. In addition, the special came in just behind American Idol, which brought in 6.61 million viewers.[55]
Contrived case [ edit ]
At least some of the cases on the series have been circumstances that were allegedly contrived by the litigants just to receive monetary payment from the program.
In April 2013, former litigants from a 2010 airing of the show revealed they conspired together in fabricating a lawsuit in which the logical outcome would be to grant payment to the plaintiff. The operation, devised by musicians Kate Levitt and Jonathan Coward, was successful: Sheindlin awarded the plaintiff (Levitt) $1,000. The litigants involved also walked away with an appearance fee of $250 each and an all expense paid vacation to Hollywood, California. In reality, all the litigants in question—plaintiffs and defendants alike—were friends who split the earnings up among each other. It was also reported that the show's producers were in on the sham and knew of the contrivance all along but went along with it. The lawsuit was over the fictitious death of a cat as a result of a television crushing it.[56][57]
Curb Your Enthusiasm pseudo-Judge Judy case featuring Sheindlin [ edit ]
Sheindlin and her program appeared on the November 26, 2017 broadcast of Curb Your Enthusiasm, presiding over a sketch comedy court case with Larry David as the plaintiff who sued over custody of a sick plant, and ended up losing. The pseudo-Judge Judy case assumed the appearance of an actual case from Sheindlin's program, taking place from the show's courtroom set with trademarked voice-over briefs, theme music and audience response.[58]
Judge Judy Sheindlin [ edit ]
Judge Judy Sheindlin was born on October 21, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York, to German-Jewish parents Murray and Ethel Blum. Sheindlin described her father, a dentist, as "the greatest thing since sliced bread" and her mother as "a meat-and-potatoes kind of gal." It was reported in October 2012 that Sheindlin had a $45 million yearly contract with CBS Television Distribution, in effect until 2015 and up $20 million from 2007.[59] It was later reported in October 2013 that Sheindlin is the highest paid TV star, earning $47 million per year for Judge Judy, which translates into just over $900,000 per workday (she works 52 days per year).[60]
Sheindlin has gained a reputation for her tough judicial approach in both the family court and televised court, also known widely for her no-nonsense fact-finding, restive nature, and incisive impositions that dismiss attempts at debate.[61][62] In line with these attributes, her program has been touted as "a show where justice is dispensed at the speed of light." Loosely related is her resoluteness in opinions and rulings, often resulting in the parties arguing, debating and excuse-making to no avail.[63]
Strict in her management of the proceedings,[64] Sheindlin coerces precise compliance of rules and is very quick to scold or even punish what she perceives as disobedience, misbehavior or even annoyance. And as result of her gruff disposition,[65] volatile temper,[66] and cheeky treatment,[67] taglines such as "Justice with an Attitude" have been used to characterize the program.[68] As examples of this, Sheindlin has regularly made such remarks as:
"Baloney!"
"Do I have'stupid' written over my forehead?" [69]
"I'm here because I'm smart, not because I'm young and gorgeous, although I am" [69]
"If you live to be 100, you will never be as smart as I am, sir" [69]
"Clearly you are not wrapped too tight" [70]
"Where did you think you were coming to today, the beach?!" [71] "I'm speaking!" [71]
"I'm speaking!" "If you interrupt again madam, your case is dismissed, and I'm throwing you out. Do we understand each other?" [71]
"I've been in this business for over 40 years" [71]
"Do I look like I need help from you?" [71]
"That's a lot of who shot John" [72]
"This is my playpen"[71]
Sheindlin's regular phrases on the program have become known as "Judyisms".[73] Some of these Judyisms are intended to provide a lesson, such as "A good deed never goes unpunished", "Beauty fades, dumb is forever", "If It doesn't make sense, it's not true", "Do you know when teenagers are lying? When their mouths move."[71] Sheindlin has used the position of television arbitrator to impart guidance, direction, and life lessons not only to her litigants but her viewers and public at large. An example of guidance often stressed by Sheindlin is to be independent through employment, especially so as to not live off the government where unwarranted or other people directly where oppression from or friction with the provider may eventuate. In the former, Sheindlin can often be quoted as stating, "No, you aren't supporting yourself. Byrd and I are supporting you."[74][75] Sheindlin has stated that the main message she wants viewers to take from her program is that people must take responsibility for their actions and do the right thing.[40][76]
Reception [ edit ]
Nielsen ratings by season [ edit ]
1996–1998
Judge Judy went on the air in September 1996. By the end of October of that year, the show was averaging only a 1.5 rating, putting it in the mid-rank of the 159 syndicated shows on the air. At that time, it was never expected that the show's ratings would ever compete with highly successful daytime TV shows of the time, such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Rosie O'Donnell Show and The Jerry Springer Show.[40] According to Biography's documentary film on Sheindlin, "Judge Judy: Sitting in Judgment" (aired February 21, 2000),[77] producers of Judge Judy were disappointed that the show was barely making it on the radar. However, it did not take long for the court show to pick up momentum as Judge Judy rose to a 2.1 rating by the end of that first season. By its 2nd season (1997–98), the court show had already risen into the 4 ratings ranges, averaging a 4.3.[78]
The 3rd season (1998–99) of Judge Judy was the show's first season as the highest-rated program in daytime television, having surpassed the highly rated Jerry Springer Show and even then daytime powerhouse The Oprah Winfrey Show for the first time[79] (King World Productions which launched Oprah was a corporate sibling of CBS Television Studios, which distributed Judge Judy): the program's ratings more than doubled to a 5.6 for that season, marking Judge Judy as an early success.[80]
It was due, in part, to this early success that daytime television began to feature more court programming, such as a revival of The People's Court that re-debuted in fall 1997. In 1999, Judge Judy moved from Worldvision Enterprises to Paramount Domestic Television, which also distributed her stablemate Judge Joe Brown and eventually Judge Mills Lane. Many other retired judges were given their own court shows in syndication due in large part to Sheindlin's popularity. These include Greg Mathis, Glenda Hatchett, Alex Ferrer, Maria Lopez, Karen Mills-Frances, Cristina Perez, David Young, and many others. In addition, the series helped to spawn various nontraditional court programs. These include the reality-based revival of Divorce Court, which was originally presided over by Mablean Ephriam and now helmed by Lynn Toler; the short-lived Power of Attorney, capturing various high-profile attorneys arguing cases for litigants in front of Andrew Napolitano; Street Court, which took litigation outside of the courtroom; Jury Duty, featuring an all-celebrity jury hearing cases presided over by Bruce Cutler; etc. Furthermore, the role of Judge Judy in the rise in popularity of daytime court shows enabled several other non-real life judges to preside over courts, such as Nancy Grace, Jeanine Pirro, and Gloria Allred.
Also, partly due to Sheindlin's popularity, the producers of The People's Court decided to replace Ed Koch with Sheindlin's husband, Jerry Sheindlin, as their presiding judge during The People's Court's 3rd present life season/15th overall season (1999–2000); this meant that husband and wife would be either part of the same afternoon lineup or competing for ratings against each other. This experiment, however, did not last long as midway through The People's Court's fourth season, Sheindlin was replaced by the show's current judge, Marilyn Milian.[80][81]
1999–2006
For its 4th season (1999–00), Judy's ratings exploded to their highest to date, peaking at a 9.3 rating. At this point, Sheindlin's courtroom series was still more than ever the highest rated program in daytime. It was also at this point that Judge Judy held a record of increasing its ratings for each successive season since its debut. Because of the program's success, Judge Judy began airing at better time periods.[80]
It was by the show's 5th season (2000–01) that Judy's streak of growing in ratings from season to season since its debut had ceased. However, the court show still remained the highest-rated program in daytime that season with a 5.6 rating.[48] By the 6th season (2001–02), Judy was no longer the highest-rated program in daytime, beaten out by The Oprah Winfrey Show. The court show averaged a 5.0 rating that season.[48] Likewise, for her 7th season (2002–03), she also averaged a 5.0.[48] For her 8th season (2003–04), Sheindlin finally reversed the season-to-season downward turn in her ratings by averaging a 7.1.[82] Of the seven running court shows during the 2004–05 season, most of them earned a 3.63 rating; however, Judge Judy pulled in a 7.5 rating for that season (the show's 9th).[80] For her 10th season (2005–06), Judge Judy averaged a 4.8 rating.[83] Judge Judy averaged 4.6 rating for her 11th season (2006–07). Meanwhile, other programs in the genre were trailing Sheindlin from a vast distance (as has been the case since the debut of Judge Judy): Judge Joe Brown averaged a 2.9 rating; The People's Court averaged a 2.7; Judge Mathis averaged a 2.4; Divorce Court averaged a 2.0; Judge Alex averaged 1.9; Judge Hatchett averaged a 1.5; rookies--Cristina's Court averaged a 1.4, and Judge Maria Lopez came in last, averaging a 1.0 rating.[84]
2007–2011
For its 12th season (2007–08), Judge Judy averaged a 4.8 rating (4.8 HH AA%/7.4 HH GAA% rating) and 9.9 million average daily viewers.[43] Judy was the only first-run syndication program to increase in ratings for that season from the previous, leading CBS to immediately extend her contract through the 2012–13 season.[85] For its 13th season (2008–09), the show averaged a 4.2 rating (4.2 HH AA%/6.5 HH GAA% rating) and 9.02 million average daily viewers.[86] Its 14th season (2009–10) marked the first season in nearly a decade since the 2000–01 season that any daytime television program had been able to surpass The Oprah Winfrey Show's ratings (Judge Judy is also the show in question that during the 2000–01 television season surpassed The Oprah Winfrey Show in daytime TV ratings): Judy broke Winfrey's near decade-long streak with a 4.4 rating (4.4 HH AA%/6.9 HH GAA% rating) and 9.6 million average daily viewers.[87] It was also at that point that Sheindlin's courtroom series became the highest rated show in all of daytime television programming.[88] Judy secured this title in its 15th season (2010–11) as the program remained ahead of Oprah in her [Oprah] final season and the highest-rated daytime television offering, averaging a 5.11 rating[89] and 9.6 million viewers.[90] During this season, Judy also became the highest rated show in first-run syndication.[91] Late that same season in May 2011, as a result of continued high ratings, CBS again extended Sheindlin's contract, this time through the 2014–15 season (the show's 19th).[92]
In the first post-Oprah television season, the court show continued its reign as the most dominant show in daytime and also became the top-rated show in syndication, its 16th season (2011–12) racking up a 7.0 rating and 9.29 million average daily viewers.[93] As the top-rated show in all of syndication at this point, Sheindlin defeated first-run syndication programs and off-network syndication programs (rerun episodes of programs off their original network).[94] The title of overall syndication leader was previously held by off-network syndicated program Two and a Half Men (2010–11) and before that, first-run syndicated program Wheel of Fortune (2009–10).[95][96]
Judge Judy's ratings boost in its 16th season and late into the show's 15th season was at least partly due to Nielsen's change in methodology, in April 2011. This variation benefits programs that air multiple, differing episodes a day. The updated method is totalling ratings points through adding all viewings for each daily episode–even if one of those viewings come from an individual already counted in as having watched another of the show's daily episodes. For example, as Judge Judy airs two different episodes per day, two ratings points are counted for every one person who has watched both the first and second daily airings. This is as opposed to one person's viewing of the two daily episodes amounting to only one ratings point. Prior to the convert, the latest method was only used in GAA numbers, while the previous method was used in average audience measure. Some court shows air in one hour blocks and thus do not benefit at all from the updated method.[97] Worth noting, however, is that shows airing multiple daily episodes may not directly benefit monetarily as the rating system that local stations use to sell to advertisers is based upon the prior method.[98]
2012–2016
For its 17th season (2012–13), Judge Judy once again pulled in a 7.0 household rating.[91][99] The series delivered 9.63 million average daily viewers that season, growing by +32,000 viewers over the prior season.[100] Despite this, Judy lost its 1st place spot as the ratings leader in all of syndication that season, descending to 2nd place, only a tad behind The Big Bang Theory (off-network syndicate) which took home a 7.1 for that season. Still and all, this was the 3rd season in a row that Judy earned the title of ratings leader in all of first-run syndication.[91] Moreover, this was the 4th consecutive season that Judy was the ratings leader in all of daytime television programming.[101] For the 18th season (2013–14), Judy rose to a 7.2 household rating and brought in 9.94 million viewers, gaining 8% over its prior season. Also for this season, the show reclaimed the title as highest rated program in all of daytime (5th consecutive time, 8th time overall) and all of syndication (3rd time).[102][103] The show's 19th season (2014–15) pulled in a 7.0 household rating and remained the highest rated program in both daytime television as well as all of syndication.[104] The 20th season (2015–16) was Judy's 3rd consecutive year as syndication's top strip, the court show averaging a 7.0 full-season household rating.[105]
2017–present
For its 21st season (2016–17), Judge Judy trounced all of its competitors in daytime and all of syndication. The court show scored a 6.8 household rating for its 21st season.[106][107] For the 22nd season (2017–18), Judy attained a 6.9 live plus same day household average, well ahead of anything else in syndication. It marks the show's 5th straight year as the leader in all of syndication ratings and the 9th straight year as the leader in first-run syndication ratings.[108]
Longevity [ edit ]
Judge Judy, which premiered on September 16, 1996, reportedly revitalized the court show genre.[109] Only two other arbitration-based reality court shows preceded it, The People's Court (its first life canceled in 1993 from low ratings) and Jones & Jury (lasting only the 1994–95 season, short-lived from low ratings).[109] Sheindlin has been credited with introducing the "tough" adjudicating approach into the judicial genre, which has led to several imitators.[110] The only two court shows that outnumber Judge Judy's seasons, The People's Court and Divorce Court, have both lasted via multiple disunited lives of production and shifting arbiters. Thus Sheindlin's span as a television jurist or arbitrator has lasted longer than any other—a distinction that earned her a place in the Guinness World Records in September 2015. With no cancellations or temporary endings in its series run, Judge Judy also has the longest-lasting individual production life of any court show.[111][112]
Awards [ edit ]
A three time Emmy Award winner, Judge Judy won its first Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Legal/Courtroom Program in 2013, its 15th nomination.[113] It was the first long-running, highly rated court show to win an Emmy. The court show won Emmys in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
Ratings [ edit ]
Since its premiere, Judge Judy has gained enormous popularity and has had the highest ratings in courtroom programming in the United States.[35] The show was also the highest-rated daytime television program from its 3rd (1998–99) through 5th (2000–01) season. After that, the show's Nielsen ratings moderated but regained the number one spot by its 13th season (2009–10) and has kept this reign to date.[114][115] For its 16th season (2011–12), it was named the highest-rated program in all of daytime as well as syndication, averaging a 7.0 rating.[97] It regained the position as leader in all of syndication for its 18th season and has kept that title henceforth, 5 consecutive years to date through its 22nd season.
Audience makeup [ edit ]
Judge Judy's daytime audience is composed of approximately seventy-five percent women and twenty-five percent men.[38] In February 2014, it was reported that Judge Judy's audience is mostly composed of older women, African Americans and Latinos.[116]
Criticisms [ edit ]
Sheindlin vs. Joseph Wapner [ edit ]
Despite her widespread popularity, Sheindlin's behavior and treatment of the parties that have appeared before her has often been the subject of criticism. Regular viewers of the program have also been criticized as sadistic for their delight in watching Sheindlin engage in her typical behaviors.[117] One such example of criticism has come from the first star of arbitration-based reality court shows, Joseph Wapner. Wapner, who presided over The People's Court from 1981 to 1993, was a long-time critic of Sheindlin. On November 26, 2002, Wapner criticized Judge Judy's courtroom behavior, stating "She is not portraying a judge as I view a judge should act. Judge Judy is discourteous, and she's abrasive. She's not slightly insulting. She's insulting in capital letters."
Judge Judy replied through her publicist, stating, "I refuse to engage in similar mud slinging. I don't know where or by whom Judge Wapner was raised. But my parents taught me when you don't have something nice to say about someone, say nothing. Clearly, Judge Wapner was absent on the day that lesson was taught."
Since then, Wapner has stated, "She is a disgrace to the profession. She does things I don't think a judge should do. She tells people to shut up. She's rude. She's arrogant. She demeans people. If she does this on purpose, then that's even worse. Judges need to observe certain standards of conduct. She just doesn't do it and I resent that. The public is apt to gain the impression that this is how actual judges conduct themselves. It says 'judge' on the nameplate on the bench and she's wearing a robe."[118]
Sheindlin has since stated, "As a young person, when I had watched The People's Court... I said 'you know what, I could do that.' And at least as well because while Joe Wapner is a very good judge, [he] didn't have much of a sense of humor. And I always knew from a very practical perspective that you have to marry those two things in order to be successful in entertainment."[10]
In a November 2013 interview with Larry King, Sheindlin was asked whether she enjoyed watching Wapner on The People's Court. She replied, "Meh! Oatmeal!" Following this, King asked her what if any other television judges then did she enjoy, to which Sheindlin answered "Mills Lane" of Judge Mills Lane.[119]
Acclaim [ edit ]
In a September 2014 Rickey Smiley Morning Show interview, Judge Mathis (second longest reigning TV judge/arbitrator, three seasons behind Sheindlin with 20 seasons as of 2018-19) was asked what 3 other court show judges he'd most enjoy sharing a meal with. For his first choice, he answered (laughing) "Are you kidding?! It would be Judge Judy at the head of the table. Oh my goodness, that Judge Judy is something else." His second choice was Judge Marilyn Milian, and third Judge Mills Lane.[120]
In August, 2010, rapper, singer and songwriter Nicki Minaj stated that she has an obsession with Judge Judy and that all of her free time is spent watching the program.[121]
In February 2013, then head Football coach for the San Francisco 49ers, Jim Harbaugh, was asked about the importance of truthfulness and enthusiastically remarked, "Somebody that's not truthful? That's big to me. I'm a big fan of the "Judge Judy" show. When you lie in Judge Judy's courtroom, it's over. Your credibility is completely lost, and you stand no chance of winning that case. So I learned that from her. It's very powerful and true. If somebody lies to you, how can you trust anything they ever say |
funded and undermanned, not even being equipped with a single mecha suit for the defense of its personnel, the incident would have been avoided. Accusations were made, and curses flung, and the presiding officer on duty had to step in and restrain the troops in order to prevent the fight from escalating any further. After this night, things were never the same. Allegiances were broken, factions were formed, and the security on the borders suffered. Reports of violence occurring on the outskirts of town increased, and eventually this violence found its way into the heart of the city. On the whole our populace was strong, though, the majority of our people still working together to achieve our common goals; but slowly our numbers began to split. Many of us could no longer see eye to eye on even the simplest of matters, on things that we had once found so much agreement in, and the more divisive of our numbers flocked to the outskirts of the city. They stayed there, forming their own enclaves in the deserted regions of the suburbs, staying away from the activities of the community at large, and being hostile to all those who didn’t agree with their insistent and unwavering views. It all happened so fast, so fast that we couldn’t believe the things that we had seen. And then, one day, the invaders came… At one of the entry gates lying along the city’s border, the A. T. Field leading into the city had been deactivated. The station had fallen into disrepair for some time, as the community living around it had long been plagued by power shortages. No one suspected it at the time—everyone still believing that our city’s integrity was of the greatest importance to all its citizens, even if we didn’t always agree on how best to achieve this goal—but these burdens must have greatly unnerved our neighbors, for it was they who were the first to make allegiance with the forces from outside. The outsiders were allowed entry into our city and from this base staged numerous attacks against our people. At first we held strong against them, banding our separate numbers together in a coordinated counterattack and resisting the influx of their pernicious forces; but, slowly, they began to take over the city. First the outlying regions surrendered, then parts of the interior. Promises were made to those who resisted, and defections in our ranks mounted. In time, the loyal among us began to yield, giving in to the new order that was being erected outside our city walls. Less and less of us remained, and eventually the ones that did were forced into hiding, for any sense in a direct struggle had long been lost. In the end, even these last remaining stalwarts broke down, finding common cause with our oppressors and freeing themselves from the uncertainty of our daily struggle, leaving one regrettably alone to face life forsaken in the ruins of our past…
The war is over now. The city has been destroyed. Everywhere one looks there is destruction. Nothing remains of its former glory except for piles of rubble and pallid scattered lights—and in some places there’s even less. The outsiders still scour the wreckage from time to time, in hopes of finding some unlikely survivor to seize away as their prize, but even these attempts have become less frequent. There is no hope of triumph in remaining here, hidden in the shadows of these barren walls, for the oppressors have won. And yet here I am… Maybe there are others: I wouldn’t know—it’s been so long since I’ve seen another person in this city. Sometimes, when I’ve gained the courage to venture out from my hidden den, I search for survivors; but I’m no longer as hopeful of finding them as I once was, even if at times I wished differently. So, then, the question naturally raises itself: Why am I still here? What is it that keeps me behind?
There’s no question of surrender—it’s much too late for that. Any hope there might still have been of submitting to their rule had long passed. I had made my decision a long time ago—to uphold these crumbling walls until the day they can no longer stand—and now only resistance remains. I live out what days I can, always on guard for the first sign of approaching danger and ready at a moment’s notice to take up arms in my defense… but with each day that passes by, one gets older, and it gets harder to fight. Inside the chamber of this silent, stolid, hard metallic shell, my body lies bruised and weary, and, for the first time, although the thought frightens me a little, I begin to wonder: How much longer can it hold itself up? How much longer can I keep up this fight?…
At that moment, just outside the building, the whirl of a Heli-bot droned overhead. It passed its search beacon over the darkened area, over the rubble covering Rei’s fallen body, searching for any signs of suspicious activity… but, after a minute, it found nothing. So, having failed in its search, it raised its beacon, turned from the building, and hovered slowly away.
Having seen this, Rei lowered her eyes from the vast chasm of darkness stretching endlessly before her, and she exhaled.
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Advertisements(Photo: Ben Schumin / Flickr Now – not after the tar sands spigot is turned on – is the time to support the efforts of courageous Texas landowners who could stop Keystone XL’s administration-approved southern leg in its tracks.
Twenty-five environmental leaders recently signed on to an open letter to President Obama urging him to avoid any “deal-making” with the Canadian government and to reject a presidential permit for Keystone XL’s proposed northern leg. As the letter remarked: “Building Keystone XL will expand production in the tar sands, and that reality is not compatible with serious efforts to battle climate change.”
I share my colleagues’ objection to any deals between the United States and Canada over Keystone’s prospective northern leg, but what the open letter posted by 350.org ignored is the well-reported fact that the 485-mile southern leg of Keystone XL already is being built. Did the president engage in deal-making to facilitate this?
Regardless of what the president decides about the northern leg permit in 2014, Keystone XL’s southern leg – which is now 95 percent built – is ready to begin pumping more than half a million barrels of climate-destroying tar sands daily from landlocked Alberta to Gulf Coast port refineries by as early as the end of this year. This “reality is not compatible with serious efforts to battle climate change.”
Last spring, Obama made a special trip to Cushing, Oklahoma, to hold a press conference directing his administration to “cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles, and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done.” He said this about Keystone XL’s southern leg only months after announcing he was postponing, until after the election, a decision on Keystone XL’s northern leg.
This is classic bait-and-switch. By breaking Keystone XL into northern and southern legs, he was able to give his environmental base something it wanted (a “victory” to crow about), while giving TransCanada something it needed (access to port refineries).
When Obama released his climate action plan in June, he said, “The question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. … I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing.” He cannot now stand idly by while Keystone XL’s southern leg is completed and expect anyone to believe what he said. If the Obama administration could conjure up a way to fast-track construction of the Keystone pipeline, it should be able to conjure up a way to stop it.
The price the president would pay for such a courageous act likely would be high, but it would help ensure his legacy as a president, and as a father, who saw the dangers of the gathering storm and chose to do something before it was too late. Of course, the odds of him making such a bold move are slim to none, absent massive public pressure, which will not be forthcoming as long as his friends in the environmental movement continue coddling him, instead of calling him out.
Now – not after the tar sands spigot is turned on – is the time for movement leaders to support the efforts of courageous Texas landowners like Michael Bishop, who has singlehandedly filed a series of lawsuits that could stop Keystone’s southern leg in its tracks. And let’s not forget about the fraud case Texas landowner David Daniel painstakingly developed against TransCanada that three attorneys told him stood “a good chance” of winning. David, like Michael, got no help, despite sharing his case with every environmental group and attorney he could think of. It now sits on a shelf collecting dust.
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Click on above photo for more information or use the Gallery menu at the top of this page to see the full collection:PBS Frontline brought frank discussion about death and dying to American homes Tuesday night with “Being Mortal,” a passionate documentary based on Dr. Atul Gawande’s bestselling book of the same name.
Americans face many challenges in initiating end of life care conversations, said Gawande, a general surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Seriously ill patients often focus on “how to beat the steep odds against them” without hearing from doctors and caregivers about how certain aggressive treatments may worsen their final days and hours.
Instead of dying at home with supportive comfort care, as the vast majority of Americans wish, many end up in hospitals surrounded by emotional family members who disagree about their final wishes.
“All of the stuff you learned about in medical school is just a tiny little bit of what it means to be good at our jobs,” Gawande offered. “So many people have their death come as a total surprise.”
Most of the documentary centered on the reluctance of many surgeons and oncologists to engage dying patients in meaningful discussion about prognosis and care options.
“It’s always a challenge how to say it, that this is not working and I have nothing more,” said Dr. Lakshmi Nayak, a neuro-oncologist at Dana-Farber. “I have tried to deliver the information in pieces over a period of time.”
In one emotional scene, Nayak has difficulty explaining to a patient and his wife why she has no further curative therapy to offer for his aggressive brain tumor.
It may be up to the patient to ensure that his or her end of life wishes are honored, because physicians often will not, Gawande cautions.
Dr. Monica Williams-Murphy, an award-winning writer and emergency physician at Huntsville Hospital in Alabama, called the documentary a “great introduction to how Americans may face death.” However, she would have liked it to explore diseases beyond cancer.
“As an emergency physician, I see death that is both expected and unexpected. We have all got to manage the many forms of being mortal better,” she told Life Matters Media. “Additionally, there was no mention of advanced directives, something that everyone over 50 absolutely should have. Conversations upstream in health care may ease the medical moments portrayed in the film.”
An advance directive may take the form of a living will, power of attorney for health care or do-not-resuscitate order. The purpose of such forms is to help ensure one’s end of life wishes are honored in case of illness or incapacity. Nationally, only 30 percent of adults die with advance directives.
Dr. Karen Wyatt, a family practice physician and end of life care advocate, said she would have liked the documentary to have explored benefits of earlier hospice enrollment. Hospice care is designed to help comfort terminally ill patients in their last months of life. The goal is not cure, but symptom management.
“The film barely touched the surface of what we need to talk about, but it was a great introduction to end of life issues. An appetizer,” she told LMM. “If a hospice physician would have created the film, it would have been entirely different. Those of us who care for dying patients in their home see an entirely different end of life experience.”
Wyatt said she believes some physicians will be inspired to start talking about death and dying with their terminally ill patients earlier.
“Gawande comes from within the hallowed halls of Western medicine and speaks directly to his colleagues,” she added. “He has credibility.”
Viewers were encouraged to tweet their reactions and share what matters most to them during the hour-long program (#WhatMattersMost and #BeingMortal quickly became trending topics, after thousands of messages were sent).
For me, #WhatMattersMost: not my body but a mind that still works well enuf to connect with the people that matter to me. #BeingMortal — Atul Gawande (@Atul_Gawande) February 11, 2015
Grateful my husband's Drs started hospice when it was time, giving quality time over quantity #beingmortal #whatmattersmost @Atul_Gawande — Angela Schlaack (@angelaschlaack) February 11, 2015
#WhatMattersMost Remembering, as my dear Mother taught me, you begin dying the day you are born..@frontlinepbs.@Atul_Gawande #BeHereNow — Elin Silveous (@ElinSilveous) February 11, 2015Image copyright Norfolk Police Image caption A week on from the attempted abduction, police have released e-fits of the two suspects thought to be involved
Police investigating the attempted abduction of an RAF serviceman have released e-fits of the men they suspect were involved.
The victim was threatened with a knife near RAF Marham in Norfolk on 20 July.
Attempts were also made to pull him into a car but he managed to fight the men off, headbutting one of them.
Norfolk Police has released the images a week on from the attack. The force says it is possible the suspects were part of a "larger team".
Live: Follow updates on this story
The first suspect is described as of "Middle Eastern appearance", between 20 and 30 years old, approximately 6ft (1.8m) tall, with a well-groomed beard.
The second man, who is of similar appearance, is slightly younger, about 5ft 10in (1.78m) tall and was clean-shaven with short, dark hair.
Image copyright PA Image caption Police said they were still looking for a dark-coloured people carrier used in the attack
Officers were called after the victim was approached by two men while he was out jogging near the RAF base.
Police said he was on a route used regularly by personnel at the base, but was wearing headphones at the time so did not hear what the first attacker said to him.
He managed to wrestle the man to the ground - possibly leaving the suspect with a black eye - before a second man, armed with the knife, tried to attack him.
The suspects then fled in a dark-coloured people carrier, which police are still trying to trace.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The serviceman was threatened with a knife near RAF Marham in Norfolk last week
"We know that our victim is a member of RAF personnel and we are still investigating how much relevance this was to his attempted abduction," Det Supt Paul Durham said.
"It is probable that there would have been a degree of planning involved and in order to achieve this, it is quite possible that there was at least one other person involved."
He added there had been "no change" on how likely terrorism was seen as being a motive.
"There's still no credible evidence that supports that but equally I can't discount it," he said.Teen suffers head, facial injuries after being hit by car in Quincy
A taxi struck a 13-year-old boy in Wollaston around 3 p.m. Monday, causing head and facial injuries, police said.Watch the reportThe Patriot Ledger reported Monday that the boy was transported to Boston Medical Center.Quincy police spent much of the afternoon investigating the collision that took place on Berlin Street just a block from the MBTA station.Just before a truck towed away the gray Honda taxi, two Quincy police officers grabbed snow shovels and tossed piles of snow onto an icy patch of the roadway. Streaks of blood were still visible on the thick ice.The boy was struck on the odd-numbered side of Berlin Street where the sidewalk was covered by deep snow banks.On the even-numbered side of the street, many sidewalks were cleared of snow."There are a lot of kids here when school lets out, and it's high-traffic with cabs who use it as a cut through," said Jack Timmons, a Berlin Street resident.Earlier this month, a 10-year-old boy from Quincy was hit by an MBTA bus, sustaining facial injuries that required two days of treatment at Boston Medical Center.The boy was walking to Sterling Middle School and tried to cross from the east side of Water Street, where the sidewalk had been cleared of snow, to the opposite side of the street, where mounds of snow blocked sidewalk access.
A taxi struck a 13-year-old boy in Wollaston around 3 p.m. Monday, causing head and facial injuries, police said.
Watch the report
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The Patriot Ledger reported Monday that the boy was transported to Boston Medical Center.
Quincy police spent much of the afternoon investigating the collision that took place on Berlin Street just a block from the MBTA station.
Just before a truck towed away the gray Honda taxi, two Quincy police officers grabbed snow shovels and tossed piles of snow onto an icy patch of the roadway. Streaks of blood were still visible on the thick ice.
The boy was struck on the odd-numbered side of Berlin Street where the sidewalk was covered by deep snow banks.
On the even-numbered side of the street, many sidewalks were cleared of snow.
"There are a lot of kids here when school lets out, and it's high-traffic with cabs who use it as a cut through," said Jack Timmons, a Berlin Street resident.
Earlier this month, a 10-year-old boy from Quincy was hit by an MBTA bus, sustaining facial injuries that required two days of treatment at Boston Medical Center.
The boy was walking to Sterling Middle School and tried to cross from the east side of Water Street, where the sidewalk had been cleared of snow, to the opposite side of the street, where mounds of snow blocked sidewalk access.
AlertMePin 3 19K Shares
Claire Bernish
June 9, 2015
(ANTIMEDIA) Amnesty International UK has launched a campaign and petition asking President Obama not to “punish” Edward Snowden for whistleblowing. By exposing “the sinister extent of global mass surveillance,” the organization says, he has informed the world about “human rights abuses” and should not be prosecuted as a traitor.
In light of the federal court ruling that deemed the NSA’s surveillance tactics using provisions of the Patriot Act illegal, Amnesty is calling for the charges against Snowden under the infamous Espionage Act to be dropped.
The organization also explains that its successful litigation against the UK government and its intelligence community was only possible with information revealed by the whistleblower—thus questioning the justification for such “strict charges” still remaining against him. As its statement explains,
“There are protections around whistleblowers when the information they have revealed is seen to be in the public interest. Snowden’s revelations undoubtedly brought our attention to previously unknown abuses […] The charges facing Snowden under the 1917 Espionage Act are outdated and ill-equipped to deal with the circumstances of his case — and if he’s tried for crimes under the Espionage Act, he could be prevented from presenting a defense that explains his motives were in the public interest.”
Snowden’s freedom to seek asylum in countries that agree he deserves such protection is being severely hindered by the US government’s revocation of his passport and continued political pressure to force other countries into cooperating to restrict his travel.
Amnesty’s campaign vigorously urges the US to completely drop the charges, but says:
“If the US does try Snowden, President Obama should ensure that Snowden is guaranteed a fair trial, and allowed to argue that information he revealed was in the public interest and guarant[ee] him whistleblowers’ protections.”
Click here to sign Amnesty International UK’s “Justice for Edward Snowden” petition and for more information.
This article (Amnesty International Calls on Obama to Drop Charges Against Edward Snowden) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TheAntiMedia.org. Tune in! The Anti-Media radio show airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: [email protected].
Pin 3 19K SharesWith pitbulls, dobermans and rottweilers under fire from the French authorities, youth gangs in the depressed city suburbs have discovered an alternative way to intimidate their rivals - with attack monkeys.
"They're ultra-fashionable," said Didier Lecourbe, a police officer from the depressed Paris suburb of Aubervilliers. "There are dozens of them. Kids take them out on leads, and even carry baby monkeys around in nappies. But these animals can be very dangerous indeed."
Imported illegally through Spain from Gibraltar, Morocco or Algeria, the Barbary apes are known for their powerful limbs, sharp teeth and short tempers. Veterinary experts say they can be turned into frightening and effective weapons.
"They live naturally on rocks or in a desert environment," said Marie-Claude Bomsel of the natural history museum in Paris. "Removed from their natural habitat, they can become highly aggressive. They bite, and their favoured method of attack is to hurl themselves at people's heads."
Police believe as many as 500 Barbary apes may have been smuggled into France in the past two years. Bought for about £30 each by youngsters visiting their families in north Africa, they change hands on the council estates around Paris for as much as £300.
"Now the authorities have cracked down on pitbulls and the rest, apes look like becoming the new weapon of choice," said Mr Lecourbe. "We've heard of monkey-fights being run in tower block basements."
Ms Bomsel said the museum had received dozens of telephone calls from owners wanting to know how to deal with violent monkeys, or how to get rid of them. "The zoos don't want to know because apes that have grown up outside their natural environment will not live with others," she said. A spokeswoman for the the society for the protection of animals said the society had taken in more than 40 apes in the past 18 months and its Paris animal homes were full.George Osborne has delivered his seventh Budget as chancellor, the first for a majority Conservative government since November 1996. Here is a summary of his main announcements.
Personal taxation and pay
New national living wage will be introduced for all workers aged over 25, starting at £7.20 an hour from April 2016 and set to reach £9 by 2020 - giving an estimated 2.5 million people an average £5,000 rise over five years
Low Pay Commission to advise on future changes to rates
Inheritance tax threshold to increase to £1m, phased in from 2017, underpinned by a new £325,000 family home allowance
Personal allowance, at which people start paying tax, to rise to £11,000 next year. The government says the personal allowance will rise to £12,500 by 2020, so that people working 30 hours a week on the minimum wage do not pay income tax
The point at which people start paying income tax at the 40p rate to rise from £42,385 to £43,000 next year
Mortgage interest relief for buy-to-let homebuyers to be restricted to basic rate of income tax
Analysis: What it means for you
Welfare and pensions
Tax credits and Universal Credit to be restricted to two children, affecting those born after April 2017
Income threshold for tax credits to be reduced from £6,420 to £3,850
Working-age benefits to be frozen for four years - including tax credits and local housing allowance, but maternity pay and disability benefits exempted
Rents in social housing sector will be reduced by 1% a year for the next four years.
Subsidies for social housing will be phased out with local authority and housing association tenants in England who earn more than £30,000 - or £40,000 in London - having to pay up to the market rent
Disability benefits will not be taxed or means-tested while state pension triple lock to be protected
Image copyright PA
18-21-year-olds will not be entitled to claim housing benefit automatically, with a new "earn to learn" obligation
Employment and Support Allowance payments for new claimants who are deemed able to prepare for work to be "aligned" with Jobseeker's Allowance
Green Paper published on proposals for "a radical change" to pension saving system
The amount people can contribute to their pension tax-free to be reduced for individuals with incomes over £150,000
The cost of funding free TV licences for the over-75s transferred from the government to the BBC between 2018 and 2021
The annual household benefit cap will be reduced to £23,000 in London and to £20,000 in the rest of Britain.
Analysis: Who will be affected by benefit changes?
The state of the economy
Economy grew by 3% in 2014
2.4% growth forecast in 2015, 0.1% lower than predicted in March, followed by 2.3%, 2.4% and 2.4% in the following years
One million extra jobs predicted to be created by 2020
Public borrowing/deficit/spending
Image copyright PA
Deficit to be cut at same pace as during last Parliament - reaching a budget surplus a year later than planned in 2019-20
Spending to be £83.3bn higher up to 2020 than projected before the election
Borrowing set to fall from £69.5bn this year to £43.1bn, £24.3bn and £6.4bn before reaching a £10bn surplus in 2019-20
Debt as a share of GDP to fall from 80.3% this year to 79.1%, 77.2%, 74.7%, 71.5% and 68.5% in successive years
1% public sector pay rise to continue for next four years
£37bn of further spending cuts by 2020, including £12bn of welfare cuts, £5bn from tax avoidance and a £20bn reduction in departmental budgets
Analysis: End to the big squeeze
Alcohol, tobacco, gambling and fuel
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No rise in fuel duty this year with rates continuing to be frozen
Major reform to vehicle excise duties to pay for a new road-building and maintenance fund in England
New VED bands for brand new cars to be introduced from 2017, pegged to emissions for the first year. Subsequently, 95% of car owners will pay a flat fee of £140 a year
Alcohol and tobacco duties not mentioned in statement
Business
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Corporation tax to be cut to 19% in 2017 and 18% in 2020
Permanent non-dom status to be abolished - from April 2017, anyone who has lived in the UK for 15 of the past 20 years will pay same level of tax as other UK citizens, raising an estimated £1.5bn
£7.2bn to be raised from clampdown on tax avoidance and tax evasion with HMRC budget increased by £750m
Bank levy rate to be gradually reduced over the next six years and a new 8% surcharge on bank profits introduced from 2016
Cap on charges imposed by claims management companies and an increase in insurance premium tax to 9.5% from November
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New apprenticeship levy for large employers
Climate Change Levy exemption for renewable electricity to be removed
National Insurance employment allowance for small firms to be increased by 50% to £3,000 from 2016
Dividend tax credit to be replaced with a new tax-free allowance of £5,000 on dividend income. Rates of dividend tax to be set at 7.5%, 32.5% and 38.1%.
Annual investment allowance will be fixed permanently at £200,000 from January 2016
Health and education
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NHS will receive a further £8bn by 2020, in addition to the £2bn already announced)
Student maintenance grants to be replaced with loans from 2016-17, to be paid back once people earn more than £21,000 a year
The maintenance loan will increase to £8,200
New university professorships to be created to mark the Queen's 90th birthday
£50 million to expand the number of cadet units in state schools
Housing/infrastructure/transport/regions
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Control over fire services, planning and children's services to be handed to consortium of 10 councils in Greater Manchester
Discussions on devolution of services to Sheffield, Liverpool and West Yorkshire
£30m for new body, Transport for North, to promote integrated transport - including use of Oyster cards - in the north of England
Rent-a-room relief scheme to rise to £7,500
Defence
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Government to spend 2% of GDP on defence every year, meeting Nato target
Spending on defence to rise in real terms - 0.5% above inflation - every year during the Parliament
New £1.5bn Joint Security Fund for investment in military and intelligence agenciesCHURCH weddings have hit an all time low in Spain.
Only 22.2% of 68,560 couples tied the knot at the country’s catholic altars in the first half of 2016.
That is a huge fall from the same period in the year 2000, when 75% had a Catholic ceremony.
Barcelona province had the lowest number of Christian ceremonies in mainland Spain, at only 10.5%.
Malaga saw the least in Andalucia, with 21.6%.
However, neighbouring Jaen had the highest in the country, at 53%.
Alfonso Pérez-Agote, a sociologist, says three main reasons explain the nose dive in Catholic weddings.
These are the impact of the economic crisis, which has left 34.4% of under 30s unemployed and a change in cultural views, which means marriage is not seen as important.
He added that growing secularisation also played a part.
“The young people of today are the children of those disinterested in religion.
“When they think of getting married, they don’t think of doing so in the church.”A key District of Columbia council member says she will fight to close legal loopholes exposed by a News4 I-Team investigation. Jodie Fleischer reports.
Key D.C. Council Member Says Law Being Exploited by Renters Needs to Change
A key District of Columbia council member said she will fight to close legal loopholes exposed by a News4 I-Team investigation.
Renters are exploiting a decades-old D.C. law to make huge profits, but in the process, they're holding up home sales and costing buyers and sellers thousands of dollars.
"We know that this was not the intent of the law. and so we have to address it," said D.C. Councilwoman Anita Bonds, who chairs the committee on housing and neighborhood revitalization.
Bonds acknowledged it will likely be a bitter fight, as is anything involving tenants' rights in the District.
In this case, everyone seems to agree the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) serves a purpose: It keeps longtime renters from being booted out of gentrifying neighborhoods.
TOPA was designed to protect affordable housing by giving renters the first chance to buy their place if it goes up for sale.
But the News4 I-Team found some renters are also using it to hold sales hostage while they negotiate for a piece of the profits.
"I'm not trying to make the sale fall apart, I'm trying to change who the buyer is," said TOPA attorney Andrew McGuire, who converted his entire law practice to handle only these cases.
McGuire estimates TOPA rights amount to a $100 million per year industry in DC; he's even trademarked the phrase, "Got TOPA?"
TOPA rights are a commodity and should be able to be shopped around on the open market, he says.
DC Attorney’s Entire Practice Devoted to TOPA Payouts for Renters
Getting TOPA payouts for renters has become Andrew McGuire’s entire law practice. Jodie Fleischer reports. (Published Thursday, June 8, 2017)
"If you get TOPA rights and somebody knocks on your door and says I'll give you $500, how do you know they're not worth $500,000?" McGuire said.
The DC Association of Realtors believes this use of TOPA will ultimately raise the price of homes and rents across the District because those who have to pay renters to leave a property will simply pass that cost on to the next buyer or renter.
DCAR President Colin Johnson said the law does serve a purpose when large apartment buildings in gentrifying neighborhoods go condo, but he doesn't think it's effective for single-family homes or row houses where a renter only has one room or the English basement.
Some D.C. Renters Make Tens of Thousands of Dollars Exploiting Decades-Old Law
TOPA was designed to keep longtime renters from being forced out of gentrifying neighborhoods or to help them afford a new lease in a different building by giving them the chance to buy their place first, but tenants don't want to or can't afford to buy, they can rake in big bucks by selling those rights. Jodie Fleischer reports,. (Published Thursday, May 11, 2017)
"I think the law definitely needs changing," Johnson said. "I don't see what the advantage is for a tenant to be able to trade their rights to somebody else and how that helps them either purchase a home or stay within a home."
DCAR said its members are seeing too many abuses of the law, and they've yet to see one renter successfully buy a whole building. Instead, renters are selling their rights to buy to the highest bidder.
"In many cases, these are not senior citizens who are being displaced in a transitioning or developing neighborhood," DCAR CEO Ed Krauze said. "These are smart young smart people who have figured out 'I can get some money.'"
"It's like someone actually sticking a gun to your head," said Yolanda Smith, who's been trying to sell a home she owns. "Had I known I would never, ever, ever rent property in Washington, D.C."
A first-time home buyer named Clara spent years as a renter and sees the value in tenants having rights, but she agrees the law needs fixing after losing her contract on a Capitol Hill row house the night before closing.
"It was just, poof, just taken away from me," said Clara, "I was up for collaborating with [the tenant] to figure out what she wanted and what she needed to stay... but instead what I got back was, 'What's your best offer?'"
Councilwoman Bonds said she's heard the complaints.
"As it is with any law from at least that far back in our history, there are changes that need to be made," she said. "One of the things we have to do is clearly define 'tenant.'"
Realtors told the News4 I-Team plenty of tenants who don't pay rent and aren't on the lease, are still getting paid -- even if they only lived in the apartment for a few weeks and even if they'd already moved out when it went up for sale.
Bonds said she's also aware of the new industry of TOPA chasers that's popped up to recruit renters.
"We know that this was not the intent of the law. and so we have to address it," Bonds said.
She said she plans to convene a working group this summer with representatives from the real estate industry and tenants groups to work together on fixing the law.
The DC Realtors Association has already drafted proposed legislation to eliminate TOPA in single unit sales.
Reported by Jodie Fleischer, produced by Rick Yarborough, shot by Steve Jones and Jeff Piper, and edited by Steve Jones.A NOVEL suggestion to solve the current problem of who’s actually in charge of Britain has been raised by the Canadian newspaper the Toronto Star.
Harking back to the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the Star suggests that Scotland’s uncrowned leader Nicola Sturgeon could well be the person to sort out the mess caused by the Brexit vote.
Pointing out that David Cameron has “fallen on his sword” and that Boris Johnson is a non-starter, the newspaper’s editorial claims that “Labour loyalists fear their party is on the fast track to oblivion.”
The Star is in no doubt about who should fill the political vacuum: “England’s politicians have clearly made a hash of things. Which leads us to a modest proposal, firmly grounded in history, to restore a measure of sanity and stability to Britain’s political life.
“The only British politician who has so far weathered the crisis with her reputation enhanced is not English at all. It’s Nicola Sturgeon.
“While all about her were losing their heads, Sturgeon kept hers. She stepped confidently forth to make Scotland’s case for staying in the EU and for having another crack at a referendum on independence.
“Clearly, this is a leader to be reckoned with, one with the grit and clear head needed in a shambles like the one the English have created. Why not find a way to put her in charge of righting the British ship and steering a path through the Euro mess?”
The Star does point out that there’s the “little matter” of Sturgeon being a dedicated Scottish nationalist who doesn’t actually believe in the U.K. as currently constituted, but with a fine appreciation |
speech of everyone on the continent of Europe be limited to what certain bien pensants think is becoming for people to have free speech about. Which really isn't the point of it at all. For example, this little explanatory note:
There is no need to be tolerant to the intolerant. This is especially important as far as freedom of expression is concerned: that freedom must not be abused to defame other groups.
Err, yes, there is indeed a need to be tolerant of the intolerant. The entire point of this freedom and liberty lark is that we all get to do our own thing, say what we wish and with that right comes the duty to take the consequences. When we get to the freedom of speech that means no libel and no incitement to immediate violence and everything else we can and do say to our heart's content.
This is where we could profitably borrow something from the constitutional arrangements of another country:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That would put an end to this sort of nonsense.2011 seems to be a revival year for the folk/punk genre, with all-around great releases by Mischief Brew, Frank Turner, and as of this month, Andrew Jackson Jihad, with their third Asian Man Records release “Knife Man.”
I absolutely love this album because it’s everything that a folk/punk album should be: honest, raw, and for lack of a better word, weird (“I’m gonna fuck the devil in his mouth”). Lyrically “Knife Man” is composed of pretty much standard Andrew Jackson Jihad material, and that is, in my opinion, a great thing. Once again, singer Sean Bonnette continues to find more creative ways to spin tales of life, love, death, alcohol, tobacco, and philosophy. It’s the same message we’ve been hearing from the band for years, but they’ve managed to keep it fresh.
Overall this album is definitely one of the band’s most “electric” releases, setting it at least a little apart from past albums such as “Can’t Contain” or “Candy Cigarettes and Cap Guns.” AJJ revisits some old instrumentation that use mandolin, organ, and kazoo (trust me, this last one isn’t nearly as annoying as it sounds) and it all ends up working out pretty damn well.
In a modern world that allows us to pick and choose tracks and singles, this is a release that I would suggest listening to in order, start to finish. These songs go so well with one another and that seems to be coming increasingly rare not only in the general music industry, but in the punk scene, as well.
My favorite tracks are the short-but-sweet opener “Michael Jordan of Drunk Driving,” the somewhat morbid “Backpack,” the so-called intermission track “Sad Songs,” and the final blow of “Big Bird.” I could not ask for a better closer.
This album is sure to find a special place in the hearts of Andrew Jackson Jihad fans, old and new, as well as the punk community as a whole. My rating: 4.5/5 stars.Details of what new powers the Commission is lining up for Frontex are sketchy. Last week, the agency referred our inquiries on this matter to Juncker’s office which declined to comment beyond saying firm proposals are expected by the end of the year.
But the Bureau has discovered that an external evaluation into Frontex undertaken by Danish firm, Rambøll Management Consulting is scheduled to be published next month and should provide clues to the organisation’s future.
It is widely expected that Frontex will be given the legal mandate to co-ordinate search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean and play a far more active role by initiating the return of migrants and failed asylum seekers.
It is also highly likely Frontex’s budget will be further increased having been given two separate increases in the past nine months.
Speculation will also centre on whether the agency will be allowed to directly employ its own border staff and control its own boats, planes and motor vehicles instead of effectively begging member states to lend it resources.
In June last year, the Home Affairs directorate of the European Commission published a “study on the feasibility of the creation of a European System of Border Guards to control the external borders of the Union”.
The report was the result of extensive consultations with Frontex, the European Parliament and members states and highlighted the different goals among them.
It recommended a phased approach to giving the EU full powers over borders, particularly at “hotspots”, over the longer term.
But the authors also reported resistance. The report said: “Whereas both Frontex and members of the European Parliament advocated for a more integrated border management of external Schengen borders with more powers acquired at EU level, Member States were supporting a more careful approach.
“Most of them agreed that the current opportunities provide a number of measures to improve the border control activities and should thus be fully exhausted before taking new initiatives towards further integration.
“In their view, Frontex should perform the supportive and coordination role in joint return operations, training activities and negotiation of readmission agreements.
“They however feel that there is currently neither immediate need nor legal possibilities to shift the responsibility for external EU borders from national to EU level.”
Juncker has decided the time has come for Europe to have a common immigration and border policy with Frontex at its heart.
At the European Parliament last week, Juncker promised to release the money, saying: “The Commission believes this is money well invested. This is why we will propose ambitious steps towards a European Border and Coast Guard before the end of the year.”
At next May’s European Day for Border Guards, it is certain delegates, their experience shaped by the events of 2015, will have firmer ideas on how Frontex should look for the next 10 years.
But whether the latest crisis is enough to make the necessary fundamental shift in thinking at member state level when they already baulk at merely lending equipment is now very much a key question.The ball that Elliott Barzilli hit to right field to save TCU’s baseball season Monday night didn’t stay there long.
Someone remembered in the middle of the celebration following the Horned Frogs’ 9-8 victory in 10 innings against NC State — or a little bit afterward — to pick it up and give it to him.
In turn, he gave it to his mom, who had been in the stands at Lupton Stadium. She could take it back home to Los Angeles, where Barzilli started his journey that led him to Georgia Tech and then Fort Worth for the moment he stepped to the plate and saved a season.
“I let her have it. It’s something nice for her,” he said. “I don’t know what I would have done with it.”
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Barzilli’s run-scoring single through a drawn-in infield completed a comeback from an 8-1 eighth-inning deficit in the championship game of the Fort Worth Regional, advancing the Frogs to a Super Regional best-of-three series this weekend against Texas A&M.
A loss would have ended the season for the most experienced, deepest and pitching-rich team in TCU history. Instead, it was kept alive by one of its least-used players.
Barzilli, a sophomore utility infielder, had batted in only one other game in the regional, and he had appeared in just three of the previous nine games. The Frogs had set their postseason lineup, and he wasn’t in it.
But he never regretted being at TCU. Just 11 months earlier, he didn’t have a place to play at all, unexpectedly told by Georgia Tech that he wasn’t in their plans and should look for another school.
“They told me I wasn’t going to be a factor on the team,” he said. “I was honestly devastated to hear that. If I could look back and know I would end up at TCU for my sophomore year, I would not have been freaking out at that moment. I love TCU — it’s a great school. Baseball here is a cherry on top.”
TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle, already looking for a shortstop for the next season, heard Barzilli’s name through the grapevine and helped steer him to Grayson Junior College, hoping he’d consider TCU in 2016.
But then Georgia Tech did Barzilli a favor — they signed off on immediate eligibility for him, and he came to Fort Worth.
“Instead of looking at junior colleges, he was now considering two or three four-year colleges,” Schlossnagle said.
TCU’s reputation, coming off a College World Series appearance, sold the power-hitting infielder, who had two home runs and six doubles in only 34 games for Georgia Tech.
“Especially after the year they had, I couldn’t not consider TCU,” Barzilli said. “It was just too good of an option.”
Barzilli said his older brother, Julian, went to four colleges in four years before reaching professional baseball. So he figured his own journey of two schools in two years was no big deal.
But just before TCU began practice in January, another problem for Barzilli — a thyroid abscess in his throat.
“It was killing me,” he said. “It was hurting to swallow.”
The infection got so bad, he was hospitalized.
“I remember there were so many things holding me back,” he said. “I wore a neck guard for the first few weeks of the season, a hockey one. It was kind of a scary thing. I just knew I had to get through it.”
He did get through it, and by the season opener he was in the lineup at designated hitter. But Connor Wanhanen eventually won that job, and without an infield position open, Barzilli settled into his role as a backup infielder. His most extended playing time came when first baseman Jeremie Fagnan was out two weeks after hurting his foot on a slide against Texas — and first base was Barzilli’s least comfortable spot.
Without a starting job, trying to learn an unfamiliar position, Barzilli could have struggled emotionally. Instead, he remained the loose California kid his teammates had gotten to know.
“I wouldn’t want to say he’s a character, because he’s not always the goofiest guy around — but he’s up there,” senior third baseman Derek Odell said. “We all like a good laugh, but he especially likes that. He likes to make us all laugh. He kind of has that quiet humor, but he’s bought into everything that our program stands for from the word go. And he’s worked his tail off.”
Said Evan Williams, who pinch hit to start the 10th and scored on Barzilli’s hit, “He’s never down about anything. If you’re having a bad day, find Elliott. He’ll bring you up.”
The team had quickly gotten to know Barzilli’s charm. When the Frogs played at the Dodgertown Classic over spring break, Barzilli arranged for a team dinner at a relative’s home in Pacific Palisades, Schlossnagle said.
“Up in the Hollywood Hills,” Schlossnagle said. “Pretty neat.”
In 33 games with the Frogs, Barzilli has hit.250 with two home runs and 12 RBIs. The pop in his bat is why he entered the game Monday as a pinch-hitter for Wanhanen in the eighth inning with the go-ahead run at second base.
Two innings later, he told himself, “It’s just baseball,” and hit one to right field.
“Elliott has had to pick up whatever role he possibly can, and he’s done a great job of doing that,” senior third baseman Derek Odell said. “Coach Schloss always says be ready when the game comes calling, because it’s going to.
“He’s been a great teammate to me. He deserves the world. He deserves nothing less than what he got Monday night, because the game knows. He was ready when the game called.”Follow Carl down the new-look corridor on Stage 5. Hang a left, up the stairs, and you’re in the control room.
The stripped-down gate room. The former SGC gate becomes the gate on Icarus Base.
Back in early February, Carl and I wandered down to Stage 5 to check out the work in progress. After 11+ years as Stargate Command – gate room, control room, briefing room, and General’s office – it was finally undergoing a complete transformation. The control room and gate room, once separated by fictional wall, glass, and sliding blast doors, was now an open expanse, a metal walkway running from the nerve center directly through the gate. The surrounding corridors and control room had been given a new paint treatment, with touches of protruding rock suggestive of a rough and recent off-world construction. The upstairs briefing room had been emptied of its SGC trappings. Gone was that old table that served us well for countless years, chipped and scratched in so many places that directors were forced to choose their camera angles judiciously. The vast window that once looked down on the gate had been walled up. In a few short days, it would be a dining area. And, a month after that, the headquarters of Homeworld Command.
The old briefing room – under construction.
The bay window view down to the gate room is re-imagined.
I was admittedly wistful. After all, I’d written for those standing sets for seven great years and, suddenly, they were gone. But eventually, as the new sets took shape, that initial melancholy gave way to excitement at the prospect of the upcoming Stargate: Universe series and the third SG-1 movie. Over the course of the next few weeks, the sets were finished and, as impressive as they were on those casual strolls, they were ten times more impressive once properly lit and engaged. And then ten times more impressive than that when we first saw them in dailies.
For now, I leave you with pics of the early stages of construction, Stargate Extreme Home Makeover – Phase 1.…
Shaping up nicely under Carl’s watchful eye.
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Like this: Like Loading...“Some scandals are so massive that they’re simply hard to believe. But this one is true. As many as one million white, English children may have been the victims of Muslim rape gangs, better known as grooming gangs, in towns up and down Great Britain.”
Abuse of war victims is as old as war itself. The conquering army claimed the lives, land, and goods of the conquered. And then raped the women and children of the defeated. Rape and horror were part of war.
And then we became more civilized.
But then there was the Holocaust. Nazi Germany exterminated 12 million people, six million Jews, six million people of ethnicities the Nazis deemed unworthy of life. Captive women were also subject to rape.
Many Germans and much of the world stood by, silent. As if what happened was too massive, too horrible to be real.
The civilized nature of modern civilization was a facade.
And there was the sex abuse scandal of the Catholic Church–an institution entrusted to further the Gospel. To protect children. But sex abuse is not a Catholic problem or even a religious problem.
It’s a scandal, despite the silence of many, that we happen to know about. Other scandals wait to be uncovered as some now stand by, silent.
The silence is what a CBN news story called an Omerta–a Mafia code of silence about crime, about evil.
The Holocaust was happening right under people’s noses, but they chose to believe the best about humanity. They chose to believe that humans are incapable of such atrocity simply because of our humanity.
It’s a false circle of logic: We are human, therefore, we are good. We are not.
We deny the truth about who we can be. We remain silent as horror destroys little children and young women. That’s happening in England and in more of the world than we’d care to admit.
According to the CBN news story, grooming gangs have been preying upon British children, mostly girls as young as 9 to 14 years of age, since the late 1980s. Gang members woo children, usually from broken homes, with presents, then drugs. Then comes addiction, threats, torture, and rape. Gang rape and sex slavery.
It’s the conquest of a people who don’t realize they’ve been targeted for conquest.
What these children suffer is so horrible, I will not give an account here. It’s not just sexual domination. The goal is to inflict agony on a young innocent and to enjoy watching the resulting anguish.
With few prosecutions, the British government and police are largely silent.
It’s unfathomable that some see what has been a common occurrence in some places as simply a clash of cultures. It’s as if revealing these crimes is a slur on all of Islam. And that the reputation of all of Islam must be protected at the expense of these, apparently, throw away children, now just “drug addicts.” From CBN:
“Some say grooming gangs originate from a particular region of Pakistan. But others point out that the Quran encourages Muslims to take enemy women as sex slaves, and that Muhammed had sex with a 9-year-old wife.
“ISIS has publicly defended sexual slavery, saying, ‘enslaving the families of the infidels and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Sharia, or Islamic law.'”
These people are still fighting a war from the Dark Ages. And it isn’t just children who get caught in their trap.
Kayla Mueller was an American working with Doctors Without Borders in Turkey. She was kidnapped when she traveled into Syria. Raped and terrorized, she kept her Christian faith.
When her captors presented her to other hostages as an example of a “strong” girl who converted to Islam, she spoke up.
“No, I didn’t,” she said.
Her Christian compassion had compelled her to go where people were suffering so she could relieve their adversity. Then she became one of the suffering, like the little girls in England.
Today, her death has been confirmed, but its cause remains a matter of dispute.
Radical Islam knows they are in a war. Terrorized British children understand that war. Kayla Mueller understood it too.
Many who don’t realize what’s happening here prefer the idea that people are good and evil can’t be as bad as it seems.
The world is a dangerous place. It’s even more dangerous if there is a war going on. It’s most dangerous when there’s a war and one side won’t acknowledge the conflict.
And so remains silent.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
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PrintAfter his release from prison Mahmoud burned his Austrian passport in a video. Photo: Site
Has Austria become a growing regional centre for Islamic religious extremism? In this analysis, Benjamin Weinthal, who reports on European affairs for The Jerusalem Post, sees three different Jihadist movements working actively in Austria.
The small Central European country of Austria has recently made headlines because of its jihadi teenagers who have gone to fight in Syria. But Austria's radical Islam problem stretches beyond the Islamic State's recruitment of young Austrian men and women. The Alpine state has become a hub of extremism that includes not only Islamic State terrorism but also Iranian nuclear proliferation activities as well as active support for Hamas.
Islamic State activity in Austria
"ISIS: Austria is terror hotspot," ran the headline of an interview published in September by the Österreich newspaper's online news outlet.
In April, Samra Kesinovic, 17, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, two Austrian girls who had been radicalized by a local mosque, departed to join the Islamic State in Syria. The girls left notes in their bedrooms that said "Don't look for us. We will serve Allah--and we will die for him," according to Austrian police.
Regretting their decision, the girls sought in October to return to Vienna. The girls, of Bosnian background, are now believed to be in Raqqah, the Islamic State's so-called capital, in Syria. "Jihadi brides" is the term some reports have used to describe the girls' alleged status as wives of Islamic State combatants.
Then in late October, Sabina denied that she wanted to return to Austria, telling the French magazine Paris Match that she wished to stay in Syria because she feels "free" there. "[Here] I can practice my religion," and, "in Vienna I couldn't," she said.
Austrian security experts believe she was strong-armed into denying that she is being held against her will.
The Austrian radical Islamic preacher Mohammed Mahmoud, who has been a key figure in creating the Central European jihadist movement, is also believed to have played a crucial role in the establishment of the Islamic State. "Mohammed M. from Vienna is IS co-founder," the Vienna-based Kurier daily titled its mid-October report. The paper based its piece on a new book by Behnam Said, an expert on Islam, who noted that Mahmoud's name appears on a document urging support for the Islamic State.
The Turkish government reportedly released Mahmoud from custody in August in exchange for Turkish hostages held by the Islamic State. After returning to Raqqah, Mahmoud married Ahlam Al-Nasr, the so-called "poet of Islamic State." Mahmoud had burned his Austrian passport in a public display, which was filmed and then posted on the Internet.
In an email response to a Long War Journal media query, Karl-Heinz Grundböck, a spokesman for Austria's interior ministry, said that "according to current information there are approximately 150 Austrians" fighting as foreign combatants in Syria. "More than 60" Austrian fighters have returned from Syria, he said. Grundböck flatly denied that Austria is a hub of jihadist activity.
In a separate case of adolescent jihadism in Vienna in late October, the Islamic State offered $25,000 to Mertkan G., a 14-year-old boy, to detonate a series of bombs in Vienna. According to Austria's largest mass circulation daily, Kronen Zeitung, Mertkan, the son of Turkish immigrants who lived in Austria for eight years, planned to bomb the Westbahnhof train station, and had downloaded instructions from the Internet on how to assemble explosives.
"An attack of this kind would have ended bloodily and caused many casualties," an Austrian terrorism expert said. Mertkan, who had planned to travel to Syria to join Islamic State, is currently incarcerated.
In August, Austrian authorities arrested nine Chechens, who had been granted asylum, for attempting to engage in jihad for the Islamic State in Syria. Two of the nine Chechens had tried twice to enter Syria. A 17-year-old boy and a woman are among the members of the Chechen group.
"Vienna has served as the de facto base for Islamist extremists from southeastern Europe, a place to recruit, raise and hide funds, and radicalize, thanks to Austria's permissive laws and weak enforcement mechanisms," wrote former NSA intelligence analyst John Schindler, who has a deep expertise in jihadist activity in the Balkans and Austria. "It's an exceptional terrorist or Salafi radical in Bosnia who has not spent some time in Austria. It says something that the most notorious Salafi mosque in Vienna is located directly across the street from a major military base," Schindler continued.
Significant support for Hamas
The Austrian capital has also seen significant activity over the years by Hamas, a radical Islamist organization designated as a terrorist entity by both the European Union and the United States. In 2010, Omar al Rawi, a Social Democrat member of the Vienna City Council, spoke at an fiercely anti-Israel rally in the city, calling for the "continuation of the struggle" of the nine anti-Israel activists killed on the ship Mavi Marmara. Israel had intercepted the ship for its attempt to break a legal naval blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The anti-Israel rally, which attracted 10,000 people, including many Islamists, featured a sign calling for "Hitler to wake up."
In mid-October, the online Vienna news and analysis website Die Jüdische published an article titled "Fighting Islamic State, Ignoring Hamas." According to the report by Die Jüdische's editor-in-chief Samuel Laster, Austria's interior ministry conducted a workshop against "hate and agitation." The event covered preventative efforts in the areas of online radicalization, countering foreign fighters, and hate crimes.
Muslim preacher Adnan Ibrahim has criticized the Islamic State for killing Muslims, but praised Hamas for murdering "non-believers" and Israelis. Despite this, Carla Amina Baghajati, spokeswoman of the Islamic community in Austria, termed him a "liberal," Die Jüdische reported.
Strong Iranian presence in Vienna
Iran's regime maintains a strong presence in Vienna, largely because it is the headquarters of OPEC and the IAEA. Porous counterterrorism laws make it easy for Iranian agents to continue work on evading nuclear sanctions.
In 2012, The Telegraph reported: "At least two visits this year to Vienna by a senior departmental director have been used to carry out transactions worth millions of euros, according to sources. Western officials confirmed the official is a regular visitor to the Austrian capital and has traveled for extended stays each year since 2007."
The senior departmental director is from Iran's Center for Innovation and Technology Cooperation. The US Treasury Department designated both the agent and the Center for Innovation and Technology Cooperation for illegal nuclear proliferation activity.
According to The Telegraph, the agent's network brought into Europe funds that were "handed to money lenders in Austria, Germany and Italy. Payments from the network have been documented as transfers to accounts as far as Russia and China to pay for goods that are subsequently sent to Iran." Austria's interior ministry said there was "no criminal investigation" in connection with Tehran allegedly using its financial system to launder money.
Austria's 2012 domestic agency report stated: "In the period under review, concrete proliferation-relevant activities were observed in connection with North Korea and Iran."
Challenging counterterrorism environment
The mushrooming recruitment by Islamic State, and the presence of a large pocket of support for Hamas, pose major challenges for Austria's struggling counterterrorism establishment. Even so, Iranian intelligence's extensive network, including agents who have previously carried out a 1989 terrorist attack with impunity in Vienna, will remain Austria's greatest terror threat for the foreseeable future. The interrelationship among the three jihadist movements -- Hamas, Iran's regime, and the Islamic State -- playing out in Austria helps to explain why critics view the relatively small Central European country as a danger zone.
Benjamin Weinthal reports on European affairs for The Jerusalem Post and is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal
This essay was first published in the Long War Journal, and is reprinted with kind permission of its publishers.Over at Vice's Motherboard gaming website, writer Teodora Stoica is just the latest to trot out a bunch of nonsense about video games and violence without bothering to even question broad, sweeping assumptions.
It's baffling that video game websites keep publishing such one-sided malarkey, but as people like to say these days, "It's 2016."
Apparently "It's 2016" justifies a whole lot of mumbo jumbo.
"In 2016, technology and media have turned genocide viral," writes Stoica, failing to point out that genocide is actually a real thing that has never been caused by video games. "The video game Mortal Kombat X features spines being snapped, heads crushed and players being diced into cubes. In Hatred, gamers play as a sociopath who attempts to kill innocent bystanders and police officers with guns, flamethrowers and bombs to satisfy his hatred of humanity. Characters beg for mercy before execution, frequently during profanity-laced rants."
I always knew the game Hatred, which basically nobody played, would be used more to condemn video games than anything else, an unwitting pawn in agenda-driven articles like this one. It's one reason the game has always irritated me to no end.
Stoica's argument, which delves into only one side of the never-ending debate on video games and violence, boils down to this:
Since the Korean War, the military has altered basic training to help soldiers overcome existing norms of violence, desensitise them to the acts they might have to commit, and reflexively shoot upon cue. Even the drill sergeant is portrayed as the consummate professional personifying violence and aggression. The same training takes place unconsciously through contemporary video games and media. Young children have unprecedented access to violent movies, games and sports events at an early age, and learning brutality is the norm. The media dwells upon real-life killers, describing every detail of their crime during prime-time TV. The current conditions easily set up children to begin thinking like soldiers and even justify killing. But are we in fact suppressing critical functions of the brain? Are we engendering future generations who will accept violence and ignore the voice of reason, creating a world where violence will become the comfortable norm?
No, dear god, no. The answer is no. It has always been and always will be "No."
Real violence and video game violence are not the same thing. The vast majority of people who play video games do not commit violent crimes or engage in violent acts. If they did, the 70 million copies of GTAV that have been sold globally would have thrust the world into chaos. Gamers' empathy remains as intact as anyone else's, which is to say there are bad apples in every bunch. I played Mortal Kombat as a child (yes, it was available in the early 90s' not just in 2016) and never once had the urge to snap spines in half.
Anyone who has actually engaged in real violence---a fight at school, for instance---will know just how vastly different it is from the violence we experience on a screen. Real violence is frightening and overwhelming and takes control of your entire body.
I was in a fight in fifth grade, and never again since, thank god. Three boys chased me into my friend's house after I tossed a bucket of water on them. They punched and kicked me. I wasn't really hurt, but it was scary. I literally cannot imagine taking another human life, and neither can most people. This is common sense. It doesn't matter how many digital avatars you've slaughtered in video games. So long as you're not a sociopath, which video games cannot create, you aren't going to have an easy time killing. Even soldiers, in war, struggle with the act.
The real makers of war and chaos are the politicians we elect, the policies we enact that promote violence like the War on Drugs. It's the religious fanatics and the hawks and the cowards who get other people to carry out their violence for them.
In any case, I've written extensively about the science behind all of this. I don't have the time or inclination to do it all over again. The truth of the matter is, for every study you show me about how video games can make people more "numb" to violence or more aggressive, I can show you one that says the opposite. I prefer to use basic reason and common sense. Show me your studies, I'll show you the world around us.
Every few months or so, somebody comes out with some fear-mongering jibber-jabber about how video games are corrupting our youth, making our young men terrible killing machines. They always ignore the fact that in nations with high rates of video game usage, violent crime is generally exceptionally low; that as video games have become more popular and realistic, violent crime has fallen; that in spite of the horrific shootings we keep seeing, these are never caused by video games, and have their roots in far more complex and difficult to understand phenomena.
So why do we keep seeing this propaganda? Why do we see it from both right-wingers and left-wingers alike these days? Why do liberal video game writers and conservative activists like Jack Thompson all ride the same bandwagon?
Because people have agendas. Because people are arrogant and self-assured. (Oh no, I know a dirty word!)
Because it's fun to get clicks and fun to stir up fear and fun to sit on a moral high horse and wag your finger at people who enjoy such crude things as first-person shooters or D&D. Surely these people are closeted killers, nerdy deviants just one thumbstick away from a massacre.
Hogwash. You have no proof. You have "studies" and accusations. You'll need to do better than that. And shame on gaming websites that promote this nonsense without at the very least presenting the other side.
/End Rant/We don’t always head into the mountains and this date had us doing some history exploring in the Drumheller area. Here, a few kilometres east of Carbon along an old CPR rail line is the ghost town of Sharples Alberta. I doubt the place ever amounted to much but all that remains today outside of the elevator are a few dilapidated sheds, some old cellars and house foundations. And maybe ghosts.
The Elevator is marked P&H. This company, Parrish & Heimbecker, was one of the smaller players in the Canadian grain industry with a fewer number of elevators seen when compared to the big boys like UGG (United Grain Growers), Pioneer and the Alberta Wheat Pool (“The Pool”). Interestingly, each elevator company used specific colours on their structures making identifying them a fairly easy task. P&H mostly used either silver like what’s seen here, or a light yellow-ish colour – most other companies stuck to one colour.
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ Scroll down for photos or to comment ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
The elevator here was built just after the rail line was opened (early 1920s) and the large annex attached was added some twenty years later. An annex like this was a quick and easy way to increase capacity and a large elevator allowed for more efficient loading of rail cars. While solid looking the building is succumbing to the elements. The siding in particular is starting to peeling away.
There used to be a second elevator here, an AWP, Alberta Wheat Pool built late 1920s, that was torn down in the 1980s.
Just west of “town” are the remains of a bridge. The decking has been removed but the concrete piers still stand tall and strong. It’s likely that the spans were removed when the line was abandoned, either to be used elsewhere on the railway, or to be sold for scrap. Another small concrete bridge nearby (more of a drain actually) is marked 1947, proudly proclaiming the date it was built.
Sharples was on the CPR’s Langdon Subdivision, which extended from its namesake town into Drumheller and beyond. Along with grain, this line transported considerable amounts of coal from the many mines that dotted the Red Deer River valley. What’s odd about this line is that after it was pulled up, some of the grain elevators were left behind and not demolished. There is Sharples as seen here, but also there are also examples in Kirkpatrick and Dorothy Alberta further east down the line.
The branch here originally came through in the early 1920s and according to my research appears to have be abandoned in the late 1970s or early 1980s (I have seen conflicting information). It’s assumed that this elevator was shut down at that same time. Abandonment seems to be concurrent with the end of coal mining in the region and perhaps this was a catalyst for the line being pulled up. Without the coal traffic there was only small amount of grain to be moved on this section and this was likely not enough to sustain the line.
It’s not clear at this point if Sharples was ever anything more than a siding on the rail line. No evidence can be found of any business having been here and only a few houses or evidence of houses have been found close to the elevator.
I used to drive oil field truck in the 1990s and often visited the gas plant that is located just east of the site. While on one trip I examined on old burnt out pile of junk just up from the elevator and in it found an intact Northern Telecom Western Electric designed model WE500 rotary telephone. In the 1950s to the 1970s these were probably the most common phone in Canada (especially in black, every household seemed to have one). I grabbed it since it was clearly considered junk and it sat in my house forgotten for many years. I found it recently while cleaning up some boxes and have since rebuilt it to working order and use it often. The ringer can wake the dead!
Near the elevator is a shed that contained a number of old motorcycles. Actually just the frames and other miscellaneous parts. I guess someone liked to tinker?
Nailed to the wall of another shed were a number of old newspaper stereotype masters. These are used to make a printing plate and how they got here is anyone’s guess but they appear to be some form of basic insulation. The newspaper is the Calgary Albertan (now the Calgary Sun) and the dates are from the 1930s. On a visit in the 1990s I found a loose one blowing in the wind alongside the road and grabbed it. It’s from the comics section from June 11, 1933. Subjects include “The World Of Mosquito’s” and “Freckles and his Friends”, a long running and popular comic of the time. Interesting reading that’s for sure!
Down the road near Carbon we found a neat old farm house. We hoped to explore it but it was too dangerous. It was near falling over and all the wood was rotten. I doubt it will last another season or two.
I really enjoyed visiting Sharples and finding a standing elevator in 2012 is a real treat. Where there were thousands of them dotting the prairies, now are only a few remain. This structure is starting to look pretty rough so I wonder how long this one has?
East down the Langdon Subdivision is a still standing grain elevator in Kirkpatrick Alberta and to see it, click this link…
Prairie Sentinels – Kirkpatrick Alberta.
To see other grain elevators we’ve explored, go here…
Prairie Sentinels – Prelate Saskatchewan.
Prairie Sentin |
versions of your code against each other.
That's all really impressive, but you don't need a formal methods PhD to do this stuff. You can write a fuzzer that will shake out a lot of bugs in an hour. Seriously. I'm a bit embarrassed to link to this, but this fuzzer was written in about an hour and found 20-30 bugs, including incorrect code generation, and crashes on basic operations like multiplication and exponentiation. My guess is that it would take another 2-3 hours to shake out another 20-30 bugs (with support for more types), and maybe another day of work to get another 20-30 (with very basic support for random expressions). I don't mention this because it's good. It's not. It's totally heinous. But that's the point. You can throw together an absurd hack in an hour and it will turn out to be pretty useful.
Compared to writing unit tests by hand: even if I knew what the bugs were in advance, I'd be hard pressed to code fast enough to generate 30 bugs in an hour. 30 bugs in a day? Sure, but not if I don't already know what the bugs are in advance. This isn't to say that unit testing isn't valuable, but if you're going to spend a few hours writing tests, a few hours writing a fuzzer is going to go a longer way than a few hours writing unit tests. You might be able to hit 100 words a minute by typing, but your CPU can easily execute 200 billion instructions a minute. It's no contest.
What does it really take to write a fuzzer? Well, you need to generate random inputs for a program. In this case, we're generating random function calls in some namespace. Simple. The only reason it took an hour was because I don't really get Julia's reflection capabilities well enough to easily generate random types, which resulted in my writing the type generation stuff by hand.
This applies to a lot of different types of programs. Have a GUI? It's pretty easy to prod random UI elements. Read files or things off the network? Generating (or mutating) random data is straightforward. This is something anyone can do.
But this isn't a silver bullet. Lackadaisical testing means that your users will find bugs. However, even given that developers aren't going to spend nearly enough time on testing, we can do a lot better than we're doing right now.
Resources
There are a lot of great resources out there, but if you're just getting started, I found this description of types of fuzzers to be one of those most helpful (and simplest) things I've read.
John Regehr has a udacity course on software testing. I haven't worked through it yet (Pablo Torres just pointed to it), but given the quality of Dr. Regehr's writing, I expect the course to be good.
For more on my perspective on testing, there's this.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Leah Hanson and Mindy Preston for catching writing bugs, to Steve Klabnik for explaining the cause/fix of the Chrome bug (bad/corrupt web fonts), and to Phillip Joseph for finding a markdown bug.
I'm experimenting with blogging more by spending less time per post and just spewing stuff out in 30-90 minute sitting. Please let me know if something is unclear or just plain wrong. Seriously.Raleigh, North Carolina (CNN) Donald Trump on Tuesday night repeatedly hammered his message that there is a "rigged system" at work, pointing specifically to the FBI decision to not recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of email while serving as secretary of state.
Trump seized on the FBI's decision as he addressed the crowd of fervent supporters in this potential battleground state, calling it the "best evidence ever that we've seen that our system is totally rigged."
He accused Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, of bribing the U.S. attorney general -- offering little to back up the dramatic accusation. And he called the FBI's decision, announced earlier Tuesday by the agency's director James Comey, a "tragedy."
"Everybody thought based on what was being said she was guilty. She was guilty. And it turned out that we're not going to press charges. It's really amazing," Trump said as his crowd of more than 2,200, according to the theater, erupted in a chorus of boos.
"We have a rigged system, folks," he added.
Trump, who emerged victorious in the GOP primaries by portraying himself as an outsider and riding a wave of anti-Washington sentiment, has in recent weeks worked to paint Clinton as an embodiment of the establishment and called for a radical shake-up of the status quo. That message was alive and well on Tuesday.
The FBI director's remarks Tuesday that Clinton was "extremely careless" in storing classified information on her private email server during her time as secretary of state coupled with his decision to not recommend criminal charges proved a potent political combination for Trump.
"That's a tremendous word," Trump said of Comey's description of Clinton's actions.
And then he quickly returned to criticizing the FBI decision.
"It's a tragedy. Because we're a country of law. We're a country of order," Trump said. "Stupidity is not a reason that you're going to be innocent."
But Trump took his central message that Clinton is not facing charges because of a "rigged" and corrupt system beyond insinuation and varnished allusion.
Drawing on a report in The New York Times that Clinton "may decide" to keep on U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch should she win in November, Trump accused Clinton of bribing Lynch.
"If she wins, she's going to consider extending the attorney general and you know what, I'm not saying, I'm not knocking the attorney general, what I'm saying is how can you say that? It's a bribe," Trump said. "The attorney general sitting there saying, if I get Hillary off the hook I'm going to have four more years or eight more years, but if she loses I'm out of a job, it's a bribe. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace."
Trump added of Clinton: "She is laughing at the stupidity of our system. She is laughing and so is her husband, Bill, laughing at what's going on because they've been there before."
Peppered throughout his remarks on Tuesday were also accusations that Clinton is "a criminal with a guilty conscience" and "one of the most crooked politicians in history."
Trump has previously called for Clinton to be jailed and has suggested he would direct his attorney general to reopen an investigation into Clinton's email scandal with the goal of indicting the former secretary of state.
Trump, who is prone to making tangential statements and straying off message during his rallies, was remarkably consistent Tuesday night in his message.
"We are going to get rid of these fools -- these fools -- that are running our country," Trump said, winding down at the end of his speech.
Trump also seized on the revival of Clinton's email scandal on Tuesday by laying out the stakes of the general election -- one Trump hopes will be a referendum on Clinton's high unfavorability ratings, and not his own.
"Hillary Clinton can't keep her emails safe and you know what folks, she sure as hell can't keep our country safe," he said.
The FBI news conference on Tuesday could not have been more welcome news for Trump, who was facing his latest round of controversy over a tweet he sent out on Saturday that evoked anti-Semitic imagery.
But Trump now faces a new test: whether he can stick to the message he now appears to have grasped, and avoid the self-inflicted wounds that have so often steeped him in controversy.Wargaming's August Extravaganza
Wargaming is pulling out all the stops this month with the August Extravaganza, our biggest battle blowout of the year! The Extravaganza lasts from August 1 through August 17, and throughout those 17 savage days, we'll be celebrating our community of over 93 million players with a lineup bigger than a Panzer tank. Over $1,000,000 worth of in-game giveaways, physical prizes, in-game special events (including accelerated XP) are set to roll for all tankers and pilots this month.
Win Big
Each day of the August Extravaganza is designed to reward the hardcore and entice the casual players with big rewards and discounts. Participate in special week-long missions to earn massive amounts of XP and Credits, and join in the weekend crescendo, when limited-edition tanks and aircraft are awarded among huge discounts on Premium vehicles, and XP earning is boosted to the limit. Then keep it tuned to our weekend livestreams on Twitch to be eligible for valuable real-world prizes!
Limited-Edition Giveaway Vehicles World of Tanks
Type 97 Te-Ke WoT: Xbox 360 Edition
T1E6-X World of Warplanes
Curtiss F11C World of Tanks Blitz
M3 Light Lend-Lease
Play Hard
The event spans across all Wargaming games: World of Tanks, World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition, World of Tanks Blitz, and World of Warplanes. The August Extravagazna is the ultimate opportunity to bolster your armor, stock your arsenal and fill your Garages or Hangars with the firepower and Credits you need to dominate. Lock and load!
During the week of August 11, the event extends beyond North America and goes international with the events for World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition!
Extravaganza Breakdown
Click to enlargeSpeaker Nancy Pelosi, who has come under fire for spending before, spent roughly $3,000 on flowers for her office. Pelosi spends $2,993 on flowers
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spent $2,993 in taxpayer money on flowers between June and October. House Majority Whip James Clyburn has a thing for Chantilly Donuts, spending about $265 at the Virginia shop in the past quarter. And Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), a fiscal conservative, decided to give about $2,000 in unused office funds back to the government to help reduce the deficit.
These expenditures – culled from thousands of line items released Monday by the Chief Administrative Officer of the House – are just a fraction of the $300 million spent last quarter by House offices. But while the bulk of congressional office spending goes to salaries and routine office expenses, some of the line items offer a window into the personalities and priorities of each congressional office.
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Pelosi, who has come under fire in the past for spending on flowers, also spent roughly $30,610 in food and beverage and about $2,740 on bottled water, contributing to the nearly $120,531 total from all congressional leadership accounts. Her offices defended the charges, saying the Speaker’s office holds more ceremonial events with visiting dignitaries than other congressional offices. They also use a local florist, and about a third of her flower expenses this quarter were for Jack Kemp’s funeral.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) racked up about $24,617 in catering costs. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) spent about $1,561 in bottled water and House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) spent no money on water but a touch over $18,000 in food. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) spent about $24,116 on food and beverage.
These line by line expenditures used to come just in bound green books, but for the first time ever, Pelosi requested that the reports also be put online this quarter.
The nearly 3,400 digitized pages were released Monday afternoon and touted by Pelosi as expanding “accountability to taxpayers and the press.”
Most of the expenditures seem standard – everything from individual staff salaries to office supplies is listed. Most offices order food from the Capitol Host in-house catering service, but others order from outside locales. Clyburn, for example, frequently purchases donuts for his office from Chantilly Donuts in Virginia, where he spent about $265 in the period stretching from June until the end of September.
One of the biggest line items for congressional offices outside of salaries tends to be the pricy subscriptions to Congressional Quarterly, which produces high end legislative tracking products, a magazine and a daily publication. Cantor and Boehner together spent $69,832.50 on the company’s publications – Boehner spent $48,085 on CQ publications.
Lawmakers appear to have great flexibility on what qualifies as an office expense. Money is spent on everything from security services for district offices to thousands in mileage reimbursements for individuals’ cars. Taxpayers foot the bill for leasing cars for members, including cars for Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas).
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) spent $28,410 with a market communications firm to send a newsletter to his constituents, querying them on issues ranging from the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, earmark reform and health care. A spokesman said it was sent to 196,000 constituents and is just “one of the many tools Congressman Kirk uses to communicate with constituents.”
Some even have money left over to give back to the government. Walz and Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) both returned about $2,500 to cut away at the deficit. Bachus, a fiscal conservative, said he does not take cost-of-living increases in the middle of a congressional term.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the amounts Nancy Pelosi’s office spent on flowers and James Clyburn’s office spent on donuts.During her acceptance speech Monday at the New York Women in Communications annual Matrix Awards luncheon, rape-hoaxer Lena Dunham explained why she would rather die than be a man.
TV host Andy Cohen asked Dunham what she would do if she woke up one day as a man.
I’d “kill myself,” the Girls star said.
“The reason I said that wasn’t because I’m subscribing to an old binary,” Dunham explained. “I love that fact that we’re in a time where we get to determine what gender looks and feels like to us. It was not because I wouldn’t know what to wear. It was because I feel so passionately lucky to be doing the work of being female right now.”
WATCH:
Dunham, an outspoken feminist, wrote in a pro-Hillary Clinton essay Monday that she’s not “supporting Hillary only because of our shared anatomy. I have no plans to blindly follow my uterus to the nearest polling station.”
But Dunham admitted and explained in the very next paragraph “why I’m voting for Hillary Clinton.”
During Monday’s event, the 29-year-old producer also said that she would “100 percent” move to Canada if Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump were elected president.
Trump, as Breitbart News has reported, said he would “be doing a great service to our country” if Dunham fled the United States.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudsonWe hit on this Monday night during Quick Slants but it absolutely bears repeating.
To gain an appreciation of how the Patriots’ placekicking situation has been, just look at fourth-quarter field goals in the regular season since Bill Belichick got to Foxboro in 2000. The Patriots have missed seven fourth-quarter kicks. The rest of the league has combined to miss 620.
Adam Vinatieri was brilliant during the first portion of the Belichick regime from 2000 to 2005 going 32 for 36 in the fourth quarter and overtime. Gostkowski has been otherworldly – 38 of 40 in the last 51 regular season games and 77 for 80 overall. Shayne Graham – remember him? – went 4 for 4 in fourth quarters in 2010.
How much of an advantage is it for the Patriots when their kicker is, as Devin McCourty said Monday on Quick Slants, “one of our best players”? A big one.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels when apprised of the Patriots’ fourth-quarter kicking stats. “Steve’s been tremendous and Adam before him was equally as accurate and made a ton of clutch kicks. I’ve always felt good about, if we had to put it in their hands … to win the game, we know what we need to do offensively to turn it over to him and then we trust him to go out and make it. He’s done that numerous times.”
I asked McDaniels how much the kicker weighs each week on offensive decisions made.
“That’s a topic that comes up each week,” he explained. “It’s a discussion point for us. On a week-to-week basis, you’re dealing with wind, you’re dealing with potential rain or precipitation. You’re dealing with the conditions of the field. Is it grass, is it torn up? The conversation for us before the game is generally the range depending on the direction we’re going that we’d to get the ball into if we’re in a situation where we need the field goal. Or, if you’re in a long yardage situation where it’s third-and-12 and the ball’s at the 45-yard line, you need to have an idea, ‘OK, if I don’t pick this up but I get 7 of it, are we getting it close enough where Steve can go ahead and attempt a kick he can make?’ ”
Beyond having Vinatieri, Gostkowski and Graham on his side, when McDaniels was head coach in Denver, his kicker was Matt Prater – a very solid player at the time.
“I’ve been very fortunate to be on teams that have had kickers that were obviously very accurate. We depended on them a lot and we trusted them incredibly. We always try to avoid putting them in that situation (where they are at the end of their range) but you have to know where’s the cutoff point each week and it changes from one pregame to the next depending on where you’re playing.”
In considering the care and feeding of a kicker, a staff also has to consider temperament. It took a long time for Patriots fans to feel fully confident with Gostkowski from long range and the game on the line, despite the fact his numbers have been so good.
In Super Bowl 42, the Patriots’ only possession of the third quarter against the Giants ended with New England (leading 7-3 at the time), trying to pick up a first down on a fourth-and-13 from the Giants’ 31. The Patriots passed up the field goal try from 48 and a battle of field position ensued that New York eventually got the upper hand in, scoring early in the fourth to make it 14-10. It remains a curious decision to this day and it will be interesting to find out (which I’ll try to do), if the youth of Gostkowski entered into the decision to not have him kick.
Gostkowski also had an early-season miss at Gillette against Arizona in 2012, a game in which the Patriots were upset 20-18. That left a little scar on the region’s brain for a bit but it’s all but vanished now.
Since 2000, the general rule has been that, whoever the Patriots have is the guy that you want to see kicking with the game on the line.Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner
Edwin by
Do you still remember the wonders of film photography? What is that? What do you mean, cameras have never used films? You must be one of the modern generation brats who live in an “instant” culture, and the first exposure you had to cameras were of the digital kind. Let me share with you, my young padawan, of the days when cameras still used films that had to be developed in a dark room. In an effort to bridge the gap between the past, present and the future, this UK exclusive £59.99 Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner might be just the tool that you were looking for, as it allows you to scan, edit and share all your 35mm film stock, directly into the smartphone itself (memory permitting, of course).
The Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner is completely compatible with both iPhone and Android platforms, where it relies on a direct light panel to evenly and efficiently scan negatives and slides onto your smartphone. Not only that, it will also take advantage of decent Lomo technology so that you can churn out your fair share of slideshows, movies and panoramas along the way.It's now widely accepted that the impact of an asteroid at Chicxulub in Mexico's Yucatan region finished off any dinosaurs that we don't currently refer to as birds, while triggering a mass extinction that wiped out a lot of other species. But that hasn't ended the debate regarding the dynamics of the extinction event, with other ecological influences getting consideration as contributing to the dinosaurs' vulnerability.
One potential contributor that's hard to overlook is situated in western India: the Deccan Traps. These enormous deposits are built of layer upon layer of volcanic rock, suggesting a series of flood eruptions took place over thousands of years. These eruptions happened suspiciously close to the start of the mass extinction—close enough that some researchers argued that it was the eruptions that killed off the dinosaurs. There was, after all, precedent; the eruptions that formed the Siberian Traps have been blamed for a mass extinction that was so severe, it's known as the The Great Dying.
To help settle the issue, an international team of researchers has gone back and obtained the most precise dates for the eruptions yet. The dates show that the eruptions started nearly a quarter-million years before the onset of the mass extinction but continued for roughly 750,000 years, meaning they spanned the extinction event. This supports the idea that the eruptions helped set the stage for the end of the dinosaurs.
The dating techniques used in the work—uranium-lead dating of zircons—is pretty standard. But it's really the technical challenges of getting it right in multiple samples from a massive eruption that stand out. It was easy to find zircons and get dates from them, but a number of reasons to expect those dates wouldn't be very precise.
First, the researchers had to ensure that the zircons had formed in the magma involved in the eruptions rather than forming earlier and being included in them. This was handled by visually examining the crystals, which could eliminate non-volcanic zircons. But even then, some of the crystals seem to have taken an extended time to form, as the authors obtained a range of dates from their samples. So the authors looked at the presence of other elements in the sample, finding a set of zircons that had the same chemical signature and thus likely formed in the same magma.
To add an additional layer of control, the authors used the fact that each layer of rock must have erupted after the layers it was sitting on top of. So once dates were obtained, the researchers ordered them by rock layer and ran the whole stack through an analysis that discarded any dates that were out of order.
The authors conclude that it took 750,000 years to put about 80-90 percent of the rock that was ultimately erupted in place. That's a long time, but the Deccan Traps consist of at least 1.1 million cubic kilometers of rock, so that number still represents a pretty staggering series of eruptions. The dates also place the start of the eruptions at 250,000 years prior to the mass extinction event at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.
The start of the eruptions clearly didn't trigger the mass extinction. But a variety of ecological disruptions are apparent in the fossil record leading up to the mass extinction, and it's clear that the Deccan Traps eruptions could have contributed to these disruptions. The duration of the events also means that the eruptions could have been ongoing even as the Chicxulub impact occurred, which really provides just about any species out there a great excuse for dying.
Science, 2014. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa0118 (About DOIs).The Withings Activité is by and large a fashion-focused watch. This is not a fact that the maker, Withings, tries to hide. (Withings’ product line is design-focused, including a futuristic Smart Kid Scale that links to a smart phone to track a child’s growth). Amidst the number of smart watch prototypes and accessories coming onto the market, the Activité caught our attention because it actually looks good. Really–the clean Junghans-esque design is something to be appreciated. Moreover, the Activité reflects an interesting approach to the smart watch concept: by hiding the brash technical aspects of the product, in theory it will be more wearable.
The Activité was designed in Paris and built in Switzerland. Inside the stainless steel case is a Swiss-made quartz 36.3mm movement called “Connected Movement” that automatically adjusts to local time when the wearer changes time zones. It achieves this by synching via Bluetooth with an iOS device adjusted to the correct time.No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide Headlines Slate with All Top 6 Teams; 12 of the Top 20 Teams
Games from Lambeau Field and Dublin, Ireland
No. 9 Notre Dame at Texas on Sunday Night in Prime Time
No. 14 Ole Miss vs. No. 4 Florida State on Labor Day Night
ESPN will begin the 2016 college football season with DICK’s Sporting Goods Kickoff Week, a marquee week 1 slate featuring top teams, ranked squads going head-to-head and games from historic locations. The must-see schedule will feature the defending College Football Playoff National Champion and No. 1 team in ESPN.com’s “way too early top 25” Alabama, in addition to No. 2 Clemson, No. 3 Michigan, No. 4 Florida State, No. 5 Oklahoma and No. 6 LSU. Overall, the announced schedule to date features at least 12 teams in the top 20, including four games with matchups of ranked teams. The location of games adds to the interest, as Lambeau Field hosts its first college game in more than 30 years and 2016’s first college football Saturday begins in Dublin, Ireland.
Saturday, Sept. 3 – Tripleheader on ESPN and ABC
The first full Saturday of college football will feature a tripleheader on each ESPN and ABC; each game has at least a top six team or a matchup of ranked teams:
No. 5 Oklahoma vs. No. 18 Houston (noon ET on ABC) in the 2016 AdvoCare Texas Kickoff from NRG Stadium in Houston. This will be both schools’ first time playing in the annual opening-weekend game, now in its fourth year.
Hawaii at No. 3 Michigan (noon on ESPN) from Ann Arbor, Mich. As Jim Harbaugh begins his second season as head coach of the Wolverines, the Warriors make their first trip ever to Michigan Stadium.
No. 6 LSU vs. Wisconsin (3:30 p.m. on ABC) from Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis. The game will be the fourth college football game held in the home of the Green Bay Packers, having previously occurred in 1983, 1982, and 1960. The previous three games featured St. Norbert taking on Fordham twice and Mankato State once.
No. 13 Georgia vs. No. 19 North Carolina (5:30 p.m. on ESPN) in the 2016 Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game from the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Both the Tar Heels and the Bulldogs will be making their second appearance in the game, which began in 2008 and included a special two-game event in both 2012 and 2014.
No. 12 USC vs. No. 1 Alabama (8 p.m. on ABC) from Arlington, Texas. The Trojans are kicking off their season for the first time from AT&T Stadium, while the Crimson Tide is 2-0 in season-opening games from the stadium since 2009.
No. 2 Clemson at Auburn (9 p.m. on ESPN) from Auburn, Ala. This will be the 50th all-time meeting between the two schools, but just the fourth regular season meeting since 1971.
Before the pair of tripleheaders, ESPN2 will begin the day from across the Atlantic Ocean when Georgia Tech plays Boston College (7:30 a.m.) at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland.
Sunday, Sept. 4 – No. 9 Notre Dame at Texas
ESPN/ABC’s dynamite week 1 schedule continues Sunday, Sept. 4, when two of college football’s most celebrated programs match up: No. 9 Notre Dame at Texas (7:30 p.m. on ABC) from Austin, Texas. The game is believed to be the network’s first-ever live, Sunday, prime-time, regular season college football game and the Fighting Irish-Longhorns’ 12th all-time matchup, with their first game dating back to 1913.
Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 5 – No. 14 Ole Miss vs. No. 4 Florida State
ESPN will conclude college football’s first week with its annual Labor Day night game, this year with No. 14 Ole Miss vs. No. 4 Florida State (8 p.m.) in the 2016 Camping World Kickoff from Orlando, Fla. It is ESPN’s 13th annual prime-time Labor Day game, having begun in 2002*, and Florida State’s fifth appearance in the game and Ole Miss’ second.
*No game in 2004 due to Hurricane Francis
Thursday, Sept. 1 – SEC Action Begins the Season
ESPN will begin its college football season when South Carolina travels to Vanderbilt on Thursday, Sept. 1 (8 p.m.), as the Gamecocks and Commodores meet on opening night for the first time since the 2012 season.
ESPN’s week 1 schedule begins a season of industry-leading coverage which will conclude with the third annual College Football Playoff.
Additional Week 1 Games on ESPN Networks will be announced at a later date.
ESPN/ABC College Football Week1 Schedule (as of May 17)
Day Time (ET) Game Network Thu, Sept 1 8 p.m. South Carolina at Vanderbilt ESPN Sat, Sept 3 7:30 a.m. Georgia Tech vs. Boston College (Dublin, Ireland) ESPN2 Noon 2016 AdvoCare Texas Kickoff: No. 5 Oklahoma vs. No. 18 Houston (NRG Stadium, Houston) ABC Noon Hawaii at No. 3 Michigan ESPN 3:30 p.m. No. 6 LSU vs. Wisconsin (Lambeau Field, Green Bay, Wis.) ABC 5:30 p.m. 2016 Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game: No. 13 Georgia vs. No. 19 North Carolina (Georgia Dome, Atlanta) ESPN 8 p.m. No. 12 USC vs. No. 1 Alabama (AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas) ABC 9 p.m. No. 2 Clemson at Auburn ESPN Sun, Sept 4 7:30 p.m. No. 9 Notre Dame at Texas ABC Mon, Sept 5 8 p.m. 2016 Camping World Kickoff: No. 14 Ole Miss vs. No. 4 Florida State (Camping World Stadium, Orlando, Fla.) ESPN
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Media contact: Derek Volner at 860-384-9986; [email protected] and @DerekVolnerImage caption Police said a crude bomb being made inside a house caused the explosion
Six people have been killed in an explosion near a nuclear power plant in India's Tamil Nadu state, police say.
Three others were injured when a home-made bomb accidently exploded near the controversial Kudankulam nuclear plant, which began operations in October.
The plant begun producing electricity in October after years of protest.
Opponents of the plant, which is on the coastline hit by the 2004 Asian tsunami, fear a disaster similar to the one at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.
But the government says the joint Indo-Russian project, which is seen as critical to India's energy needs, is "necessary for the welfare and economic growth of India" and is "completely safe".
Police said it was investigating whether the blast in a coastal village on Tuesday night was linked to protests over the plant.
"The bomb exploded accidently inside a house. Six people died and three more are seriously injured," local police chief Vijayendra Bidari told Associated Press news agency.
He claimed the house was being used as a bomb-making factory.
TV footage showed at least three homes collapsed near the blast site in Idinthakarai village, from where most of the protests against the plant have originated.
Senior officials of India's Atomic Energy Commission told the Press Trust of India news agency that the plant was safe and functioning normally.
The plant is one of many that India hopes to build as part of its aim of generating 63,000 MW of nuclear power by 2032 - an almost 14-fold increase on current levels.Samsung's lawyers are spending the weekend curled up with the iPhone's source code — an Australian judge recently ordered Apple to turn it over as part of the ongoing patent lawsuit in that country. The move isn't unexpected: we assumed it would happen after Samsung asked for the code in Australia last week. And while we don't have all the details on what transpired in the courtroom, we've been able to piece together a pretty good idea of what happened.
It makes sense that Samsung's source code request was granted — it's how you evaluate patent infringement claims when you're dealing with this type of technology. Apple apparently began handing over the iPhone 4S source code yesterday, and while disputes over whether Apple's code production is adequate will surely be raised by Samsung in the future, it seems that this particular discovery argument has been resolved in Samsung's favor without too much fanfare.
As we expected, though, the more controversial issue was over whether Samsung was entitled to the agreements between Apple and the regional telcos. Apple argued these documents were highly confidential and irrelevant to Samsung's infringement allegations. On this issue, the judge acted swiftly but cautiously, ordering Apple to hand over certain terms of the contracts to Samsung. The court then determined that based on Apple's representations of what was contained in the documents, Samsung's allegations that Apple demanded preferential treatment from the telcos didn't have any legs. With that, the judge called the issue tangential and set it aside for now.
Neither of these rulings are too surprising — the hearing on Samsung's motion to block sales of the iPhone 4S in Australia is scheduled to start November 15, and the court is keeping everyone focused on the merits of the actual patent infringement case. We'll let you know what happens next week.A new film captures a circular game of copycat: a fish that mimics an octopus that mimics fish.
First described by scientists in 1998, the remarkable mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus) can shift its shape, movements and color to impersonate toxic lionfish, flatfish and even sea snakes. Such mimicry allows it to swim in the open with relatively little fear of predators.
The black-marble jawfish (Stalix histrio), on the other hand, is a small, timid fish. It spends most of its adult life close to a sand burrow that serves as its hideout if a predator comes along.
"All jawfish are really specialized for living in burrows," said researcher Luiz Rocha, an ichthyologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. "They're almost never found outside their burrows."
Unexpectedly, during a diving trip in Indonesia in July, researcher Godehard Kopp of the University of Gottingen in Germany filmed a partnership between the pair of animals. He saw what appeared to be a black-marble jawfish closely tagging behind the octopus as it moved across the sandy seafloor. The jawfish possessed brown-and-white markings similar to ones on the octopus it was following that made it difficult to spot among its many arms. The octopus, for its part, did not seem to notice or care for its entourage. [Watch the video]
"It's a pretty unique observation of mimicry — most of the time, a mimicking animal doesn't actually follow the model it is mimicking," Rocha told LiveScience. "But the mimicry wouldn't work otherwise for this jawfish."
The researchers suggest the jawfish hitches a ride with the octopus in order to safely venture away from its burrow to look for food.
"The jawfish found a way to get around in the open and not get eaten by anything else," Rocha said. "It's not a good swimmer, so any grouper or snapper or predatory fish would easily grab it otherwise."
In Rocha's opinion, this jawfish evolved its brown-and-white coloration first and then later discovered the advantage of sticking close to the octopus. "Those jawfish that did gain this advantage survived more often and got more offspring, so this behavior spread throughout the population," he explained.
"Unfortunately, reefs in the Coral Triangle area of southeast Asia are rapidly declining mostly due to harmful human activities," Rocha said. "We may lose species involved in unique interactions like this even before we get to know them."
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Rocha, Kopp and their colleague Rich Ross detailed their findings in the December issue of the journal Coral Reefs.
Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.The San Francisco Board of Education may soon commit to building a new elementary school in Mission Bay nearly two decades after the land was set aside for the development.
Two school board members introduced a resolution Tuesday directing the superintendent to begin planning for the school in Mission Bay, where hundreds of school children are expected to move in the coming years as housing developments spring to life in the neighborhood.
“The studies have been done, the community has spoken, now it’s time to get the school developed,” said school board member Matt Haney, who introduced the resolution with the board’s Vice President Hydra Mendoza-McDonnell.
If the resolution is approved at the next meeting in two weeks, the San Francisco Unified School District will have set in stone a plan to build its first new school in more than a decade. The school would be built on less than an acre of land near UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus, which was set aside for the school district to use at no cost in 1998.
The last time the district built a new school was in 2006, when it opened Dianne Feinstein Elementary School in the Sunset District. While Willie Brown Middle School just opened in the Bayview in 2015, it was rebuilt on the site of a former school.
The resolution’s approval would also mean the school board decided to build a school in Mission Bay before the Bayview — a historically black neighborhood that has also experienced its share of development in recent years, but is a |
backlash.
However, critics on the Left have claimed that such an order would make it easier to use religion as an "excuse" to discriminate against LGBT individuals.
Conservative hope arose after a four-page draft copy of a religious freedom order was leaked to the press in early February. After two months, no such order has been issued but sources close to the discussions have indicated that such an order is still in the works.
According to Politico, two senior administration officials confirmed a plan to sign the order on Thursday. However, one official warned that the plan hasn't yet been finalized and that the draft order is still being fine tuned.
Ken Blackwell, chief domestic policy adviser to the Trump transition team who oversaw the formation of nine federal agencies, told The Christian Post during a conference call last Thursday that it would only be a matter of time before the Trump administration enacted some policy or order to address the religious liberty concerns of many conservative Christians, adding that "we are seeing... the desire to make sure it is as tight and as sound as it possibly can be."
"Folks who are framing this are not novices. They know that it is going to be immediately and aggressively challenged," Blackwell said.
Plaintiffs are already seemingly lining up to legally challenge the rumored religious freedom order to be enacted by Trump. The American Civil Liberties Union and the pro-LGBT firm Lambda Legal have already threatened to immediately sue should Trump sign the religious freedom order. The nonprofit American Atheists has also vowed to "fight back."
According to Buzzfeed reporter Dominic Holden, liberal groups believe they can bring First and Fourteenth Amendment challenges against such an order.
"We will fight this with everything we have," Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Camilla Taylor told Buzzfeed on Tuesday. "We are prepared to sue in a very short timeframe if the executive order closely resembles the leaked drafts."
Although it was reported that Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who have a record of supporting LGBT rights, have had some influence on Trump's decision not to sign the order in February, an influential conservative who saw the text of the reported order told Politico that the language hasn't weakened much from the draft obtained by The Nation in February.
"The language is very, very strong," the source was quoted as saying.
When asked about Ivanka Trump and Kushner's influence, Blackwell told CP: "I do know that those of us who have advanced religious liberty within the discussions are confident that we have done it in way that is morally sound, legally assertive and politically advantageous for the administration to advance."
In addition to the threats of legal action, over 1,300 left-leaning faith leaders signed a statement condemning the rumored religious freedom order.
"Although it purports to strengthen religious freedom, what this order would actually do is misuse this freedom, turning it into a weapon to discriminate against broad swaths of our nation, including LGBTQ people, women, and children in foster care," the letter reads. "We urge you to turn away from all proposals that would abuse religious freedom, including any executive orders on this issue that are currently under consideration."
In early March, over 100 conservative leaders, headed by Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, signed onto a letter that was sent to Trump, urging him to sign a religious freedom order and citing a number of instances in which individuals and organizations received consequences for acting in accordance with their biblical convictions.Getty Images
As the ultimate power of the executive branch will soon be transferred from a President who believes the Washington team should change its name to a President-Elect who believes it shouldn’t, the ultimate power of the judicial branch will hear arguments in a case that will impact the lingering legal dispute regarding whether the team should lose the federal protections applicable to their name.
Via the Associated Press, the balance between free speech and trademark rights will be determined via an Asian-American band whose chosen name arises from a term that is offensive to Asian-Americans. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refused to register the name in 2011, sparking the legal fight that lands in the highest court on the land on Wednesday.
The lingering dispute regarding the Washington name has been placed on hold pending the outcome of the litigation that will be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. The team had tried to have its case merged with the case that will be heard Wednesday.
Instead, the outcome of Wednesday’s case will become precedent that will apply to Washington’s case.
A loss won’t mean that the team’s name must change. Instead, it will eliminate the federal protections applicable to the name, allowing anyone to sell merchandise bearing the label without permission from the team.It was a dream weekend for Team Peugeot-Hansen as team-mates Timmy Hansen and Davy Jeanney secured a one-two at the NAF World RX of Norway, round eight of the FIA World Rallycross Championship presented by Monster Energy. Hansen’s emphatic win is the fourth podium in a row for the Swedish-based squad and has pushed Peugeot-Hansen to the top of the Teams’ Championship. Third place was taken by independent driver Robin Larsson in his Larsson Jernberg Racing Audi A1 Supercar.
Running alongside World RX this weekend was the third round of the FIA European Rallycross Championship (Euro RX), where home favourite Tommy Rustad took the victory in his Marklund Motorsport run VW Polo RX Supercar. Joni-Pekka Rajala finished runner-up in a Per Eklund Motorsport run Saab 9-3, with Latvia’s Janis Baumanis third in a Peugeot 208. Albatec Racing’s Jerome Grosset-Janin was fourth and drops behind Rustad in the overall Euro RX standings with two rounds remaining (Barcelona and Italy). Meanwhile, Sweden’s Fredrik Salsten was crowned the 2015 TouringCar Champion.
“Finally I have another win! I’ve been wanting this for a long time,” beamed Hell RX winner Timmy Hansen who was also awarded with a limited edition Rebellion Timepieces Wraith Drive Rallycross watch. “The car has been flying all weekend and I am really, really enjoying driving the 208 at the moment. We played safe tactics throughout the heats and had a good tyre strategy going into the semis – the team has been very supportive once again. We are just getting better each weekend and now I can’t wait for Loheac because it is one of my favourite circuits and is of course home for both Peugeot and Davy.”
Fellow podium finisher Larsson was just as delighted as Hansen to be on the podium. “For two years I have had nothing but bad luck in Hell so it’s great to finish third. I’ve been struggling this season, the two previous races in Canada and Sweden were a nightmare for me. This weekend we were consistent in the heats and kept everything clean. We were on the last row for the semifinal and I didn’t have much to lose so I just pushed and kept everything tidy. I can’t thank my team enough – they have worked so hard and they deserve this,” he said.
ALL-INKL.COM Muennich Motorsport’s Alx Danielsson had his best result of the year so far in fourth place. “When I went to the first round in Portugal, I hadn’t driven a rallycross car ever, and I hadn’t been to a rallycross track ever. I had only watched it on TV – I was very new to it. It took some getting used to of course and we’ve been developing the car. The pace this weekend has been really good, this is a big day for me.”
Rounding out the top five was former WRC driver PG Andersson at the wheel of his Marklund Motorsport run Polo RX Supercar. Despite not finishing on the podium due to a front-left puncture, the Swede took comfort after being rewarded with the Monster Energy Super Charge Award for leading the pack to turn one.
Russia’s Timur Timerzyanov had a dramatic day and rolled his Olsbergs MSE prepared Ford Fiesta during the semi-finals but managed to recover and finish third and to secure a spot in the final. The team worked frantically and managed to get the car to the grid for the final, but Timerzyanov was forced to retire on the second lap.
Reigning World RX Champion Petter Solberg, Ford Olsbergs MSE’s Andreas Bakkerud and Reinis Nitiss plus EKS team-mates Anton Marklund and Mattias Ekstrom made it through to the semi-finals but all five failed to make the final. Bakkerud made contact with Solberg in the second semi-final and was forced to retire when the front wheel came clean off his car in the penultimate lap. Solberg and Bakkerud finished seventh and 11th respectively.
Meanwhile, a front-left puncture for EKS driver Ekstrom slowed the Sweden RX winner during the same race and left him classified 12th overall. Teammate Anton Marklund was close to reaching his first ever final with the team but a small mistake cost the Swede crucial time. He finished the event in eighth place.
Team Volkswagen Sweden’s Johan Kristoffersson qualified 12th at the Intermediate Classification stage but failed to start his semi-final after the team were unable to get his car ready on time. Team-mate Tord Linnerud finished 15th overall.
Supporting the FIA World Rallycross Championship in Hell this weekend was the final round of the FIA European Rallycross Championship for TouringCar and the fourth round of the RX Lites Cup. Christian Sandmo took the Hell RX TouringCar win but it was Sweden’s Fredrik Salsten who was crowned the overall TouringCar Champion after a dominant season in his Citroen DS3. “I’m so happy,” grinned Salsten. “I want to thank my whole team and family – without their support none of this would be possible. Now my aim is to go into a Supercar but it depends on budget. I hope to have a surprise for everyone soon… so watch this space!”
In the supporting RX Lites Cup Thomas Bryntesson took the win with Lites series leader Kevin Hansen placing second. Kevin Eriksson was third in Hell and remains third in the overall standings.
Martin Anayi, World RX Managing Director for IMG, concluded: “It’s been a sensational weekend in Hell: we’ve had a record crowd, fantastic weather and action-packed racing. The Hell RX organisers have worked exceptionally hard to deliver a top-notch event this year and their efforts have successfully helped grow spectator numbers to just shy of 20,000 people. We witnessed four different manufacturers – Peugeot, Ford, Volkswagen, Audi – in the final and the fight for the teams’ Championship is definitely heating up with Team Peugeot-Hansen now leading the charge over Ford Olsbergs MSE. Timmy [Hansen] looked unstoppable this weekend but Solberg continues to lead the standings by 41 points. With five rounds still remaining, however, both the Drivers’ and the Teams’ Championship are all to play for.”
Round nine of the Championship, the Bretagne World RX of France, is next in the 13-round World RX calendar and will take place in just under two weeks time (5-6 September).Defense Logistics Agency cites ongoing crisis in Japan as reason behind bulk purchase
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The Troop Support branch of the Defense Logistics Agency has decided to replenish its stockpiles of anti-radiation pills, citing the ongoing crisis at Fukushima and the potential for nuclear fallout as a primary reason behind the bulk purchase.
According to a solicitation on the FedBizOpps.gov website, the DLA is looking to finalize the purchase of almost $400,000 dollars worth of potassium iodide pills, which work by helping the the body’s thyroid gland block cancer-causing radioiodines.
The posting states that the DLA requires 75,000 blister packs of pills, each of which contain 14 potassium iodide tablets, enough to last 2 weeks for one adult. The solicitation specifies the need to “ensure that critical operational forces are protected in the event of nuclear fallout,” as the reason behind the purchase, adding that, “The recent earthquake in Japan in March of 2011 and the resultant nuclear crisis has renewed interest in this item.”
Despite the mainstream media’s disinterest in the ongoing Fukushima crisis, now into its 14th month, experts have warned that the situation at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is at its most critical phase.
As we reported last week, according to insiders the Japanese government has drawn up contingency plans for the potential evacuation of Greater Tokyo’s 39 million residents due to the threat posed by the potential meltdown of Fukushima’s reactor number 4, which holds 75% as much nuclear fuel as the entire Chernobyl complex did prior to its meltdown.
“The worse-case scenario drawn up by the government includes not only the collapse of the No. 4 reactor pool, but the disintegration of spent fuel rods from all the plant’s other reactors. If this were to happen, residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate,” according to a Mainichi Daily News editorial by senior writer Takao Yamada which cited defense insiders.
Diplomat Akio Matsumura went further, warning that the collapse of reactor number 4 would “certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced,” adding that the 11,138 spent fuel assemblies stored at the Fukushima plant contain “134 million curies is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident.”
Matsumura chillingly cautioned that should the worst case scenario unfold, the resulting radioactive fallout “would destroy the world environment and our civilization.”
Radiation from the Fukushima plant was recently detected on the west coast of the United States by marine biologists who found giant kelp collected along the coast from Laguna Beach to as far north as Santa Cruz to be contaminated with radiation as high as samples found in British Columbia, Canada, and northern Washington State in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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In the immediate aftermath of the beginning of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, there was a run on potassium iodide pills as panic buying exhausted stocks, prompting some retailers to demand up to $300 dollars for packs of the medication which would normally sell for just $15 dollars.
The U.S. Army is seemingly treating the threat of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear plant with much more seriousness than health authorities in Fukushima itself. As we highlighted recently, almost a quarter of residents who attempt to receive treatment for radiation poisoning are instead being treated for “psychiatric disorders,” with fear of contamination being characterized by as a mental illness.
As the Business Insider website points out, the DLA purchase could also be related to an upcoming attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities which threatens to disperse radiation over a wide area.
“Destroying one of the most likely Iranian targets, the 1000-megawatt Bushehr nuclear plant, would create just such a concern,” write Eloise Lee and Robert Johnson. “When Israel destroyed Iraq’s Osiris 70-megawatt nuclear reactor in a bold 1981 attack, the plant hadn’t yet been stocked with nuclear fuel so there was no risk of radiation.
But an attack on Iran’s Bushehr plant, which has been stocked with radioactive fuel rods since 2010, would be an incalculable mess.”
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.COVINGTON, La. (AP) A woman invited to a rural Louisiana campsite for a Ku Klux Klan initiation ritual was shot and killed after she asked to be taken back to town, a sheriff said Tuesday. Eight people were arrested after authorities found the woman's body hidden under some brush, on the side of a road several miles from the remote campsite where the initiation was planned. Investigators found weapons, several flags and six Klan robes at the campsite, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said in a news release. Strain said the woman, whose identity was not released, was recruited over the Internet to participate in the ritual and then return to her home state of Oklahoma to find other members for the white supremacist group. But Strain said the group's leader, Raymond "Chuck" Foster, 44, shot and killed the woman Sunday after a fight broke out when she tried to leave. Foster was charged with second-degree murder and is being held without bond. Capt. George Bonnett, a spokesman for the sheriff's department, said he didn't know what the initiation involved. "We haven't completely sorted out if they finished the initiation," he said. "I assume that they had started it, but I don't know if they were finished." Bonnett said he doesn't know if Foster has an attorney. He also said that in three years with the department, this was the first time he had seen a case involving the KKK. Seven others were charged with obstruction of justice and were held on $500,000 bond at the St. Tammany Parish jail. All eight of the suspects live in neighboring Washington Parish, but Bonnett said he couldn't immediately identify their hometowns. Authorities said some of the suspects tried to conceal the crime by burning the woman's belongings along with other items at the campsite. Strain said the woman arrived in the Slidell, Louisiana, area last week and was met by two people connected to the Klan group. She was taken over the weekend to the campsite near Sun, Louisiana, on the banks of the Pearl River. Sun is about 60 miles north of New Orleans. Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read moreThis video is no longer available
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56The San Antonio Spurs and Kawhi Leonard wanted to sign a contract extension in July, 2014, probably with the same sort of alacrity that New Orleans and Anthony Davis used in agreeing to their no-brainer extension during this offseason. Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski has already reported that the Spurs and Leonard have agreed on the framework of a five-year, $90 million extension, and yet the signing process has been delayed while the Spurs attempt to finagle their way into more cap space in order to lure LaMarcus Aldridge to sign with them.
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As it stands, until Leonard puts pen to paper, he’ll count against the cap for $7.2 million even though he made less than half of that last season, even though his qualifying offer for 2015-16 is far less than that, and even though the words “seven point two million” were never brought up in bargaining talks between the two sides?
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So why that figure?
It’s his “cap hold,” a collective bargaining tool that was put in place a decade ago in order to, as just about every owner-encouraged collective bargaining agreement bylaw usually is, to protect owners from themselves. For years prior to its debut, teams would hold off on signing their own free agents in order to use the fake “space” they had underneath the cap to sign other free agents. Because teams didn’t fully renounce their incumbent players, they were allowed to use the decades-old ‘Bird Rights’ provision to go above the salary cap to bring the whole gang back.
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Owners and general managers can always talk themselves into spending big in the summer, when everyone is tied for first place, and though this practice didn’t result in a salary millstone for every team, the cap hold was developed in order to (mostly) discourage this. Varying holds were created – anywhere from 150 to 250 percent of the previous year’s salary to the max for ten years of service even if the free agent in question isn’t even guaranteed a contract at the veteran’s minimum with his next free agent contract.
The Spurs’ intentions were obvious a year ago, and no team has been as blatant about this sort of (legal, and correct, and intelligent, very-Spurs’y!) machination as this outfit. Even releasing a statement outlining the expectation of an eventual signing, with Leonard going on record as being “confident” that it will all get sorted out, is basically just coming clean. We’re all adults here. We know what’s going on. Everybody’s going to get paid.
This is where we can’t help but wonder how David Stern would have “dealt” with this.
We’re presuming that current NBA commissioner Adam Silver isn’t going to take any unneeded action with the Spurs should they find a way to sign LaMarcus Aldridge, bring Tim Duncan back at a lowered rate, release and then re-sign Manu Ginobili with the room exception, and eventually sign Leonard to the max. You don’t have to have a secret, under-the-table file already signed when both Leonard and his reps know that he’s already signing for the most he can, and that San Antonio wants to give him the most they can.
Back in 1996, however, Stern fought tooth and nail against a Miami Heat franchise that came close to pulling off the same damn thing.
Heat president Pat Riley completely re-formatted a middling Miami squad with a series of deals for free agents during the 1995-96 season, including Alonzo Mourning, Tim Hardaway, and Rex Chapman. Working with cap space during the offseason, Riley attempted to sign Gary Payton (before failing), prior to re-signing both Mourning and Hardaway and signing free agent P.J. Brown. He then outbid Washington for Juwan Howard’s services, with Howard coming off what would end up being the best season of his career.
Stern, mindful that an emerging Washington Bullets team had just lost a young All-Star after just his second season in the pros, was not happy. Miami was a new money team, and the established-yet-perpetually-awful Bullets were just a year and a half away from becoming the ‘Wizards’ and opening a shiny, new arena. He looked into Brown and Hardaway’s contract and deemed that the players’ performance bonuses (Hardaway had been out of shape the previous season) had to count against the cap, even though that wasn’t strictly outlined in the 1995 collective bargaining agreement.
He voided Howard’s contract, charging that it put the Heat over the salary cap. It was Washington’s turn to then outbid Miami, and Juwan returned to the Bullets less than a week later to a richer contract than the one they initially offered. Riley was furious, pointing out that the NBA allowed teams to technically break salary cap law to go over the cap to sign their own free agents, and that Stern was effectively allowing Washington to (kinda) break the rules but not Miami to (kinda) break the rules.
Both Stern and Riley had their points, but the commissioner’s ruling stuck despite some aborted legal attempts from the Heat to have the decision scrutinized.
San Antonio’s somewhat comparable version of this, unless there is some signed document hiding in a drawer somewhere, is far cleaner than Miami’s attempts. Even if Riley’s (a noted body weight hound) attempts to keep Hardaway trim were legitimate. David Stern wasn’t averse to lobbing huge and ridiculous fines at the Spurs, and it’s worth wondering how the cantankerous former commissioner would handle San Antonio effectively hiding the difference between Kawhi Leonard’s cap hold and the first year of his eventual contract (about $8.6 million) in plain sight.
Thank goodness, so far, for Adam Silver. Until he locks the players out in 2017, of course.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: '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' MORE on Monday said the movement he has built while running for president is the future of the Democratic Party.
"If you look at every primary and every caucus, we are winning by very large numbers the votes of those 45 years and younger," he told a crowd in Evansville, Ind.
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"Our ideas, the political revolution transforming America, are the ideas for the future of this country and the future of the Democratic Party.”
Running to the left of front-runner Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE, Sanders has become a progressive champion, winning significant support from younger voters and college students.
Throughout his speech, he highlighted his more liberal stances when compared with Clinton, including on raising the federal minimum wage and hydraulic fracturing. And he accused Republicans of seeking to hold America back from making progress.
While Sanders's positions have energized the party's base, he has only an outside shot of winning the party's nomination.
He trails Clinton by more than 300 pledged delegates, according to The Associated Press. When Clinton's huge lead among party superdelegates is included, she needs to win just 21 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to wrap up the nomination.
Clinton holds a slight lead in polls of Indiana ahead of Tuesday’s primary. A few polls have shown the race as close as 3 or 4 percentage points, but only Sanders chose to hold events in the state the day before the primary. Clinton decided to go to West Virginia instead.
During his rally, the Vermont senator railed against the superdelegate system, which allows about 700 party loyalists to cast their own votes for the party’s nominee on the floor of the Democratic National Convention. Sanders has argued the system unfairly hurts him, noting that he's won about 45 percent of pledged delegates so far but only 7 percent of superdelegates.
"The way the system works is you have establishment candidates who win virtually all of the superdelegates. It makes it hard for insurgent candidacies like ours to win," he said.
Sanders has long argued for open primaries, which allow independents to participate, a call he repeated Monday in light of his success with independent voters.
"I hope the Democrats at the national convention understand that while independents may not be able to vote in certain Democratic primaries, they do vote in the general election," he said.
- This story was updated at 3 p.m.Russia, China announce joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean
By Alex Lantier
2 May 2015
Russian and Chinese warships will hold joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean Sea later this month, according to Chinese military sources. This unprecedented decision reveals the sharp tensions between the major world powers arising from the US-led “pivot to Asia” against China and the NATO war drive against Russia over the Ukraine crisis.
The exercises will mark the first time that Chinese warships carry out military operations in the Mediterranean. Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said the Chinese navy would contribute warships currently on anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia, in the Indian Ocean. The nine-ship Russo-Chinese fleet in the Mediterranean will practice refueling, escort and live-fire missions.
“The aim is to deepen both countries’ friendly and practical cooperation, and increase our navies’ ability to jointly deal with maritime security threats,” Geng said at a monthly briefing on Thursday.
Chinese officials implausibly downplayed any suggestion that the exercises were aimed at the United States and its European allies. “What needs saying is that these exercises are not aimed at any third party and have nothing to do with the regional situation,” Geng declared.
A glance at the “regional situation” shows, in fact, that military tensions are escalating between the NATO imperialist powers, Russia, and China—a situation for which NATO’s aggressive policies are mainly responsible. While NATO stages military drills aimed at Russia across Eastern Europe and the Black Sea, war is spreading in the Mediterranean. A US-led proxy war is burning in Syria, as is the civil war that erupted in Libya after the 2011 NATO war destroyed Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
Russian and Chinese warships already had appeared in the Mediterranean during the Libyan and Syrian wars. Chinese vessels evacuated 30,000 Chinese workers from Libya during the 2011 war, while Russian warships patrolled the Syrian coast in 2013 to dissuade NATO from launching missile strikes on Syria, a Russian ally.
If Moscow and Beijing have taken the extraordinary step of organizing live-fire exercises off the coast of Europe, however, this is to send Washington and its European allies a political signal. US-led policies of strangling Russia’s economy with financial sanctions and seeking to topple Russian President Vladimir Putin, or isolating China through the US “pivot to Asia,” pose the threat of all-out war.
Chinese commentators indicated the Mediterranean exercises were also Chinese President Xi Jinping’s response to US-Japanese military deals in the Asia-Pacific, agreed between Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during Abe’s visit to Washington this week.
“Russia wants to show the United States it is not isolated and can launch exercises near Eastern Europe. And as a result of Abe’s visit to the United States and the upgraded Japan-American military relationship, Xi wants to show the United States he has good relations with Russia,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
James Hardy, Asia-Pacific editor of IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly, said the exercises marked a new stage in the development of the Chinese navy’s fighting capabilities and would be seen as a challenge by ruling elites in the NATO countries.
“The geopolitical significance of its exercising along Russia will not be lost on the US and NATO, although it would be churlish of anyone in the West to complain about it, given the number of joint drills the US and its allies conduct in China’s near seas,” he told the New York Times.
The greatest danger facing the world’s population is that the risk of world war is largely hidden from the working class internationally. However, military standoffs such as the US threat to arm the far-right regime in Kiev against pro-Russian forces in east Ukraine, or the Japanese standoff with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islets, could erupt into all-out wars threatening the very survival of humanity.
In an interview in March, Putin confirmed that the Russian military prepared for possible nuclear war with NATO in the initial weeks of the conflict in Ukraine triggered by a NATO-backed, coup in Kiev last year.
The only progressive basis for struggle against the danger of world war is the political mobilization of the working class internationally against war. This struggle cannot be left to an alliance between the reactionary regimes in Moscow and Beijing.
Oscillating between maneuvers designed to warn off NATO policymakers and attempts to work out deals with them, the policies of the capitalist oligarchies that emerged from the restoration of capitalism in China and the USSR only deepen the danger of war. It is safe to predict that the imperialist powers will respond to this exercise by stepping up military pressure on Moscow and Beijing, and any other regime that they see as a potential obstacle to their interests.
Reckless imperialist policies are clearly pushing the Russian and Chinese towards a strategic alliance. Last year, Russia and China signed a $400 billion pipeline deal allowing Russia to export its oil and gas towards China, bypassing a cut-off of Russian energy exports to Europe, should this arise. At the same time, Moscow and Beijing held joint naval exercises off China’s Pacific coast. As US and European sanctions hit Russia and the Russian ruble plunged on the currency markets last December, top Chinese officials said Beijing would offer Russia financial backing.
Beijing is now offering symbolic support to Moscow in the Ukraine crisis, by preparing to send an official delegation to May 9 celebrations in Moscow of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Officials from US, the leading European powers, and the NATO-backed Ukrainian regime have announced that they will boycott the ceremony.
A defensive Russo-Chinese alliance aimed at the US, Europe and Japan all too obviously draws potential battle lines of a Third World War. However, it is hardly clear that such a war could only emerge in the form of a conflict between unstable alliances of the imperialist powers, on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other.
Divergences are rapidly emerging between the major imperialist powers themselves over what policy to pursue towards Russia and China. In March, in a stunning rebuke to Washington, the European powers bucked US appeals not to join the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Several European governments are openly opposed to financial sanctions against Russia.
Moreover, the Sino-Russian relationship is itself deeply fraught. Powerful tensions exist between Beijing, flush with export revenues from cheap-labor Chinese export industries, and Moscow, which has never recovered from the industrial collapse that followed the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.
China’s Global Times newspaper pointed to the distrust between the rival capitalist cliques in Russia and China in an article discussing why Chinese financial aid would not suffice to overcome US-European economic sanctions.
It wrote, “Due to Russia’s large population of 140 million people, its modernity and strong currency cannot be solely supported by oil, gas and timber … China is capable of offering sufficient capital, technologies and markets to Russia, but these efforts can only take limited effect if Russia’s economy still relies heavily on oil exports and lacks structural diversity. If Chinese investment in Russia shoots up under these circumstances, Moscow might suspect China has ulterior motives. Russia does not want to be a vassal of the Chinese economy.”
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Academic performance is improving in schools, but achievement gaps remain: Of the 11th graders at Jesse Bethel High School, which is in the 94591 ZIP code, 42 percent of black students and 51 percent of Hispanic ones tested proficient in English this year, compared with 63 percent of white students and 77 percent of Filipino ones.
Spencer Lane, a 17-year-old white senior at a high school where whites are in the minority, said classmates had told him that he looked as if he could shoot up a school. Ms. Yee-Ross said her mother once heard a news account of a robbery and insisted that the perpetrator had to be black. And the Johnsons have battled racial tension in their family and their business.
A white customer who had been a regular at the restaurant once asked the woman taking his order to make sure that a young black employee did not cook his food, Ms. Johnson said. When she heard commotion at the front of the restaurant, she said, she confronted the customer, who told her: “How can you have people like that working here? His pants are sagging.”
The Johnsons met in Vallejo in 2003, introduced by mutual friends. He liked her toothy smile, she liked his respect, but each harbored racial stereotypes.
Mr. Johnson, 33, assumed that she would be a devoted homemaker who would cook and clean for him. Ms. Johnson, 31, said she was impressed that he did not wear baggy pants and that “he doesn’t talk ghetto.”
As diverse as Vallejo is, Ms. Johnson said she grew up hanging out mostly with Filipinos, a clustering that many local residents of different races said is natural. Immigrants from Mexico or the Philippines may want the company of people who can help them navigate a new country.
But within these groups, stereotypes can fester.
When Mr. Johnson’s mother, Tanja Mayo-Pittman, found out he was dating Ms. Johnson, she thought of the time she worked at Home Depot. She was the only non-Filipino on her team, and felt ostracized in part because her co-workers spoke Tagalog and joked with one another, leaving her to wonder if they were teasing her.This article was originally published by Brandon Smith of Alt Market
Globalists Are Building An Army Of Millennials To Destroy Sovereignty
Back in October of 2016 I covered an issue which I have been very concerned with for over a year now. In an article titled Global Elites Are Getting Ready To Blame You For The Coming Financial Crash, I outlined the basis for my belief that Donald Trump would win the U.S. election and why the U.K. Brexit was allowed to meet with success. Here is a quote from that article to give you a general sense of my position:
“I argue that the Trump tapes will be forgotten in a week and that they have no bearing whatsoever on the election. They are nothing more than bread and circus. Beyond the fact that really, almost no one cares what Trump said a decade ago. I argue that this election has already been decided. I argue that the globalists want Trump in office, just as they wanted the passage of the Brexit. I argue that they need conservative movements to feel as though we have won, so that they can pull the rug out from under us in the near future. I argue that we are being set up. Again, the elites are openly telling us what is about to happen. They are telling us that if ‘populists’ (conservatives) gain political power, the system will effectively collapse. To what extent is hard to say, but let’s assume that the situation will be ugly enough to influence the masses to reconsider the ideal of globalism as a possible solution. The elites are fond of the Hegelian dialectic and the philosophy |
emotional and political pressures on the terrorism issue, this does not relieve politicians and bureaucrats of the fundamental responsibility of informing the public of the limited risk that terrorism presents and of seeking to expend funds wisely. Moreover, political concerns may be over-wrought: restrained reaction has often proved to be entirely acceptable politically.
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Gulliver has always argued that many post-9/11 "innovations" in homeland security are not worth their cost. But the findings in this paper are truly remarkable. By 2008, according to the authors, America's spending on counterterrorism outpaced all anti-crime spending by some $15 billion. Messrs Mueller and Stewart do not even include things like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which they call "certainly terrorism-determined) in their trillion-plus tally. There's lots in the paper to dig through, and the authors are publishing a book this fall on this same topic that I am eager to read. But I found this section—an attempt to explain why America spent all that money—particularly interesting:
[A] most common misjudgment has been to embrace extreme events as harbingers presaging a dire departure from historical patterns. In the months and then years after 9/11, as noted at the outset, it was almost universally assumed that the terrorist event was a harbinger rather than an aberration. There were similar reactions to Timothy McVeigh's 1995 truck bomb attack in Oklahoma City as concerns about a repetition soared. And in 1996, shortly after the terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo set off deadly gas in a Tokyo subway station, one of terrorism studies' top gurus, Walter Laqueur, assured the world that some terrorist groups "almost certainly" will use weapons of mass destruction "in the foreseeable future." Presumably any future foreseeable in 1996 is now history, and Laqueur's near “certainty” has yet to occur.
In other words, we're probably overestimating the likelihood of another 9/11. Sure, smaller-scale attacks are probably more common. But as Matt Yglesias notes, small-scale terrorist attacks like the bus and restaurant bombs that Israelis have been subjected to in the past are almost impossible to stop with traditional security measures: "It's not something you can prevent by putting metal detectors and bomb sniffing dogs on all your buses."
Even if increased security could prevent attacks on high-value targets like the Twin Towers, it would run the risk of simply pushing terrorists to attack softer targets. And according to Messrs Mueller and Stewart, the increased cost of post-9/11 security measures can only be economically justified if we were certain that, absent those measures, one 9/11-style attack would succeed each year. Does anyone really think such attacks are that likely? Anyway, take a look at the paper if you have a few minutes and let us know what you think in the comments.These are fierce theological times. It should come as no surprise that the Vatican and Islam are not getting along, or that their problems began long before Pope Benedict XVI made his unfortunate reference to the Prophet Muhammad, in a speech in Regensburg last September, and even before the children of Europe’s Muslim immigrants discovered beards, burkas, and jihad. There are more than a billion Catholics in the world, and more than a billion Muslims. And what divides the most vocal and rigidly orthodox interpreters of their two faiths, from the imams of Riyadh and the ayatollahs of Qom to the Pope himself, is precisely the things that Catholicism and Islam have always had in common: a purchase on truth; a contempt for the moral accommodations of liberal, secular states; a strong imperative to censure, convert, and multiply; and a belief that Heaven, and possibly earth, belongs exclusively to them. It is well known that Benedict wants to transform the Church of Rome, which is not to say that he wants to make it more responsive to the realities of modern life as it is lived by Catholic women in the West, or by Catholic homosexuals, or even by the millions of desperately poor Catholic families in the Third World who are still waiting for some merciful dispensation on the use of contraception. He wants to purify the Church, to make it more definitively Christian, more observant, obedient, and disciplined—you could say more like the way he sees Islam. And never mind that he doesn’t seem to like much about Islam, or that he has doubts about Islam’s direction. (His doubts are not unusual in today’s world; many Muslims have them.) The Pope is a theologian—the first prominent theologian to sit on Peter’s throne since the eighteenth century. He views the world through a strictly theological frame, and his judgments about Islam, however defiant or reductive they sometimes sound, have finally to do with the idea of Theos—God—as he understands it. Those judgments have not changed much, in character, since he left Germany for the Vatican, twenty-six years ago. In 1997, when the Pope was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and beginning his seventeenth year as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, otherwise known as the Holy Office, or the Inquisition, he told the German journalist Peter Seewald, “Islam has a total organization of life that is completely different from ours; it embraces simply everything.... One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of pluralistic society.” In 2004, the year before his election to the papacy, he elaborated on that dismissive thought for the German secular philosopher Jürgen Habermas, during a long recorded conversation in Munich. Talking about the “normative elements” in human rights—rights that in the West, by consensus, are not subjected to “the vagaries of majorities”—Ratzinger brought up Islam. He said that “Islam has defined its own catalogue of human rights, which differs from the Western catalogue” and from the West’s understanding of the “self-subsistent values that flow from the essence of what it is to be a man”—values that may not be readily apparent beyond “the Christian realm” or “the Western rational tradition.” What he does seem to admire about Islam is its insistent presence at the center of most Muslims’ lives.
Islam has been in Europe for thirteen hundred years. Arab armies were at the gates of Poitiers, in central France, in 732—only a hundred years after the Prophet died and more than three hundred and fifty years before the start of the First Crusade—and southern Spain was still under Islamic rule in the fifteenth century, some two hundred years after the knights of the Ninth Crusade straggled home. But Benedict is the first Pope to have developed what could be called an active theological policy toward Islam, as opposed to, say, a military or political one—“the first really functioning Pope in the post-September 11th world,” Daniel Madigan calls him. Madigan, who is one of the Vatican’s most prominent, and liberal, advisers on Christian-Muslim relations, runs the Institute for the Study of Religions and Cultures at the Jesuits’ Pontifical Gregorian University, arguably the most intellectually independent of Rome’s Catholic institutions. It is probably safe to say that many of the faculty had been hoping for a more doctrinally liberated Pope. They acknowledge Benedict, though, as an intellectual, and, from a critical distance, recognize his purpose in what Madigan calls “laying down challenges to Islam, telling Muslims, ‘We need to do some hard talking.’ ” Still, not even a Jesuit could explain what the Pope intended when he addressed a group of theologians at the University of Regensburg in September, beginning a speech that could best be described as a scholarly refutation of the so-called Kantian fallacy—Kant’s distinction between rational understanding and apprehension of the sublime—with a question posed by a fourteenth-century Byzantine emperor to a Persian guest at his winter barracks near Ankara. “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new,” the emperor asked the Persian, “and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The problem for people who actually read the speech (by most reports, very few did) was that the Pope chose not to dispute the emperor’s statement. He allowed that the emperor had spoken with a “startling brusqueness,” but he did not say whether he disagreed, nor, for that matter, did he acknowledge that Christianity had contributed its share of inhumanity to history. He quoted from the emperor’s argument against violent conversion—“God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature”—and contrasted that with a modern scholarly reading of the Islamist argument for it: “In Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories—even that of rationality.” After that, he did not mention Islam again. Marco Politi, the Vatican correspondent for La Repubblica, who heard the speech, says it was “like a typical Protestant Sunday sermon, with the quote as the proposition, the passage to be examined—only it wasn’t examined.” People at the Vatican quickly covered for Benedict. Some said that he must have been talking a Regensburg shorthand; he had taught at Regensburg for most of the nineteen-seventies, and it could be argued that, in such a familiar academic context, his disclaimer was implicit. A few joked that, being an academic, he had simply given in to a professionally irresistible temptation to show off with an obscure citation. But many of the Vatican correspondents who, like Politi, travelled to Regensburg with Benedict doubt that there was anything accidental or inadvertent in the citation. They had received copies of his speech at six in the morning of the day he gave it, and, at ten, they assembled in the university’s makeshift pressroom and informed the Vatican spokesman, a Jesuit priest and Vatican Radio director named Federico Lombardi, that the passage was going to be incendiary. “The point is that at 10 A.M. somebody got the message that the text was explosive,” Politi told me, adding that when the Pope had gone to Auschwitz to speak, last May, “we got copies of that speech, too, and it never mentioned the Shoah, so we said, ‘Hey, where is Shoah?,’ and he changed it.” Putting aside the obvious question of whether reporters should be in the business of saving Popes from embarrassment, the question remains whether Benedict got the message. Father Lombardi, a soft-spoken man who at the time was only two months into his job as the Vatican’s official spinner, told me, “I don’t know the intentions of the Pope. I do know that his Regensburg speech was directed to the culture of the West; it wasn’t given to engage Muslims.” But, of course, it did. Within a day of the speech, riots and protests had broken out across the Muslim world. Before the worst of them ended, a week later, Benedict XVI had been burned in effigy in Basra; an Anglican church and a Greek Orthodox church had been fire bombed in Nablus; and an Italian nun had been murdered in Mogadishu, in front of the children’s hospital where she worked. In Europe, young Muslims took to the streets, calling for the Pope’s death and waving placards that said “Islam will conquer Rome” and “Jesus is the slave of Allah.” The loudest voices, not surprisingly, were the first heard. Sheikh Abu Saqer, the head of the Salafiya Jihadiya movement in Gaza, called angrily for the conquest and conversion of Rome: “This is a crusader war against Islam, and it is our holy duty to fight all those who support the Pope.... The green flag of Allah and Muhammad will be raised over the Vatican.... Until they join Islam, Hell is their destination.” In Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that the Pope’s speech was the “latest link” in the “chain of a conspiracy to set in motion a crusade.” And Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told Iranians, “The Muslim outcry will continue until he fully regrets his remarks.” The Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, at Oxford, described this “counterproductive game” in late September, when he wrote that Muslim leaders who lend their voices to an angry mob protesting a “perceived insult to their faith” might well reflect on the consequences of “manipulating crises of this kind as a safety valve for both their restive populations and their own political agenda.” Ramadan has roots in Egypt (where his grandfather founded the Muslim Brotherhood) and in Europe (where he was born and raised), and he has cultivated a reputation as a kind of mediator between the Muslims of those two worlds, an interpreter of one to the other. He said that crises like Regensburg, with their “uncontrollable outpouring of emotion, end up providing a living proof that Muslims cannot engage in reasonable debate and that verbal aggression and violence are more the rule than the exception.”
Joseph Ratzinger and his predecessor Karol Wojtyla were the first “foreigners,” as Italians still call them, to be elected to the papacy since 1522, when a priest from Utrecht began twenty uneventful months as Pope Adrian VI. The forty-five Pontiffs who followed Adrian were not only reliably homegrown; they were rarely driven to extremes of Christian ardor, and Italians liked them that way—for their self-interest and their discretion. Popes were not expected to transform Catholicism. Their job was to look after their land, their coffers, and their clergy, support the wars against Protestants, and dazzle Europe’s Catholic peasants with earthly displays of the heavenly pomp awaiting them once the misery of their indentured lives was past. The Church lost the last of its Papal States in 1870, with the Risorgimento, and, after years of wrangling with the capricious new entity called Italy, it settled into a fairly comfortable role. It delivered the Catholic vote to the Christian Democrats and kept the Communists at bay, and in return was assured that no unseemly new laws would disturb the patriarchal sanctity of the Catholic family. (It eventually lost on contraception and divorce.) The received wisdom has been that the Roman Catholic Church as we know it today was born—or reborn—in 1962, with the opening ceremonies of the ecumenical council known to the world as Vatican II. The presiding Pope was the irresistibly benign Angelo Roncalli, or John XXIII, and, in calling that council, he had managed to crack a stifling papal mold, both in the huge pleasure he took in bringing together three thousand bishops from around the world and in the promise he made of opening the Church not only to the different voices of Catholicism but to the voices of the other great religions. “What do we intend?” he said, flinging open a Vatican window. “We intend to let in a little fresh air.” The council sat for three years, and while John XXIII died less than a year into its four sessions, one of the key documents it produced—Nostra Aetate, or “In Our Time”—did revise Catholicism’s formal relationship to those religions. John had wanted to leave a strong statement about the Church’s history of anti-Semitism, and in Nostra Aetate the “spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews”—the roots of Christianity in the Jewishness of Christ, and even the dim possibility of Jewish salvation—was finally acknowledged. Nostra Aetate also acknowledged, for the first time in Church history, if not what theologians call “the salvation status” of Islam—put simply, do Muslims go to Heaven?—then at least the humanity of Muhammad’s followers. “The Church regards with esteem... the Muslims,” it said. “They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of Heaven and earth.” It wasn’t a lot. “You could say that Islam entered Vatican II through a Jewish door,” the historian Alberto Melloni told me. But it held out the possibility of a revolution in relations between two religions that (as John Paul II remarked twenty years later, on a trip to Morocco) had spent more time offending each other than embracing. The assumption, perhaps naïve, was that this was a revolution that Islam would welcome, and a new Curial office, for interfaith dialogue and relations, was opened by the Vatican. At first, it was known simply as the Secretariat for Non-Christians, or Pro Non Christianis. In 1988, it became the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Giovanni Montini, the cardinal who became Pope Paul VI a few weeks after John’s death, signed off on Nostra Aetate in 1965. Ten years later, he withdrew the Church’s long-standing objection to the construction of a Grand Mosque for Rome. He did it quietly, mindful, perhaps, of the fact that, for most Italians of his generation, the question of Islam belonged where Dante had left it—in the “schismatics” corner of the Eighth Circle, with Muhammad eternally disembowelled or, in the words of the poet, “rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.” (It should be remembered that John of Damascus, the eighth-century saint and last Father of the Church, considered Islam to be a Christian heresy; today, by strict Catholic definition, any religion that postdates and rejects the divinity of Christ is heretical.) Paul also left the new interfaith office pretty much to its own devices, thus avoiding the theologically sticky question of who, from the point of view of “dialogue” with a religion without hierarchies, could properly be said to speak authoritatively for Islam. This obviously pleased the priests who were off serving small Catholic communities in the Muslim world, but permission to talk about God with imams was not exactly the “fresh air” that liberal lay Catholics had expected from the first ecumenical council in a century. Despite the mythology that surrounds it, Vatican II was meant to open the Church to the world, not to liberalize its doctrine, and its most enduring legacy may have been not Nostra Aetate but the conservative backlash that Nostra Aetate inspired. Thomas Michel, the Secretary for Interreligious Affairs at the Jesuit Curia, calls Vatican II “the 1968 of the Catholic Church”—a magical liberating moment that, like ’68, frightened as many people as it freed. Conservatives in the Church saw it as a step toward ecumenical license, if not doctrinal collapse. Paul himself seems to have thought so. Within three years of the council’s closing session, he produced the encyclical letters Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, which affirmed the doctrine of clerical celibacy, and Humanae Vitae, which, despite the best efforts of the theologians on his papal commission on birth control, who after three years of scrutinizing the Gospels had tried to persuade him that contraception was morally acceptable, affirmed its sinfulness. It may prove that, in the end, the ecumenical council that really transformed the Church was not Vatican II but Vatican I, which sat from 1869 to 1870 and enshrined the doctrine of papal infallibility. The Church that Karol Wojtyla and, after him, Joseph Ratzinger inherited is in some ways as old and as new as that.
Benedict XVI, like John Paul II, had been one of the young theological advisers at Vatican II. He was thirty-five then, a full professor of fundamental theology at the University of Bonn, and on his way to a chair in dogmatics at the University of Tübingen, where he taught with Hans Küng, Germany’s premier Catholic theologian. Tübingen’s Catholic theologians were famously progressive, closer, in some ways, to Protestant theologians like Karl Barth, in Switzerland, than to their own bishops. Ratzinger, at the time, considered Küng his friend. The upheavals of 1968 changed that. Ratzinger, by his own account, was so repelled by the anarchy around him that he fled Tübingen for the conservative Catholic fiefdom of Regensburg’s new theology department—a move I have heard described as “going from Harvard to Idaho State.” He had already written dissertations on Augustine and Bonaventura, and even a book arguing for a decentralized Church. But it was at Regensburg’s theology department that he honed his belief that the discourse of Christianity is a fundamentally rational discourse—as the West, grounded in Greek philosophical inquiry, understands reason—and as such not ultimately comprehensible, even for argument’s sake, outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. That certainty, drawn from his reading of John’s Gospel, of the inextricability of Theos and Logos—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”—was the heart of his speech in Regensburg nearly forty years later. Ratzinger and Wojtyla shared this: an exceptionally narrow view of what constitutes a morally acceptable Christian life. That view is reflected in the daily decisions of bishops who in the past few years have denied the sacraments to pro-choice politicians (St. Louis); refused to allow Muslims to pray at a church that was once a mosque (Córdoba); and denied Catholic burial to an incurably ailing man who, after years of suffering on a respirator, asked to die (Rome). But the resemblance ends there. Ratzinger did not really think that theological dialogue with non-Christians was useful, or meaningful, or even possible. John Paul II did. His papacy, he said, was going to be a peace papacy—a papacy of bridges. Unlike Ratzinger, he was not much concerned about whether a Trinitarian faith with an anthropomorphic God was “comprehensible” to a Muslim whose God is never manifest. He would talk to anyone about God. In twenty-six years as Pope, he made a hundred and two trips abroad, many of them to Muslim countries, and it didn’t matter whether the understanding of God was the same from one airport to the next. “He decided that he wouldn’t govern—he would go” is how Mario Marazziti, one of the founders of the New Age Catholic movement called the Community of Sant’Egidio, describes those years. “Whereas Benedict governs through the Word.” Father Michael Hilbert, a professor of canon law and the dean of faculty at the Gregorian, puts it this way: “For John Paul II, the faith was a given, something to celebrate and proclaim. Ratzinger wants to explain it. His question is, Why did the Holy Spirit choose me? What message should I be giving now?” And Marco Tosatti, the Vatican correspondent at La Stampa and an admirer of Benedict, says simply, “John Paul was not a theologian.” John Paul was not popular with the Church hierarchy. His freewheeling embrace did not include it. “He paid great lip service to the spirit of Vatican II,” a priest close to the Curia told me. “But, in fact, wherever he went he sat on the local bishop’s chair and said, in effect, ‘I am the bishop of this church.’ And one by one he reeled in the theologians, the bishops, the orders, everyone who believed that the celebration of the Word is adults living their faith as adults.” He stripped the bishops’ conferences of their authority. He suspended the Jesuits’ constitution for two years. He raised the reactionary lay order Opus Dei to the status of a “personal prelature”—the only personal prelature in the Church—directly responsible to him. The Old Guard of the Vatican and the priests of the most progressive orders were equally bewildered by John Paul’s populism. They complained endlessly, if privately, about his style, which was famously demonstrated on a trip to Paris, in the early eighties, when he raced through a High Mass at Notre-Dame in order to stop at a pilgrimage shrine and chapel on the Rue du Bac, where he kissed the ground and started praying. The same conservative bishops who later applauded his insistence that abstinence, not condoms, was the answer to Africa’s AIDS crisis considered the embrace, or “dialogue,” that he extended to the world, including the Islamic world, to be, at best, naïve or messianic and, at worst, theologically irresponsible or indifferent. Ratzinger is never theologically indifferent. He deals in truth—in “the Catholic ‘om,’ ” as Robert Mickens, the Vatican correspondent for The Tablet, calls it—and has little tolerance for a church of broad, grand gestures. He worries about the illiteracy in the faith. He wants Catholics to be clear and strict about who, precisely, they are. Many people who know Ratzinger call his severity “shyness.” Mickens, who was educated by Benedictines, prefers “passive-aggressive.” He says, “John Paul II was always making exceptions. Benedict is a Neoplatonist. Everything is ‘order.’ When he says that homosexuality is a disorder, that divorce and remarriage is a disorder—he can’t find any exceptions to ‘order.’ ” (Catholics still argue about the role he played, as Archbishop of Munich and Freising in the late seventies, in the Vatican’s decision to strip Hans Küng of the right to teach Catholic theology, on the ground of what could be called Küng’s “doctrinal disorder.”) He made an exceptionally effective Grand Inquisitor at the Holy Office, censuring outspoken priests and literally silencing the liberation theologians who were reviving the Church in South America. His loyalty, as he saw it, was to Christianity and not to (to his mind) errant Christians.
God’s intentions tend to wobble from papacy to papacy, and the Church adjusts to the contradictions. Benedict, for all his doctrinal rigidity, remains extremely forthcoming as a scholar, and he is much more careful than his predecessor to distinguish between opinion and “truth.” John Paul II was untroubled by that sort of distinction, and, curiously, Benedict did very little to discourage his conflations of doctrine and what the Church calls “definitive teachings”—perhaps because, during the last years of the Pope’s long illness, those teachings were “guided” by Benedict himself. (“Ratzinger has been Pope much longer than you think,” Robert Mickens says.) Eventually, John Paul’s relations with other religions, especially with Islam, were also guided by Ratzinger, although this was obvious mainly to Rome’s vaticanisti, who could trace the change. A case in point is the two big prayer gatherings for peace that took place in Assisi during John Paul’s papacy, the first in 1986 and the second in 2002, two and a half years before the Pope died. The first gathering, known today as Assisi I, was a common prayer: a hodgepodge of interfaith holiness convoked by the gurus of the Community of Sant’Egidio, blessed by the Pope, supervised by the head of his Commission for Justice and Peace, the French cardinal Roger Etchegaray, and including among the faithful a Crow medicine man named John Pretty-on-Top, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, the president of Morocco’s High Council of Ulemas, and the Dalai Lama. (John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, said that there were probably more religions represented at Assisi that day than women.) For John Paul, it was an irresistible, ur-ecumenical occasion, with everyone praying together in what was described by a spokesman for Sant’Egidio as “an unconditional opening to the religion of the other.” Justo Lacunza-Balda, a Spanish brother who until last year ran the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, told me, “The Pope’s reasons for Assisi I were maybe a little fuzzy... but he knew that Muslim-Christian relations had become fundamental for peace.” It was not, however, the sort of occasion that appealed to Cardinal Ratzinger. “This cannot be the model,” he told an Austrian paper. Word came down from the Holy Office to the organizers at Sant’Egidio that Assisi I had been too folkloric and, worse, that it had carried a risk of religious relativism and “syncretism” (which, to be fair, it did). Assisi II was what you might call a highly negotiated outpouring. The Pope was failing, and Ratzinger had already delivered his own position paper on the uniqueness of Catholic salvation. (It said that the situation for non-Catholics was “gravely deficient.”) He called it Dominus Iesus, and it was a triumphalist document—not, in any event, an “unconditional opening” of the gates of the Vatican, let alone the gates of Heaven. “We sort of reinvented Assisi after that,” Mario Marazziti, from Sant’Egidio, told me. “The religions would pray one beside the other. Not together but beside.” This time, John Paul II was installed on a big throne, surrounded by other Catholics, and the religions prayed alone. Many of the people who found themselves praying beside but not together with the Pope at Assisi II that day—January 24, 2002—were distressed by the change, though only four months after the attack on the World Trade Center there wasn’t much faith left in Assisi in the power of prayer for peace. Alberto Melloni says that there was certainly “consciousness in the Curia, after 9/11, of the possible uselessness of such an event.” By the eve of his election, in the spring of 2005, Ratzinger was warning Catholics about the “waves” battering at the boat of the true faith, including among them mysticism, “sects,” and Turkish Muslims in Christian Europe.
In February last year, ten months into his papacy, Benedict removed the much admired British archbishop who presided over the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and dispatched him to Cairo as a papal nuncio. The archbishop, Michael Fitzgerald, had a particularly warm interest in Islam, and the Vatican called this a key appointment to the Arab League. But it amounted to exile. The council itself was turned over to a conservative cardinal named Paul Poupard, and, to some extent, folded into the Pontifical Council for Culture, which Poupard heads. In today’s Vatican, “cultural dialogue” is a code for relations with religions that, by Benedict’s definition, cannot sustain a theological relationship with Catholicism. There is, of course, nothing wrong with the idea of cultural dialogue. It can mean that you start focussing on very concrete problems, and even try to resolve those problems. (Lacunza-Balda says that the Pope, if anyone, has the right to challenge Muslims to reflect on “their use of God as an umbrella to cover violence.”) On the other hand, it can mean that, in shutting the last theological windows of Vatican II, you are dismissing Islam as one more “gravely deficient” sect. There are more than twenty Muslim ambassadors to the Holy See, although there is no official ambassador representing “Islam.” (The only religion with a permanent delegation to the Vatican is the Church of England.) Some of those ambassadors say Benedict is right, when it comes to the limits of conversation. Muhammad Javad Faridzadeh, the Iranian Ambassador, told me, “After Vatican II, the ‘dialogue’ was obligatory, it was written, and John Paul had to have it. The difference today is not in the obligation but in the way of having it. Theological dialogue between religions is no sooner born than it dies. Theological language is not Socratic. It becomes militant, it is the arm with which you defend your religion. You do not come to a friend to talk bearing arms. You leave theology at the door and come with flowers—which can be ‘culture.’ ” Faridzadeh is a philosopher—a Platonist, he says, like the Pope. He has studied not only Islamic philosophy but also phenomenology, Continental philosophy, and medieval scholasticism. He reads Kant and Nietzsche and Heidegger and is given to quoting Hans Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Michel Foucault. It is as a philosopher, he says, that he doubts whether a Christian could “defend” the relation of Theos and Logos to a Muslim, who has no image of God, any better than a Muslim could defend Islam to a Christian, who does. Many Catholics with an intimate understanding of Islam share this doubt. Priests who have worked in orthodox Muslim countries like to point out that “dialogue” with fundamentalists is, almost by definition, impossible. James Puglisi, a Franciscan friar who runs the Center for Christian Unity, in Rome, told me, “You need competence on both sides. And it’s not just Islam. I was in an ‘official conversation’ with some Seventh-day Adventists. I said to them, ‘We need to write our common history.’ But how do you do that, when they don’t even accept the critical interpretation of our common texts?” Monsignor Khaled Akasheh, a Jordanian diocesan priest who worked with Michael Fitzgerald at the Council for Interreligious Dialogue—and who remains one of the council’s leading Islamic experts—said that, to his mind, the best argument for the Pope’s campaign to concentrate on Christian identity, rather than on theological incursions into other people’s faiths, is that, “with a weak identity, you are unqualified for any kind of ‘interreligious’ dialogue... especially in the face of a strong and sometimes radical Islam.” He told me, “Knowing who you are, as a Christian, can be a preparation for dialogue, not a confrontation.”
Benedict, who is nearly eighty, is said to have set himself two goals for what he knows will be a short papacy. Neither of them involves Islam theologically, but they do involve it in very practical, political ways. His first goal is ecumenical. It has to do with reinvigorating, and perhaps enforcing, what he sees as Christianity’s nonnegotiable moral precepts. In other words, he wants to temper and constrain Western secularism with his own brand of Christian morality; he wants the leaders of other Christian fellowships to join him; and he wants to put the world on notice that, with more than fifteen million Muslims living in Western Europe, the only analogous mission in the West today is an Islamist one. Moral unity doesn’t sound like a lot to ask of Christians, but it is. For one thing, Anglicans and Protestants and Orthodox Christians are hardly eager to take their moral marching orders from a man who holds Catholicism to be the one true articulation of Christian faith—and who is demonstrably more at home discussing moral imperatives with secular intellectuals like Habermas than he is with any of them. It is a matter of theological status. R. William Franklin, an Episcopal priest and a fellow of the Anglican Center in Rome, says that, from an ecumenical standpoint, “we make intellectual but little practical progress on questions of authority, and of course on the ‘sticking points.’ ” (He means the role of women and homosexuals in the two churches—subjects on which this Pope sometimes seems to have more in common with Qom than with Canterbury.) Franklin says that, given the goal of “real and full communion, the best possible scenario would be for the Vatican to say, ‘Get your best theologians together and we’ll duke it out.’ ” But, for Benedict, the Anglican schism remains, if not a heresy, an unacceptable rejection. Of course, the Pope’s real interest is in numbers, and apart from the various Pentecostal and evangelical sects, with whom he does not do serious ecumenical business, the big numbers for his Christian moral crusade lie in some sort of reconciliation between the Eastern and the Western Churches. This has been a papal imperative since the Eastern Church broke with Rome, in the eleventh century, and it is especially important now, with Orthodox Christians being the first line of defense against radical Islam. Benedict’s visit to Turkey, in late November—two and a half months after his Regensburg speech—was originally intended to be the public face of the Vatican’s private negotiations with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who, from his seat in Istanbul, remains the titular head of an Or-thodox communion of three hundred million people. The trip had been in the works since 2004—which is to say that it was going to be John Paul’s visit, and it was going to be pleasant. Turkey not only was a friend to the West—the prototype of George W. Bush’s friendly Muslim state—but officially considered itself the West, and was still confident of a European welcome. That welcome has pretty much been withdrawn by the European Union. And, because of it, Turkey’s handful of Christians—not much more than a hundred thousand in a country of seventy million people—feel particularly abandoned. (The Ottoman massacre of more than a million Armenian Christians, early in the last century, is for them a living nightmare.) Turkey, by constitution and military oversight, remains Atatürk’s secular state. There are no laws limiting Christian practice, but the particularly volatile new mixture of Islamic internationalism and Turkish nationalism could make the country a very uncomfortable place for Christians practicing their faith outside the big, cosmopolitan cities, like Istanbul and Izmir. “The Pope now sees this visit as a moment to contribute to their serenity,” Father Lombardi, Benedict’s press secretary, told me the day before they flew to Ankara. Cardinal Etchegaray, who joined Lombardi and Benedict on the papal plane (on what was Etchegaray’s first trip to the Muslim world since John Paul sent him on a “peace mission” to Saddam Hussein, in 2003), explained it this way: “Don’t forget, the primary reason for this Turkish visit is ecumenical. We have had enormous difficulties with this trip, but we are going for this reason.” It was classic Vatican understatement, given that Turkish nationalists had been rioting to prevent it; the Army was virtually occupying Istanbul to keep them from rioting again; and the country’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was fleeing to a NATO meeting in Latvia—and only at the last minute announced that he might have time for the Pope at the Ankara airport just before his flight. (He had twenty minutes.) Not even the Patriarchy was altogether happy about Benedict’s impending visit. The Orthodox Church had been counting on Turkish membership in Europe as a kind of protection, and Benedict’s earlier statements about Turkey being “in permanent contrast to Europe,” along with the local fury over Regensburg, had left all Christians in the East vulnerable. As it happened, the trip went peacefully, and by all accounts it was |
and being made to watch it by one of my cousins & her friends......they stole 100 mins of my life & I want them back!!
Matt, London
A huge part of my early teenage years.. I remember saving my wages from my first ever part time job to buy it, second hand, from the local video rental store for £40 (this was before films came out on video to buy within months of their cinema release). I watched it more times than I could count before "out growing it" 15 years later, I recently bought the DVD and rewatched. I was thrilled to realise I could still remember all the lines, and could still cry at all the same parts. Now, I finally have a way to explain its appeal to my Star Wars geek of a husband! Thankyou BBC!
N Tysoe, London, UK
"I'm gonna do my kind of dancin' with a great partner, who's not only a terrific dancer; somebody who's taught me that there are people willing to stand up for other people no matter what it costs them; somebody who's taught me about the kind of person I wanna be".
Nick, Coventry
Loved it when I first saw it as a 12 year old (although admittedly, I didnt quite understand some of the heavier storylines) and love it even more today at 20, as I watch it with my uni housemates (girls & boys). We can't wait to travel down to London to see the musical!!
Cate, Chester
I'm not too crazy about all the mush and the dancing, but anyone who uses that as a reason to dismiss the engaging nostalgia and social realism is an idiot.
Pete, London, UK
The 'Star Wars' for this girl was, um, 'Star Wars'...
Bridget, Slough, UK
My better half keeps going on about having an "I carried a water melon" moment. It's something to do with this film apparently?
Gareth, Wrexham, Wales
Calling Dirty Dancing "Star Wars for women" assumes that women either don't like or don't understand Star Wars. I was a thirteen year old girl when Dirty Dancing came out. I preferred Star Wars then and I still prefer it now. I won't be spending my money to see the theatre version of DD. I'm saving it for a ticket to see the new James Bond movie!
Trudi, London
I concur with it being the female 'Star Wars', this and 'Ghost'. A bottle of white wine, candles and the Dirty Dancing DVD is the way to every woman's heart (... or trousers!!) I recommend to all boyfriends around the world, get the Director's Cut Edition. It shows the alternative end.. The father whips out a 12 gauge double barrel shot gun and blows Patrick away, re-cocks and shoots his daughter. Then calls in an air strike and Napalms the whole cast and crew...... Well, you can only dream!!!
Steve, Yeovil
Guys, watch it, learn the plot, learn the phrases, know the characters.. its an easy way to impress a girl! so long as they dont think you're gay!!
Dave, Basingstoke
I love Dirty Dancing, especially the bit where lush-legs Swayze sings "I've had the time of my life" to Baby at the end... swooooon!! My friend paused the video where you can see his bum so much it has forever got fuzzy lines on the screen! Who can resist staring at his lovely bare bot?
Sarah Ling, Worcester
Who can't resonate with a young girl on a family holiday, looking for excitement and love, and on finding it changing from the moth to the butterfly? This is wish fulfillment at its best, and the dances are amazing. Yes it is cheesy, but it will always be with us. My husband complains, but I am not getting rid of my copy, ever.
Tamsyn, Glasgow
This is the only film I have watched 50 times. It is sentimental and cheesy, but the plot and the music both perfectly reflect the innocence and (relative) non-commercialism of the early days of rock and roll.
James Harvey-Brown, Folkestone
The best film ever...... I have watched it so many times I have worn the video out and had to buy it on DVD. I can't wait until my 3 year old daughter is old enough to sit and watch it with me!
Nikki, Warrington, England
This is a film that makes you feel better no matter what. It is like a cup of hot chocolate and a real fire on a cold winters night. it makes you feel good inside but you can't quite out your finger on why.
Helen, Wigan Lancashire
My girlfriend, sisters and mother all adore this film...and I still can't really understand why. Doesn't compare well to either Footloose or Flashdance in my opinion.
Ed, London
I think you should acknowledge the huge cult following it has with gay men too! The lines 'I carried a watermelon' and 'This is my dance space, this is your dance space' are sure to bring the house down.
Josh Lovie, Dubai
I thought it was rubbish too. It's not original in any way. I didn't think it was as good as "Strictly Ballroom" but it was made in Holywood and had all the associated hype so was inevitably going to do better... As for it being a "Star Wars for girls". Does Dirty Dancing have 7 sequels and three cartoons based upon it?
Rod, Edinburgh
I soooo love this film. It gave me the strength to come out to my friends and family and to be who I really was. I would of missed out on so much life if it wasn't for Patrick giving me the confidence to break out and live for today. I am certaintly having the time of my life!
Alwyn Broom, Cardiff, Wales
I saw it years ago, and while it's perfectly ok, it would be much better with some lasers, starships, evil Lords and green dwarves who badly do they speak.
Stephen, London
Well I have to agree with John and I'm a woman! This film never had any appeal for me whatsoever and I don't find Patrick Swayze at all attractive. I think it's the worst sort of cheesy film and would be severely disappointed should my daughter ever want to see it. Give me a Jane Austen flick any day.
Alice, London
I used to love this movie so much, my sisters and I would practice "the lift" all day in the pool.
lucy, london
Which other films are so cheesy yet so sexy at the same time! And the 'I carried a watermelon' line. How many of us whilst growing up have said a line like that and cringed the moment you uttered it?! Pure teenage angst - brilliant!
Alice, Plymouth
I was two when this film came out but at the age of 5 my mum introduced me to the film which is still my favourite of all time, and I still remember as though it was yesterday changing into my floaty skirt and spinning around my front living room acting out the dance routines to the songs!
Alexandra, Sheffield
The ultimate chick flick. And no, that's not a compliment!
Ross Mc Givern, London
A modern day classic, I was 19 years old when the film was first released around about Baby's age, loved the film from start to finish and still do now up there with my top five films.I somehow think that John in Cardiff does not have a romantic bone in his body!
JAYNE, BRADFORD
This came out when I was 17 - my friend and I had the sound track on cassette in our cars and we played it constantly! We knew every scene of the film, what was coming next and we knew every word to every song. It brings back very vivid and happy memories. It has stood the test of time as my partner's 17 year old daughter loves it too.
Sarah, Halifax
Why did John, Cardiff watch it again then! I think it is an excellent film as do my daughters
Ian, Sheffield
I can still remember walking down the street with my mate singing the songs to this when we came out of the cinema. It was fantastic. I had both of the soundtracks - they released one but so many people moaned about the tracks that had been left off, they released a second one. I have owned it on video and it was one of the first films to be purchased on DVD. It is a wonderful feel-good film. Plus, Patrick Swayzes butt in those nice tight trousers, certainly gives it an extra something....!!
Kiltie, Staffs, UK
Almost as bad as Titanic.
J Busby
Every teenage girl dreamt of going on a family holiday and meeting her Johnny.
Sarah, Carshalton, Surrey
I too was 15 when the film came out and there was mass hysteria at my school. Girls (including some of my friends) could be seen walking around with copies of the album under their arms. Although I understand the obvious mass appeal Dirty Dancing, it never really appealed to me. Personally, if I want a big dose of angst I¿d rather watch something slightly edgier like ¿The Breakfast Club¿, a great 80¿s film.
M, Birmingham
I'm obviously dead inside...
SH
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Your commentThe US president has opened a new round in his crusade against CNN after returning from his long tour to the Asia-Pacific.
US President Donald Trump has again lashed out at CNN, calling it “bad” and “fake” after he had been “forced” to watch it, while being in the Philippines.
While in the Philippines I was forced to watch @CNN, which I have not done in months, and again realized how bad, and FAKE, it is. Loser! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2017
He went on to praise his favorite TV channel, Fox News, that would be “showing much of our successful trip to Asia, and the friendships & benefits that will endure for years to come!”
Our great country is respected again in Asia. You will see the fruits of our long but successful trip for many years to come! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2017
Since Trump assumed office, many US media outlets, including CNN, have accused the US president’s team of allegedly having ties to the Kremlin, with Trump refuting these allegations and labeling the media involved in these speculations “fake news.”
Previously, the US president slammed the “failing” The New York Times, as well as CNN, NBC ABC and CBS over allegedly being “the enemy of the American People” and several other US media outlets over “fake news” reports and called for a probe into US media spreading “fake news.”
In summer, Trump posted a video of himself “beating” a person whose face had been replaced by a CNN logo.
In the course of Trump’s rift with mainstream media outlets, a Morning Consult/Politico poll released in October has shown that half of US voters think that mainstream news outlets push out false content, when publishing articles on US President Donald Trump.According to another poll conducted by renowned French pollster Ifop, 59 percent of Americans believe that MSM coverage of international and domestic agenda in their country is biased.CLOSE A 3D animation of the proposed Major League Soccer stadium in Detroit. ROSSETTI
Billionaire Dan Gilbert and Pistons executive Arn Tellem announced plans April 27, 2016 for a $1-billion investment at Wayne County's unfinished jail site for a 25,000-seat Major League Soccer stadium and other developments, including restaurants, hotel rooms, and a commercial office tower. The area is bounded by Gratiot, I-375, Macomb St. and Beaubien. (Photo: Rossetti)
The City of Detroit is helping Dan Gilbert and Tom Gores lure a Major League Soccer franchise to the city, Mayor Mike Duggan confirmed Thursday.
Duggan's affirmation of support in bringing a MLS franchise to Detroit came hours after the announcement of a tentative deal between the city and Wayne County to swap the massive 1.4-million-square-foot former American Motors headquarters in Detroit in exchange for 11 acres of city-owned land needed to build a new criminal justice complex near I-75.
Gilbert's Rock Ventures offered to build a $520.3-million complex for Wayne County, in exchange for the unfinished Gratiot jail site and surrounding justice buildings.
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Although the acquisition of the city-owned land was crucial in order to move Rock Ventures’ proposal forward, Duggan said the land swap is an entirely separate issue and not indicative of any progress made to build a soccer stadium at the unfinished jail site.
"I would not assume that at all," Duggan said in response to a Free Press question about the deal and stadium. "We need to get an MLS franchise but in my mind, this (the land swap) has nothing to do with a soccer stadium. This is a deal that is the right thing for the criminal justice center. Where the soccer stadium is located is a second question. We're pursuing an MLS franchise but there are a number of options for that, but I really can't say anything else."
Gores, owner of the Detroit Pistons, and Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, announced a joint effort in late April to bring an MLS franchise to Detroit, with a preference to build a stadium on the site of the troubled Wayne County jail site on Gratiot.
Gilbert and Gores hope to build a 23,000-seat stadium at the site. The investment has been estimated at $1 billion. The application for an expansion team filed in January listed only the jail site as a location. Gilbert and Gores are one of a dozen groups that have submitted expansion bids to join MLS in 2020.
Gilbert has previously said that construction would begin March 6, 2018, and be completed Nov. 5, 2020.
The Free Press reported last month that an October presentation before MLS commissioner Don Garber and league representatives is looming for Detroit Pistons Vice Chairman Arn Tellem, who is spearheading Detroit’s bid for an MLS franchise. Tellem has remained bullish on the league’s potential impact on the city.
The agreement between Wayne County and the City of Detroit comes after officials told the Free Press last week that negotiations were ongoing and both sides were optimistic an agreement would be reached soon.
Gilbert's proposal for the city-owned land initially sought 13 acres of the 22-acre site, which is bounded by the I-75 service drive and East Warren Avenue, and includes Detroit Department of Transportation administrative offices.
But officials said Thursday the deal is now for just slightly over 11 acres behind DDOT's bus terminal, ensuring the transit's operations won't be impacted.
Duggan said Thursday he believes the land is an "ideal place" for a criminal justice center.
"I think you'll see restaurants and other development for jurors and witnesses and lawyers and the like," Duggan said. "The county executive said that was a site he wanted to nail down as an option. He hasn't made a final decision."
The deal would enable the city to acquire the 1.4-million-square-foot complex of the former American Motors headquarters on Plymouth Road on Detroit's west side, which is currently owned by the Wayne County Land Bank.
Duggan said the city plans to market the old headquarters for re-development but the subsequent purchase agreement must first clear hurdles of approval by the Detroit City Council, Wayne County Commission and the Wayne County Land Bank Board.
"... The old AMC property on Plymouth Road is a serious source of blight in that neighborhood, and I'd like to target the redevelopment of the AMC property as one of our highest priorities," Duggan said. "We've got a year or so to do a review and make sure the environmental (assessments) are OK and if there's a problem, we can elect to take $757,000."
According to the agreement, Detroit has the option to forgo swapping the land and instead opt to receive the fair market value of the city property from Wayne County, which is estimated to be $757,000. The city has until Nov. 1, 2018, to make that selection.
Duggan said the agreement still has to be approved by the Detroit City Council, Wayne County Commission and Wayne County Land Bank Board. Duggan said he expects the agreement to be before council relatively soon.
In terms of plans for the former American Motors property, Duggan declined to elaborate but said it's time for it to be redeveloped.
"I have some plans for it but I really don't want to talk about it right now but if you drive by there you've got a neighborhood that is a quality neighborhood with some parks nearby and they're looking at this huge building where George Romney used to work and has been empty almost since then," Duggan said. "We need to address it. We do think we have good plans to address it. We think we have the resources to address it and this is going to work out for both of us."
Katrease Stafford: [email protected] or 313-223-4759. Staff writer Vince Ellis contributed to this report.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/2kpB3BIThe gunman in at a fatal shooting outside a popular McAllen bar has been arrested while headed north at the Falfurrias checkpoint.
McAllen police confirm that 29-year-old Manuel Sanchez, Jr. was detained late Friday afternoon.
Investigators believe that Sanchez is the triggerman in a shooting outside the Gamehaus Gastropub off West Nolana Avenue.
The argumen turned deadly claimed the life of 24-year-old Daniel Avila and left 26-year-old Rene Garcia hospitalized.
McAllen police confirmed the arrests of Israel Rocha, Christopher Flores and Richard Arispe following the shooting.
Another three suspects have been identified but their names have not been released at this time.
Sanchez is facing extradition back to McAllen where he's expected to face a murder charge and multiple counts of attempted murder.
Investigators told Action 4 News that McAllen police received numerous tips after releasing the photos of Sanchez and the others to the media.
McAllen police are looking for every single individual in the photos.The Lightning Power Play Podcast is a weekly show hosted by Matt Sammon (@SammonSez), Director of Radio Programming for the team. New episodes of the podcast are released every Thursday on the Lightning Radio Network (@TBLPowerPlay & SoundCloud). In this episode, Sammon recounts Yanni Gourde’s unlikely journey to the NHL. It’s a worthwhile read (and listen!) for anyone curious about how an undrafted player rose through the ranks of the ECHL and AHL to land a spot on the Tampa Bay Lightning roster.
Quick Note: For the sake of clarity and fluency, I have omitted extraneous uses of the phrases, “and,” “but,” and “so.”
Intro: This week on Lightning Radio’s Power Play
Matt Sammon: Tenacious and full of energy, he's become the latest great story to emerge from the Tampa Bay Lightning organization.
Cut to radio broadcast of Tampa Bay Lightning game.
Dave Mishkin: Jonathan Drouin. Cross-ice, [Victor] Hedman, left point. Shoots. Deflected in front. SCOOOORE! YANNI GOURDE AGAIN!
Yanni Gourde has always had that potential, that upside, that promise to make it in the NHL [National Hockey League]. This season he may have just broken through the surface. While he joins a growing group of undersized undrafted players to come up through the Lightning system, Gourde’s path is decidedly different than the others.
Given that just a few years ago, he was ready to make a career change because hockey wasn't going to work out. He's made it work, providing excitement to the end of this season while giving fans a glimpse at his talent going into next season. Getting to know Yanni Gourde.
Commercial break
Regardless of how this season ends for the Tampa Bay Lightning, one thing the fans of this team can look forward to is seeing more of some of the young talent we saw take its first steps in the NHL this season. Much like at the tail end of the 2012-2013 season where we saw the NHL careers of Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat, and Alex Killorn start. This season we've seen Brayden Point, Jake Dotchin, and Adam Erne make their debuts. Just a handful of young players who answered the bell for the Bolts in an injury-plagued and trying season.
One of the young players who made an impact and who is certainly making a case to stick around beyond this season has had the Lightning’s eye for just over three years now. But if you go back to that point in time, or even just a few months before it, you'd be hard-pressed to see Yanni Gourde living out the dream of playing in the NHL. It's not because Gourde didn't have the talent or the drive. It's simply because for one reason or another, he just wasn't sticking wherever he went.
A native of tiny Saint-Narcisse [de Beaurivage], Quebec about a two-hour drive north of Montreal near the Saint Lawrence River, Gourde joined me and Brian Engblom for our post game show The Last Call on New Year's Eve 2016. It was following his second game of the season, and at the time his fourth NHL game of his career after a two-game cup of coffee the season before. Being from Quebec and listed at 5'9" 172 pounds, there's no surprise when it comes to his favorite team growing up and his favorite player.
Cut to The Last Call from December 31, 2016
Gourde: I grew up in Quebec, so obviously Montreal Canadiens. I’m sorry guys. [crowd laughs] But my favorite player was probably Martin St. Louis though. [crowd cheers] Engblom: ‘Atta boy. Get yourself off the hook there. Smart man. Sammon: The ultimate unsigned forward story. There you go. The crowd was getting rather restless here. It’s New Years Eve. Calm down, we’ll let you go. Engblom: If they start throwing stuff, I’m sitting too close to you too. [laughs] Sammon: So with Marty [St. Louis], was it just more size and style? Or you were just at that age where he was hitting his peak? Gourde: Well Marty’s career was unbelievable. He started undr - well, I don’t know if he was drafted, but he... Sammon: He was undrafted, yes. Gourde: He was undrafted and then he was a small player, like I am. He worked his way to the NHL. I think he played his first year [at] 23 or 24 years old. It’s fun to see a guy like that get success in that league. For all these reasons I guess, he was my favorite player.
When you look back at the undersized, undrafted free agent story, Marty St. Louis leads it front and center - and so does the Lightning. Even well after Marty’s departure from the team in 2014, the list of smaller undrafted free agents continues: Cory Conacher, Tyler Johnson, Jonathan Marchessault, and Gourde. While there are similarities to all those other players’ stories, Gourde’s really is unique.
Yes, he was a scoring star at a young age, like Johnson and Marchessault were in junior [level hockey] and St. Louis and Conacher were in college. Yes, he did get a later start in the NHL because he was an overage junior player. Gourde’s lead scoring season didn’t happen until he was 20. That’s the downside of a December birthday. Unlike all of those other players, Gourde’s career post-junior league didn’t ascend. In fact, it was alarmingly going backwards despite being productive everywhere he went.
Gourde’s ascension in the QMJHL (Quebec Major Junior Hockey League) was like many other players. The more games he got, the more points he racked up. By his third season with Victoriaville, he was average a point per game with 26 goals and 42 assists in 68 games. The next season, he nearly doubled that point total scoring 37 goals and 87 assists for 124 points in 68 games. That performance earned Gourde the Jean Béliveau Trophy in 2012, awarded to the top scorer in the Q[MJHL]. There was no parent organization waiting to invite him into their farm system. In fact, Gourde had to wait for a chance in Worcester, Massachusetts [with the San Jose Sharks affiliate AHL team].
Gourde: I had a ATO [Amateur Try Out contract]. My season ended and then I spent a week home. Then all of the sudden I get a call for an ATO tryout in Worcester. I went, played four games. After those four games, they decided to offer me a contract for one year in the American Hockey League [AHL] - contract, one-way. I accepted, so I played the next year for the Worcester Sharks. I had a good season that year. I had good numbers. I figured that probably somewhere in the summer I was going to get a call. Those four games were very important, obviously. I guess I made the most of it. I did good, but right away they put me on a very good line. I was playing on first line, right off my first game. It was very nice. I think I had three points in those four games. It’s not too bad, yeah.
Cut to Worcester Sharks broadcast
Announcer: Shuffled away by Greenham and out. Trying to jam it into the side of the net is Kennedy. Greenham a save, back to the point. [Matt] Irwin, a shot. Save. Puck loose in front. SCORE! YANNI GOURDE! His first professional goal from on top of the face-off circle, ripped it through a screen. Up high, past Greenham. Yanni Gourde at 8:12 has tied the score at 1.
It was only four games, but it was three points. You don’t accidentally get thrown onto the top line. You’re doing something right. Going into the 2012-2013 season, the trajectory was following the usual path for Gourde. That is until late in the season. With his scoring pace down, Gourde was sent to the ECHL’s San Francisco Bulls.
Normally when you make the fall from the AHL to the ECHL, it’s a monumental climb to get back to the AHL and your hopes of ever making it to the NHL - they should be tempered. Despite the pressure of trying to make it back to the AHL, Gourde took the demotion in stride by not seeing it as a demotion.
Gourde: They told me that - just to get some game, get some more ice time, get that confidence back. I went to San Fran[cisco], I had so much ice time. I played well. I gained the confidence back and I went back up and I felt better. All of the sudden, I was playing better. Hockey is a lot about confidence. When you get that vibe, that energy, that drive - hockey’s easier. I guess that was a good thing. I didn’t see it like too much of a demotion. I saw it like, “Okay. It’s time to get more hockey and get on the ice and feel the puck more.” I took it like I should. I went down there with a positive attitude and went back up two weeks later.
Gourde did find his confidence and the back of the net again as he scored four goals and ten points in eight games. The season would end in Worcester with a total of 62 games between both teams and 24 points split between the two. And also a positive stint in the ECHL to boot. It also ended with an injury, a broken foot sustained in a fight.
Again, the phone wasn’t ringing in the Gourde household. Considering studying civil engineering as a Plan B, at the least - or at the time at the very most, Gourde had to start the season in the ECHL again.
Gourde: After that year I didn’t get any call for a one-way AHL deal or an Entry-Level [Contract with a NHL club] obviously. Kalamazoo [Wings of the ECHL] called me and they were like, “We’re going to offer you a deal. If you want to play for us, we’d love you to come down in Kalamazoo and try it out for us.” I went down in Kalamazoo, played 35 games. That was kind of a setback, that year. Because I was like, “I played the whole season in the American Hockey League and then all of the sudden I can’t get a try-out anywhere? Or I can’t get a deal?” That one kind of bugged me a little bit, but after that, I went to Kalamazoo. I’m like, “Okay. Let’s figure it out. Let’s see where it goes. We’ll see at the end of the season what happens.”
Gourde figured it out.
Cut to Kalamazoo Wings broadcast.
Announcer: Gourde to Panich[?]. The shot. The save. Rebound in front. FALLING BACK IT'S GOURDE AND HE SCORES! YANNI GOURDE, OFF BALANCE, FLIPS IT IN! DA-DA-DA. DA-DA-DA. SPORTSCENTER MOMENT. YANNI GOURDE, TIES IT AT 1.
30 games, 34 points, and a boatload of confidence later, Worcester called again - but with only a 25 game tryout. Again determined to finally get something long-term with a clearer path to the NHL, Gourde worked his tail off scoring 24 points in 25 games.
It was March 2014, two years after his pro career began and it was finally seemingly beginning to right itself. Mysteriously after the 25 game tryout, the Sharks didn’t extend a contract offer. It was an extremely frustrating time for Gourde.
Gourde: It was tough, but I gave myself a good year to make it back to the American Hockey League. I wanted too, so bad, to get a NHL chance at some point. I focused on that and I finally got my chance. Engblom: That’s a lot of guts, folks. You’ve got to hang in there. [crowd cheers] It’s a big hill. It’s a big hill to climb. Every year too, there’s more young kids coming up. More guys like you who don’t have a contract or are fighting for it, on top of the guys who have already been drafted. I admire that. That’s a lot of guts and you stuck with it. It’s obviously paid off. As it progressed now, what were coaches telling you that you should work on? What needed to be better in order to get a chance to come to the NHL? Gourde: Be more consistent. AHL is a tough league. To make the step to the next level, you’ve got to be consistent. You’ve got to be good every night and that’s what I’ve been trying to work on.
Fortunately for Gourde, his good works weren’t going unnoticed, at least outside of Worcester. Lightning pro scout Jamie Pushor, a former NHL defenseman who’s seen his fair share of talented forwards, put Gourde on Assistant General Manager Julien BriseBois’s radar. When Gourde’s deal with the Sharks ended, BriseBois and the Lightning jumped in to offer him a two-year, two-way deal which was reached on March 10, 2014.
Dan D’Uva, the [Syracuse] Crunch’s play-by-play announcer hadn’t seen much of Gourde in the few games the Crunch played against the Sharks. But D’Uva could tell there was something to Gourde’s game that made the Lightning take notice.
D’Uva: What you knew of Yanni Gourde was just he can’t find a place to stick - maybe he’s a bubble guy. The one stat I remember about Yanni Gourde is that one junior game, he had seven points in one game. That’s the number that says, “Well this guy’s got the potential to be something.” Why is it that he can’t stick anywhere? I suppose the Sharks organization had the same feeling because when his 25 game tryout contract expired, not only did they not offer him another contract or an AHL deal, they just let him go. Tampa Bay just swooped in and signed him to a contract. When that happened, I was wondering - they see something. Maybe those junior numbers stand out. I remember there was that one stat line, that he had seven points in one junior game. I guess that probably is the thing that I remember most before he came to the Crunch.
Shortly after signing with the Crunch, Gourde joined D’Uva in an interview on the Crunch’s website.
D’Uva: Well it’s been an interesting year for you, having been in the ECHL, a PTO [Professional Try-Out Contract] with Worcester, and now you find yourself with a brand-new contract with the Tampa Bay Lightning organization. Describe how have you felt over the last couple of weeks here, coming to the Crunch? Gourde: For sure, it’s exciting. I’m really excited to join that organization, Tampa Bay. I’m really excited to finally get started on Friday. D’Uva: For you to go from the ECHL last year in San Francisco, a little bit in Worcester. This year Kalamazoo and Worcester. To have a tryout contract and not know what your future might be, how did that affect your mentality this season? Gourde: I don’t know. I was just going to Worcester, trying to do my best every game. Feeling no pressure, just playing the game like it’s supposed to be played. I was more confident this year than I was last year. Obviously it felt better.
Gourde would finish the 2013-2014 season with eight points in 18 games in Syracuse. He was able to benefit from the positions opening up with more young players making their way to Tampa.
Finally, with a long-term deal in place and a steady spot in the lineup in Syracuse, Gourde flourished with a team-best 29 goals, including eight power play goals, in the 2014-2015 season.
With things settling down off the ice, D’Uva feels that things on the ice flowed much more smoothly for Gourde.
D’Uva: I think that when you see what has happened with the Lightning organization in the last few years, and even at that point, Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat were relatively new to the National Hockey League after having so much success in the American League. Cory Conacher - the smaller guy who can demonstrate skill even in a “tough man’s sport.” You don’t have to be big to play tough. You don’t have to be big to put up points. When Yanni Gourde can look around and see players who might have similar builds or similar skill sets, he can see himself in some of those other guys. I think that that has indeed given him a boost in this organization, whereas in maybe some other places he couldn’t see that. There’s always that maturity, that growth. He’s still just in his mid-20s. I think that he was in a situation where he was trying to find an identity. When you find an organization that really will give you a chance, even if you don’t fit the stereotypical mold, I think that did give him success. I ask guys that all the time here in Syracuse. There are plenty guys that have had success with this organization, even if they’re not as big as Steven Stamkos. I think that Yanni Gourde sees that for himself and why not take advantage of it like all the other guys he sees around him.
After being one of the final cuts in the 2015 Lightning training camp, Gourde would again shine in Syracuse with 44 points in 65 games. Also during that season, he finally had his dream come true.
After almost four years of scratching and clawing, he made his NHL debut - in Toronto on December 15, 2015. Along the way, earning his first point in the NHL on a goal by Mike Blunden.
Cut to radio broadcast of Tampa Bay Lightning vs Toronto Maple Leafs (12/15/15).
Mishkin: [Andrej] Sustr, a feed for Gourde. Down to the middle, it’s Mike Blunden barreling out to center. Blunden walks it across the Toronto line, left circle. Blunden looking to knife in front. SCORE! MIKE BLUNDEN! 3-3!
After two games with the Lightning, Gourde would finish the season in Syracuse. He was once again one of the last players cut from camp in 2016. Gourde put his head down in Syracuse and he started plugging away again.
With a plethora of injuries to Lightning forwards in late December, the door was open for Gourde once again. After another cup of coffee in Tampa Bay and a return to Syracuse where he would go on to score 46 points in 54 games, Gourde got the call for the rest of the regular season in early March as the Lightning was again dealing with more injuries and the recent trades of Valtteri Filppula and Brian Boyle.
Gourde’s tenacity quickly got Lightning fans’ attention, including former captain Vinny Lecavalier who noted to onlookers that Gourde’s style of play was impressive even if he wasn’t yet getting on the score sheet. But that would change, in an impressive fashion.
On March 11, with the Lightning in a frantic playoff push needing to beat the rival Florida Panthers to keep the Panthers down and the Lightning’s playoff hopes alive, Gourde delivered not just a key play in the game, but a milestone long in the making of his career.
Cut to radio broadcast of Tampa Bay Lightning vs Florida Panthers (3/11/17).
Mishkin: Left side, [Jonathan] Huberdeau to the red line. Back for Vincent Trocheck. He got checked by Yanni Gourde. Gourde on the counter, short-handed. Yanni Gourde trying to come in alone short-handed. Gourde holds, shoots, SC |
in the area, with some supporting the action and others condemning the torching of schools.
LISTEN: Vuwani protesters raze several schools
A pupil joined several other community members as they watched the offices burn at the Mariadze inclusive school with no fire brigade or police in sight.
#Vuwani Another school set alight this afternoon. No authorities in sight, only community members and journalists. pic.twitter.com/RT6nhNVizn — EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) May 5, 2016
"It's so painful because they burnt our school. Where can we go? We are just crying for our future."
A woman says she was born and raised in Vuwani and feels angered by the arson attacks.
"Here in South Africa, if you don't like things you must protest to be heard; but the problem is this thing of burning schools, it's not good. Others say it's not people from around Vuwani. It's people from outside."
Vuwani Vhudzani secondary school is 1 of 17 schools which have been touched by angry community members.
A video posted by Eyewitness News (@ewnupdates) on May 4, 2016 at 10:50pm PDT
While som e community members say they'll protect their schools by setting up patrols outside, others have called on police to prevent the violence.
Meanwhile, President Jacob Zuma has condemned the destruction.
#PresidencyBudget #Zuma condemns in strongest terms burning of 17 schools in Limpopo - entire nation in shock over this GD — EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) May 5, 2016
The president said there was no grievance that could justify the destruction of property, especially schools, which are meant to help the next generation defeat poverty, inequality and unemployment.
LISTEN: President Zuma condemsn burning of schools at Vuwani
At the same time, police have arrested five people in connection with the burning of the schools in Limpopo.
The police's Malesela Ledwaba says, "The number schools that have been burnt is 18, and five were just damaged. The other thing we can indicate is that we arrested about five suspects, and we are expecting to effect more arrests."
Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Des Van Rooyen, State Security Minister David Mahlobo and the Deputy Police Minister Maggie Sotyu are inspecting the damage caused in the area, and are expected to brief the media later this evening.If you’re new here, scroll down for the pictures. They’re still there. If you’re looking to write an article, scroll further down for the FAQ, which answers nearly all the questions that journalists send! If you’d like to talk to me, hire me, or get me to speak at a conference – I’m damn good at this “making web stuff” lark, and I’m not bad at teaching it – my details are here.
24 hours since launch. More than a quarter of a million visitors. Articles in The Guardian, Forbes, Slate, TechCrunch, Mashable, Gawker, the Huffington Post, and – easily sending more traffic than any of them – Le Monde. The front page of Hacker News for most of the day, too, plus pieces on Kottke and my old flame Metafilter. Dozens more besides. A couple of lovely radio interviews, and (depending on tomorrow’s news agenda) perhaps a TV interview too.
All for half a dozen amusing screenshots.
Only a few submissions, alas - presumably because not many people have Graph Search - and they’ve almost all been “People who like X and Y, where X and Y are amusingly contradictory things”. I’m trying to avoid posting many of those: the key is in the complexity.
If you plan to continue this somewhere, don’t look for people who like both Superbowl teams: look for “Rangers fans who are family members of Celtic fans”. (There are two, or sometimes five, depending on how Facebook responds.)
Maybe people will get a bit more savvy as a result of this; most likely, they won’t. The people showing up here aren’t stupid: they just don’t have the knowledge required to be safe. If I took my car to a garage for a tune-up, a disreputable mechanic could fleece me for unwanted repairs and I’d never know it: that doesn’t make me stupid, it just means my knowledge is in other areas.
Graph Search jokes are a good way of startling people into checking their privacy settings – but most people will never actually be affected by accidentally making data ‘public’. (Of course, for the unlucky ones, it won’t be a gamble worth taking.)
Most of the danger online comes not from strangers making half-assed joke searches: it comes from people who know you. A lot of the public data fails what I call the 'bitter ex test’: can someone who hates you ruin your life with that information?
I could drag this out for days, watching an ever-dwindling stream of people be mildly titillated. Or I could bow out now. As the old saying goes: always leave 'em wanting more.
In a few months, Graph Search will have rolled out to everyone, and this’ll be normal. This site will just be an archive of how we reacted when Graph Search was released and, wow, didn’t we overreact back then?
I don’t know. Did we?
My name’s Tom. You can reach me here, or on Twitter. Good night, and good luck.RICHMOND — Local Sikhs invite the entire community to join them on Saturday in an act of service to memorialize the victims of a massacre at a Wisconsin gurdwara, or temple, five years ago.
From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., volunteers will work on a habitat restoration project in the Sobrante Ridge Regional Preserve in the spirit of seva, a Sikh concept of selfless community service, according to Rajanpreet Kaur Pannu of The Sikh Coalition, a nationwide rights advocacy group. The entrance to the preserve is at 5170 Coach Drive, Richmond.
It is one of a series of events scheduled in more than 20 cities and metropolitan areas nationwide to honor the people whose lives were impacted by the Aug. 5, 2012 shooting at a gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in which six worshipers were killed by a white supremacist. The shooter, Wade Michael Page, was killed by responding police.
“Since 9/11, Sikhs have become a frequent target for bigotry and backlash,” Pannu said in a release, citing as an example a Sept. 25 attack in Richmond in which Maan Singh Khalsa was beaten and stabbed by two attackers who also yanked off his turban and cut off his hair — turbans and unshorn hair are Sikh articles of faith, Pannu noted. Khalsa had to have a finger amputated. Two Texas men, Colton Leblanc and Chase Little, pleaded no contest to charges of felony assault with a hate crime enhancement and were sentenced in May to three years in state prison.
On Sept. 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a former Walnut Creek resident and member of the Gurdwara Sahib Sikh temple in El Sobrante, was gunned down in Mesa, Ariz., by a self-proclaimed patriot who later reportedly told police he did it because Sodhi was “dark-skinned, bearded and wore a turban.” The attacker, Frank Roque, was eventually convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for what was widely believed to be the first hate crime in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“From Oak Creek to the Bay Area, no community is immune to this crisis, and by sharing these stories of compassion and service in response to these dramatic acts of bigotry, we can better educate the American public,” Pannu said.
Speaking of the Oak Creek massacre, she said: “Sadly, this tragedy did not happen in a vacuum, and five years later the continual tide of hate crimes underscores the urgency of initiatives which promote an awareness and appreciation for Sikhs and other communities most affected by these crimes.”One-hundred and fourteen in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows 8 in the past seven days.
Microsoft is expected to release a new version of its upcoming operating system Windows 10 on January 21 to the public which should shed more light on the company's plans in regards to its Windows operating system.
It will be interesting to see how Windows Store will be integrated into the operating system, especially on desktop devices, and if there will be other app-related changes.
As always, if I missed an app or game that has been released this week that you believe is particularly good, let me know in the comments below or notify me via email instead.
Discounts this week
The following games and apps are discounted by at least 50 percent in the coming seven day period.
App of the week
None this week.
Other apps
CurrentWeather
Weather apps are a dime a dozen but CurrentWeather is different in some regards. First of all, it displays everything on the screen so that you don't have to scroll or switch pages to access some information.
Details include current weather conditions, a five day forecast, precipitation, visibility, humidity and pressure. The app supports Celsius and Fahrenheit and offers options to switch between metric and US units in the preferences.
You can add as many places as you like to the app and switch between places easily with two clicks.
Carrot Quest
Carrot Quest plays similarly to the classic Sokoban game but instead of moving crates around you move baskets full of carrots.
The goal in the game is to move baskets to designated areas. To do so, you position the rabbit that you control behind baskets to move them in the direction you are facing.
If you tap or click on the basket you are moving it one field whereas you are moving it as far as possible if you click anywhere else in the row or column.
The game has quite a few levels and becomes challenging in later stages.
Penguins of Madagascar: Dibble Dash
Dibble Dash is a running game featuring the Penguins of Madagascar. What makes it different from most running games is that you control all four at the same time and not a single runner.
Some controls match that of other running games. Down makes your penguins slide for example, while swiping up jumps.
Since you control four characters, you get an option to stack them on top of each other to pass through narrow spaces.
In addition to that, each penguin has a special power that you can use in certain situations. Kowalski can blow up things with dynamite and Private heal fellow penguins.
Note that the frame rate of the game drops at times even on fast desktop systems.
Traffic: Road Racing - Asphalt Street Cars Racer 2
This is an endless street racing game in which you try to get as far as possible with your car without hitting other vehicles.
The game offers several game modes and challenges that you can play. All play the same more or less but change the difficulty level.
It is for instance possible to play with or without oncoming traffic. You earn money while you drive which you can invest in your car or a new vehicle.
A car's speed, steering and braking can be improved in the garage. There you can also change the paint color of the car or buy tires.
Only some of the available tracks are available right from the beginning. You need to spend in-game money to purchase the others.
Black Rainbow HD
Black Rainbow is an adventure game that puts you in the shoes of Helen Stone who came back to her village after a friendly trade with a local tribe only to discover that it was attacked with fire arrows and is now burning to the ground.
You guide Helen in the game and try to discover why the village was attacked.
The game itself combines classic adventure game puzzles with mini-games and "find in picture" type challenges.
Note that this is just a free trial and that the full game needs to be purchased.
Nebula Zoo ($0.99 no free trial)
Nebula Zoo is a fun shooting and reaction game with a strong retro feel to it. Your main task in the game is to survive and collect rare animals across the galaxy to bring back to your zoo.
You need to avoid aliens and terrain as they can destroy your ship, collect power-ups to become stronger, and collect animals at the same time.
5Translate ($0.99, no free trial)
5Translate supports 91 languages that it can translate between. It can not only translate what you type, but also speech or text on pictures.
The app supports Cortana, ships with dictionaries for supported languages and options to save translations to the favorites for fast future access.
A list of supported languages is available on the apps' page on the Microsoft website.Quote Hey everyone!
My name is Tait Watson and I am the newest member of the Community team here at BioWare Austin! I will be taking over a number of the things that Amber Green did previously, so I just wanted to stop in and introduce myself before you started seeing me show up on the forums. One of the many things I will be doing (and the part that will be most apparent) is gathering information for the development team through the Bug Report forums, so you will primarily find me hanging out in there.
I have been gaming for the better part of 20 years, and I have been playing Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ since its launch. I’m a huge PVE fan, and tend to spend a lot of time doing Flashpoints and Operations, but I also compete in my fair share of Warzones. I have way too many alts, but I’m okay with that!
It’s such an honor to be able to work on something that I’ve been following for so long, and it’s going to be amazing getting to come into work with the team here in Austin and interacting with all of you on the forums.
I look forward to hanging out with you all!
- Tait Tait "pariahloki" Watson
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[Contact Us] [Rules of Conduct] [F.A.Q.]Detectives in the Arson/Bomb Squad are asking the public for assistance in identifying the man depicted in the images below. Just after midnight on January 1st, 2014, a fire was set in the stairway at Neighbours Nightclub in the 1500 Block of Broadway. There were approximately 750 patrons and staff inside at the time.
Detectives are attempting to identify the person in the photos (taken from video surveillance cameras inside the club) so that he may be interviewed. Detectives are asking that anyone who recognizes this man contact the Arson/Bomb Squad. Further, anyone who was present at Neighbours on New Year’s Eve and may have had contact with this man are urged to contact detectives. Also, detectives are asking people who were present in Neighbours to review any photos or video they took on New Year’s Eve to see if they may have captured any images of this man, and if they did to please contact Seattle Police Arson/Bomb Squad detectives at (206) 684-8980.Image caption The think tank's analysis takes account of a weaker outlook for the economy
The chancellor may have to extend the squeeze on public spending until 2018 if the recent deterioration in growth prospects and tax receipts turns out to be permanent, a think tank has said.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said George Osborne may have to find another £11bn from tax rises or spending cuts if the economy does not pick up.
This is on top of £8bn of cuts already mooted in the Budget.
Mr Osborne will deliver his Autumn Statement on 5 December.
The IFS warned that the statement could bring "more fiscal pain".
A spokesperson for the Treasury said that the independent Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) would make its economic forecast next week alongside the Autumn Statement.
Two scenarios
The think tank's latest analysis takes account of "the now weaker outlook for the UK economy" and "the disappointing trend in tax revenues seen over the last seven months".
Figures last week showed the government borrowed more than expected in October with a fall in corporation tax receipts contributing to the rise.
The IFS said if borrowing continued at the same pace for the rest of the year, the government would miss its borrowing target by £13bn.
It sets out two scenarios for the economy:
a relatively optimistic scenario, in which the increase in borrowing and the deterioration in growth prospects turn out to be temporary
a relatively pessimistic scenario, in which the undershoot in tax receipts and the deterioration in growth prospects turn out to be permanent
It said that under the first scenario, "no further action above that already planned" would be needed for the chancellor to meet his fiscal mandate of balancing the budget by the end of a rolling five-year period, though he has already discussed the possibility of welfare cuts of £8bn over the two years from 2015-16 to 2016-17.
But under the second scenario, to meet that mandate would require extending the squeeze on public spending to 2017-18 and implementing a further £11bn of tax increases or welfare cuts, on top of the £8bn.
The Treasury spokesperson said: "Action taken by the government has cut the deficit by a quarter, whilst over a million new jobs have been created in the private sector, inflation is down, and the economy is healing.
"Britain still faces economic challenges at home and abroad but the government is taking the tough decisions needed to deal with our debts and equip our economy for the global race.
Worsening outlook
The IFS also said that Mr Osborne may have to abandon his other fiscal target - that debt should be falling as a share of GDP in 2015-16.
Crisis jargon buster Use the dropdown for easy-to-understand explanations of key financial terms: AAA-rating AAA-rating The best credit rating that can be given to a borrower's debts, indicating that the risk of borrowing defaulting is minuscule.
However, the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, has said that missing the debt target would be acceptable "if it's because the world economy has grown slowly and so we, in turn, have grown slowly".
Economists at Goldman Sachs have also suggested that missing the debt target would not necessarily result in the UK losing credibility or its AAA sovereign rating.
Carl Emmerson, deputy director of the IFS, said: "Since the Budget, the outlook for the UK economy has deteriorated and government receipts have disappointed by even more than this year's weak growth would normally suggest.
"As a result, the chancellor might find himself having to abandon one of his fiscal targets.
"If much of the additional weakness this year feeds into a permanently higher outlook for borrowing, then in order to comply with his other fiscal target Mr Osborne would need to announce yet more tax rises or spending cuts for the next parliament in next week's Autumn Statement.
"In that case the planned era of austerity could run for eight years - from 2010-11 to 2017-18."
He told the BBC: "If we do have a permanently worse outlook for borrowing, it would be sensible to announce now, measures for future implementation - not more pain now but more pain in future years to get that deficit down."
'Change course'
Chris Leslie, Labour's shadow Treasury minister, said Mr Osborne should use his Autumn Statement next week to "finally set out a plan to create the jobs and growth which are vital to get the deficit down".
"He must rethink his plan to give millionaires a tax cut next year while forcing millions of families and pensioners to pay more. People on low and middle incomes should not be paying the price for this government's economic failure."
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said the IFS's analysis showed that the chancellor's economic strategy was "failing on all counts" and that he should "change course".
"Sadly (Mr Osborne) looks set to drive the economy even faster in the wrong direction," he said.How AirBnB Exacerbates Portland’s Housing Crisis
Portland Tenants United Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 14, 2017
Portland’s housing crisis continues, and the body count associated to it continues to escalate.
Portland Tenants United has been calling for a rent freeze and an end to no-cause evictions. In the midst of this housing crisis it’s impossible to ignore the harm being done by short term rentals, though especially AirBnB.
In Portland more than a thousand units currently been taken off the housing market in order to supply short term vacation rentals. The permanent allocation of residential housing to vacation rentals is obscene and needs to end.
This is one of the more blatant ways in which Portland’s housing crisis is a legitimate “man made disaster” resulting in a “material elimination of rental housing”, a designation sufficient for City Hall to implement emergency controls on rents, per ORS 91.225(5).
Portland has a long history of allowing our housing supply to be driven solely by the profit motive, creating the perfect environment for illegal AirBnB vacation rentals to flourish.
It’s not a given that our housing needs to exist first to serve corporate interests. The antagonists in this system aren’t the tenants and homeowners renting out rooms for extra income, but the corporations systematizing this practice, creating incentives for large-scale abuse, such as the luxury high-rise that city hall recently intervened to stop their chronic use of illegal short term rentals.
In the current profit-driven housing paradigm, it’s difficult to claim that there’s some ethical solution for working families in these situations, or to moralistically ask them to stop renting their spare rooms. Our critiques must be focused on the corporations, starting with AirBnB and other short term rental platforms, the big landlords siphoning entire units full time into the short term rental market, and on the governmental bodies committed to enabling them.
We can’t keep acting like this crisis is an accident while ignoring the decadent obsession with profit that has transformed housing, from a ‘home’ into an ‘investment’. When a home is instead viewed as a rental investment, the family and broader community are secondary considerations; the priority is cash.
Every short term rental offered year round as an “entire place” is one prospective long term rental unit that is off the market. Even if a unit is only rented to vacationeers half the time, it’s yanked from the long term housing market full-time. This decreases the supply of housing and further mutilates the “market” that landlords love to cite when raising rents.
It’s obvious why short term vacation rentals are so attractive to housing speculators and landlords: even $60/night means revenue of $1800/month, more than average rent for a 3 bedroom in Portland. This leads to bidding wars for home-buyers, which of course drives up the prices, and an increase in rents justified by landlords who state that they “could be” getting so much more by putting it on AirBnB.
Landlords can now make more money by leaving units vacant for half the year! And they don’t have to deal with those pesky tenants who are always asking for the leaky pipes to be fixed. (A tourist won’t notice or care. They’ll be gone before maintenance ever arrives.) The “efficient” market at work. When renters and tourists are essentially competing for the same units, with very different buying power and concept of value ($100/night is reasonable for a hotel, not so reasonable for a long term rental), the idea of “market value” is violently distorted.
The distortion is felt in particular in “trendy”, close in neighborhoods. This concentrates the effects of the problem, amounting to a tax on the working people in these neighborhoods who now have to commute to areas they can’t afford to live in anymore.
The conversion of housing to vacation rentals is driving displacement and gentrification, and beginning to turn formally residential neighborhoods into blocks of hotels. For the few residents who still occupy the block, they don’t have the security, quality of life, or community of a residential neighborhood. They have to endure a constant stream of strangers, sometimes knocking at their door late at night with the wrong house number, parties at all hours of the night, and no idea who is coming and going in the house next door to them. And no one to hold accountable because the short term tenants will be gone by the next day anyway. Neighborhoods where this is a particular issue are seeing their commercial districts lose businesses that provide services to residents, like laundromats, barber shops, and corner grocers, replaced by high end shops and restaurants that would primarily appeal to tourists, making the neighborhood less livable and affordable.
The effect of all this is particularly galling considering that many of the neighborhoods that have been hardest hit are historically Black. Not only is this contributing to the violence of gentrification, but research shows that short term rental platforms systematically discriminate against people of color. People are being kicked out of their neighborhood, flung to exurbs (where the rent is still too high) and then can’t even rent an AirBnB back in their own neighborhood.
There’s clear evidence that even what limited regulations we have are being broken left and right. AirBnB seems to be prone to betting on the sluggishness of any response to their flagrant violation of the rules. As far as anyone can tell that’s a good bet. When regulations begin to threaten their interests, they’ve also proven adept at flooding cash in to correct the situation in their favor. AirBnB seems pathologically committed to flaunting even basic social norms. That this company is given any benefit of the doubt, anywhere, is astonishing. These violations make Portland’s housing market even more precarious for its residents.
Even when some token effort is made to add affordable housing, property owners are using entire floors of short term rentals to make sure their all-important profits aren’t disrupted.
Keep Portland Housed, and let our houses be houses
There are equitable solutions that would allow Portland’s many visitors to find affordable places to stay while not endangering the lives of Portland’s residents. It’s not clear that these solutions are possible as long as our cities continue to prioritize the right of landlords to maximize their profits at the expense of the 50% of the city that are renters.
Nationally, there are many vacant homes for every houseless person. This ratio is somewhat lower in Portland, but the vacancy rate in new luxury units is higher than average. This is particularly obscene in light of this winter’s storms, which have a growing body count driven by the housing crisis. Portland tenants who’ve been evicted are dying on the streets while luxury units sit empty. What forces are driving the continued focus on building luxury units?
The process of correcting the housing situation in Portland should begin with strong tenant protections, like the reforms PTU has been calling for, combined with long-term controls on the cost of renting.
This alone won’t suffice, as Portland is likely to continue to attract more residents in the coming years, particularly in light of the attacks on public services expected across the country, and the environmental crisis that will continue to drive people north. Portland doesn’t have enough housing, and we need a massive investment in building affordable housing to fix this. It’s increasingly clear that the profit-driven developer circus will be unable or unwilling to meet this demand. New solutions should be brought to the table and discussed.
How do we address the argument that short-term rentals are needed to supplement working-class people’s incomes? We join our friends in the labor movement in calling for an increased minimum wage, union rights, and strengthened worker protections. The real value of wages is depressed by the rampant inflation in rents (tenant’s largest and least negotiable expense), and rent controls and tenant protections will begin to correct this. The specter of people being forced to rent their homes out to strangers to meet their own basic needs is nothing short of dystopic: working class Portlanders should be able to survive without sacrificing their privacy.
How horrific that a city will prioritize the right to corporate profit over the needs of its residents! That citizens of a city who democratically act to protect their own homes can be crushed by millions of dollars of money para-dropped in to sabotage their neighborhoods? Who is this rogue band of tin-pot Nero’s fiddling with their phones while Portland’s future is set on fire, and its residents freeze to death?
Portland tenants, in solidarity with the labor movement, are mobilizing to address the housing crisis. Any politicians trying to make hay by pandering to these demands will be proven a liar if they don’t address the role of short-term rentals in this man-made disaster. The practice of siphoning off entire homes from Portland’s housing market for the enrichment of a few must end. The number of permanent, whole-unit homes on the Portland short-term-rental market should be zero. PTU applauds any meaningful reforms toward this end.More than 2,000 cases could be overturned in Baltimore as the first motion for a retrial is filed accusing the state’s attorney’s office and the police of “deliberate and wilful misrepresentation” of the use of the secret surveillance equipment known as Stingrays.
The motion, which was filed on behalf of defendant Shemar Taylor by attorney Josh Insley in the Baltimore city circuit court on Friday, says the state’s attorney’s office colluded with the police department to withhold “discovery” material from the defendants and the courts about the use of the Stingray device. Taylor was convicted of assault, robbery and firearm possession.
Manufactured by the Harris corporation and around the size of a briefcase, Stingrays are one of a class of surveillance devices known as “cell-site simulators”, which pretend to be cellphone towers in order to extract metadata, location information, and in some cases content from phones that connect to it.
Prosecutors are required to reveal the evidence against defendants in the “discovery” phase of a criminal trial.
However, a Guardian investigation in April revealed a non-disclosure agreement that local police and prosecutors were forced to sign with the FBI before using the Stingray devices, which mandated them to withdraw or even drop cases rather than risk revealing Stingray use.
“It shocks the conscience that a police commissioner and an elected State’s Attorney would conspire to commit obstruction of justice unless the FBI told them they could disclose,” Insley told the Guardian.
In the motion, Insley cited part of a specific 2011 agreement similar to the one revealed by the Guardian, between then-states’ attorney Gregg Bernstein and then-police commissioner Frederick Bealefeld which stated that their offices “shall not, in any civil or criminal proceeding, use or provide any information concerning the Harris corporation wireless collection equipment/technology” without permission from the FBI.
The motion also stated that in Taylor’s original trial in November 2014, attorneys for the state told defence counsel that “the device” was not used in the investigation. But a USA Today investigation that unearthed a log of cases in which the device was used showed that a Stingray was in fact used in Taylor’s case.
“This was clearly a deliberate and willful misrepresentation to the court to conceal the use of extrajudicial clandestine surveillance by the Baltimore City police department,” the motion stated, adding later that the State’s Attorney had demonstrated “an intentional wanton disregard of the Rules of Evidence.”
The Baltimore public defender’s office has also begun re-examining more than 2,000 cases in which police secretly used Stingrays.
The move also follows a change in federal policy on Thursday in which the US department of justice said that agencies under its aegis would have to obtain a specific warrant to use Stingrays. But this change in policy does not affect local police forces or state-level agencies, where the use of cell-site simulators and other devices is still shrouded in secrecy, and requires only a low-level court order called a PEN register, or “trap-and-trace” order, to grant police permission for its use.
Defence attorneys and civil liberties activists told the Guardian that prosecutors and police departments go to extraordinary lengths to avoid being forced to reveal their use of these devices. They do this by using Stingrays in the first instance, then reverse-engineering a case which they can safely bring to trial without mentioning the surveillance equipment.
In other instances, according to Nate Wessler, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s speech, privacy and technology project, police would present “inscrutable euphemisms” to courts.
“Terms like ‘we located this phone using information from a confidential source’, which sounds a whole lot like they had an informant; it doesn’t sound like they were using a sophisticated electronic device forcing all phones in the area to report back,” Wessler told the Guardian. “Those efforts to hide what the police were doing are very difficult to smoke out.”
“It’s really very frightening,” Natalie Finegar, the deputy public defender for Baltimore city, told the Guardian. She said that her office was starting the process of going through their clients’ cases to see if the police and prosecutors had committed a “discovery violation” in not disclosing the use of Stingray devices - starting with currently incarcerated clients.
Finegar said that it was “too early to tell” how many cases might be affected. “We know there’s 2,000 potential cases,” she told the Guardian, “but there may be more.”When choosing a font for use on a website, you are restricted to one of the 15 or so “web fonts“. That sucks. The only way you can use a different font is by resorting to hacks such as Cufon, sIFR or FLIR.
But if you do that, you’ve only solved half the problem. You’re still in muddy waters regarding the licensing of the fonts you’re using, possibly opening yourself to future litigation. And, whether you choose Cufon, sIFR or FLIR, the text that’s in a different font will behave differently than ‘regular’ text. You can’t select it, copy it or edit it like ‘regular’ text. That’s because it’s not regular text. It’s a Javascript image, Flash movie, or plain image – respectively. That sucks!
Fortunately, there’s a solution for that: the CSS3 @font-face tag. It allows you to set the font of any given text on your web page. If the user does not have the font you indicated, it will be downloaded and used. It even works cross-browser.
So only the legal issue remains. Obviously, you can’t redistribute high quality commercial fonts like Minion or ITC Franklin Gothic. The companies holding the rights won’t allow it, and probably rightfully so.
So what to do? As Mark Pilgrim so eloquently stated: Fuck the foundries. If we can’t legally use their fonts on a web page, then we’ll have to look for high quality fonts that we CAN use on a web page.
And that’s when I came across Font Squirrel, and I must say: I LOVE IT! Free high quality fonts that you can use on your website. 100% free for commercial use. No licensing issues! Just what web typography needed 🙂
LinkAuthor of a remarkable run during the last Nation Wars III, Alexis « MarineLorD » Eusebio is, since the release of the last StarCraft II add-on Legacy of the Void, in a tremendous period. Despite a disappointment at the HomeStory Cup, the Terran player from Millenium crushed (nearly) all alone Sweden, Canada, Finland and even the « final boss », South Korea, at the O'Gaming tournament.
At the top level in France, he is also considered today as one of the best player in the foreign scene. Millenium editorial staff wanted to know more about his latest performances, and went to ask MarineLorD a few questions.
[M]TinkeR : Hi MarineLorD, and thanks for accepting to answer our questions! Before coming back on your recent run, I'd like to talk a bit about LotV. How did you approach the switch from HotS to LotV, and what were the main obstacles you've faced at the beginning?
[M]MarineLorD : Hi! Regarding LotV, I love the fact that there's so much multitasking involved in every match-up, it makes all the aspects of the game slightly more complicated (micro/macro), knowing it's more action-packed. There's a few big issues with the design rather than with balancing I believe, but I think that the game has a bright future.
Your results on the last add-on has been quite impressive lately, and you are undoubtedly on the European top 3 today. Is that a logical improvement for you (you were already among the best foreign players at the end of HotS) or do you think the rupture between HotS and LotV is such that the playstyle on LotV just fits you more?
I think that HotS was only decision-making based, and not so much focused on mechanics. During the last two years, metagame and the game itself hugely disadvantaged Terrans on prepared matches. It's always sad to lose against MaNa in WCS (who's obviously very good though) in the last season while I thought I was playing better in general, but in one Bo3 or two, Protoss design gives him the edge.
In the end from my point of view, it was more up to my opponent to prepare his match, and then I, as a Terran, had to try to play the most solid way, without having the possibility to change my game plan. I couldn't really prepare my matches knowing that my opponent could have done anything on any map, and I had to be very solid and not doing any decision-making/scouting mistake in order for me to hope to win, that's why StarCraft II was increasingly making me lose motivation.
I'm here to play a game that requires skill, and asks for mechanics, and put me on an equal footing with my opponent, not a RTS-style HearthStone remake.
Regarding the NationWars : you ended up at the 2nd place of your groups, then carried on with a tight win against Canada, before crushing Finland, then South Korea. Did some kind of a « trigger » happen at some point? What went through your mind at these moments, and especially when INnoVation GG'ed out?
Globally, I was happy with my results, even if I was sad losing to HuK. For me, the way he played was totally random, and if you take into account all of my different builds and the way I play, his build had only 10-15% chance to win him the game. I was in a defending position against what is standard to play in the current metagame (Warp prism, Oracle, Blink), I tried to get the intel as much as I could, but by playing correctly with Phoenixes, he had the chance to deny any map control.
MarineLorD beats INnoVation and give the final victory to France
For Scarlett and Finland, I don't think I played very well but I tried to abuse the « weaknesses » of my opponents (especially Scarlett and Serral). I don't think I've been so much better than them, but my agression always surprises against Zerg, nobody else play like this in Europe, so it's harder for them to train against that. Then against Korea, to |
of the Negev in Israel in October, and it involved taking a closer look at the outcomes of 4,127 women’s and 4,153 men’s Grand Slam tennis matches. Specifically, researchers took note of how athletes from both genders responded to being put into "a unique setting in which two professionals compete in a real-life contest with high monetary rewards." In a report posted on PsyPost, Dr. Danny Cohen-Zada of BGU's Department of Management said the goal of the study was to see "whether and how much each gender deteriorates or improves at crucial stages" of athletic competitions.
The formula the researchers used to determine how athletes performed under pressure is complicated to say the least—everything from the importance of matches to the rankings of individual players was considered, as you can see here—but the findings of the study indicated that men choked more often than women did when they were under pressure. "Our research showed that men consistently choke under competitive pressure, but with regard to women, the results are mixed," Dr. Mosi Rosenboim of BGU's Department of Management said. "However, even if women show a drop in performance in the more crucial stages of the match, it is still about 50 percent less than that of men."
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At the start of the study, Dr. Cohen-Zada wanted to try and "shed additional light on how men and women respond to competitive pressure and use its conclusions to better understand the labor market." It was a lofty goal, and unfortunately, it doesn't sound like there are necessarily real-world applications to what the researchers found. Dr. Alex Krumer, who worked alongside Dr. Cohen-Zada and Dr. Rosenboim, said there are too many other variables to take into account that don't exist in the sports world.
"For one thing, while we analyzed how female tennis players respond to pressure in a contest that is homogeneous with regard to gender, in the labor market women are required to respond to competitive pressure in a different setting where, for example, they compete with men," Dr. Krumer said. "In addition, tennis players may have different preferences and characteristics that may not necessarily make them a representative subject."
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But Dr. Krumer also explained that future research may show that women handle pressure better than men outside of the sports spectrum, too. "The fact that we have uncovered such robust evidence that women can respond better than men to competitive pressure calls for further investigation in other real-life tournament settings," Dr. Krumer said.
Until then, it looks like the logical next step is to revise all of the "clutch" lists out there ASAP.Among the world's religions, views on masturbation vary widely. Some religions view it as a spiritually detrimental practice, some see it as not spiritually detrimental and others take a situational view. Among these latter religions, some view masturbation as allowable if used as a means towards sexual self-control, or as part of healthy self-exploration, but disallow it if it is done with wrong motives or as an addiction.
According to Björn Krondorfer, "Auto-erotic sex became conceivable as a distinct entity among sexual sins only when the autonomous self emerged."[1] He goes on to cite Laqueur, "Only after the Freudian revolution... did a cultural shift occur. Masturbation was now valued as an adult, non-pathological, pleasurable activity. 'Beginning in the 1950s, picking up energy with the feminism of the 1960s and early 1970s, with the subsequent sex wars, and with the worldwide gay movement of the last quarter of the century, it would become an arena of sexual politics and for art across a wide spectrum of society... Due to this cultural change across the spectrum, even theological reassessments of masturbation as a positive sexual practice were possible – though, admittedly, rare."[1]
A 2016 Psychology Today article stated that the more religious people are, the more likely they are to restrict their sexual fantasies, have fewer sex partners, use less pornography and express stronger disapproval of the use of sex toys.[2]
Abrahamic religions [ edit ]
Biblical scholarship [ edit ]
The biblical story of Onan (Gen. 38) is traditionally linked to referring to masturbation and condemnation thereof,[3] but the sexual act described by this story is coitus interruptus, not masturbation.[4][5][6][7][8] There is no explicit claim in the Bible that masturbation is sinful.[9][10]
According to James Nelson, there are three interpretive examinations why Onan's act is condemned: the Onan story reflects firm "procreative" accent of the Hebrew interpretation regarding sexuality, a constant of the "prescientific mind" to consider that the child is contained in the sperm the same way a plant is contained in its seed, and masturbation as well homosexual acts by men have been condemned more strongly than same acts by women in the Judeo-Christian tradition.[11]
Ilona N. Rashkow states: "it is questionable whether masturbation is considered a category of 'negative' sexual activity in the Hebrew Bible" and that Lev 15:16 "refer to the emission rather than its circumstances."[12] Jones and Jones state James R. Johnson's biblical view on masturbation: "treating a solitary sexual experience, whether wet dream or masturbation, as a purely ceremonial cleanliness issue and not as a matter of morality."[13] They state: "Johnson suggest that Leviticus 15:16-18 should set the tone for our dealing with masturbation. Verses 16 and 17 say that a man who has an emission of semen should wash and be ceremonially unclean until evening. Verse 18 goes on to say that if a man and woman have intercourse, the same cleanliness rules apply. By bringing up intercourse separately, the passage surely does imply that the emission of semen in verses 16 and 17 occurred for the man individually. The passage may be referring to a nocturnal emission, or wet dream, rather than masturbation, but the passage is not specific. Johnson suggests that this Leviticus passage is significant for treating a solitary sexual experience, whether wet dream or masturbation, as a purely ceremonial cleanliness issue and not as a matter of morality. The passage also puts no more disapproval on the solitary experience than it does on intercourse. Since Christians today commonly view the Old Testament ceremonial law as no longer valid, this author suggests that masturbation is not in itself a moral concern from a biblical perspective and is no longer a ceremonial concern either."
T.J. Wray explains what the Bible actually states (and does not state) about masturbation: "Returning to the Levitical list of sexual taboos, curiously missing from the list is any mention of masturbation."[14] Then she goes on discussing Gen 38 and Lev 15 and concludes "None of this, however, represent a clear condemnation of masturbation."[14]
Carl L. Jech stated "Masturbation is never mentioned in the Bible".[15] M.K. Malan and Vern Bullough have stated "nowhere in the Bible is there a clear unchallenged reference to masturbation" and "masturbation is not mentioned in the Bible or Book of Mormon".[16]
According to The Oxford Handbook of Theology, Sexuality, and Gender, some scholars suggest that the word 'hand' in Matthew 5:29-30, Mark 9:42-48, and Matthew 18:6-9 may implies masturbation as in the Mishnah (m. Nid. 2.1).[17]:204 Regarding those biblical passages, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies states Will Deming's view: "The sinning by eye, hand, and foot may come from a tradition of formulaic warnings against lustful gazing (by the eye), masturbation (by hand), and adultery (by 'foot', the Hebrew euphemism for genitalia)."[18] In addition to the eye, Deming argues that "the hand plays a major role in lust as well through masturbation".[19]
Christianity [ edit ]
Today, Roman Catholic (including Eastern Catholic), Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and many Protestant Christians consider masturbation to be a sin.
Early church [ edit ]
Greek Egyptian Church Father Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) writes in his Paedagogus, or The Instructor of Children:
Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted.
Scholars such as Raj Bhala and Kathryn M. Kueny say that Clement's statement includes both coitus interruptus and masturbation, the acts which make "injury to nature".[20] "The use of spermicidal potions" is also included within it, according to Kueny.[21] John G. Younger considers that Clement speaks about masturbation as well "masculine women and effeminate men" in his Paedagogus, make mention of violating the nature "to have sex for any other purpose than to produce children".[22]
However, the dissident Catholic moral theologian Charles E. Curran claimed that "the fathers of the Church are practically silent on the simple question of masturbation".[23] Arthur J. Mielke stated James A. Brundage's view as: "the themes of masturbation and sexual fantasy were unimportant to either pagan or Christian writers until the fourth or fifth centuries" (when the rise of monasticism happened).[24] Nevertheless, Brundage himself states in his book that those writers had not "paid much attention to these matters",[25] and "paid only scant attention to masturbation and homosexual practices",[26] without stating "unimportant".
Catholic academic Giovanni Cappelli undertook a study "concerning the problem of masturbation during the first millennium. Among his conclusions are: (1) Nowhere in the Old Testament or in the New is there an explicit confrontation with the issue of masturbation. (2) Cappelli does not find in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers any mention of masturbation. (3) The first explicit references to masturbation are found in the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic "penitential" of the sixth century where the subject is treated in a practical and juridical way. (4) It would be wrong, however, to interpret the silence of the Fathers about masturbation as a tacit approval of it, or as a virtual indifference."[27] James A. Brundage offers a differing view on the fourth point. He believes that neither pagan nor early Christian writers had paid much attention to these matters because they "apparently considered them trivial"[25]
Thomas Laqueur agrees. He notes that, "The ancient world cared little about the subject; it was a backwater of Jewish and Christian teaching about sexuality. In fact, solitary sex as a serious moral issue can be dated with a precision rare in cultural history; Laqueur identifies it with the publication of the anonymous tract Onania in about 1722. Masturbation is a creation of the Enlightenment, of some of its most important figures, and of the most profound changes it unleashed. It is modern. It worried at first not conservatives, but progressives. It was the first truly democratic sexuality that could be of ethical interest for women as much as for men, for boys and girls as much as for their elders."[28]
This is because Laqueur claims that masturbation "could only be named as such when the'self' emerged as an autonomous being."[1]
Giovanni Cappelli, as quoted by James F. Keenan, argues that as monastic communities developed, the sexual lives of monks came under scrutiny from two theologians, John Cassian (365–433) and Caesarius of Arles (470–543), who commented on the "vices" of the'solitary' life. Cappelli claims that "their concerns were not with the act of masturbation, but with the monks who vowed chastity. The monks' promise made masturbation an illicit act; the act itself was not considered sinful." Keenan adds: "In fact, as Cappelli, Louis Crompton, and James Brundage each observe, prior to Cassian, masturbation was not considered a sexual offence for anyone."[29]
Brundage states in his book that Cassian regards "masturbation and nocturnal pollution central issues in sexual morality and devoted a great deal of attention to both matters". Cassian considers "nocturnal emission" a very important problem as it is an indication of "carnal lust" and, if a monk still has not overcome it, "his religious life and his salvation might well be in peril".[25] In the Conlationes, Cassian uses the word "uncleanness" (immunditia, as written in Collossians 3:5) as an equal substitute for both masturbation and nocturnal emissions, obviously regards masturbation as an unacceptable form of "sexual release".[30] In the De institutis coenobiorum, he gives particular emphasis on "the sin of fornication, which includes masturbation and sexual fantasising".[31] Brundage sees Caesarius holds similar view as Cassian. In his Sermons, Caesarius considers "any sexual longing, to say nothing of deliberate self-stimulation, a serious sin and placed it on an even footing with adultery or excessive indulgence in sex by married persons".[25]
It is known that, prior to the sixth century, the Church's teachings on masturbation and many other moral issues were incoherent. Catholic researchers such as Bernard Hoose and Mark Jordan have found that claims to a continuous teaching by the Church on matters of sexuality, life and death and crime and punishment are "simply not true". Not only was there "inconsistency, contradiction and even incoherence" in the Church's doctrines but the researchers' work has led to the insight that the tradition itself is "not the truth guarantor of any particular teaching."[29]
Eastern Orthodoxy [ edit ]
The Eastern Orthodox Church or Orthodox Christian Church views sexuality as a gift from God that finds its fulfillment in the marital relationship, and therefore the misuse of the gift of human sexuality is sinful. Because the act of masturbation is self-directed, and by its nature is incapable of expressing love and concern for another person, it is viewed as a distortion of the use of the gift of sexuality. This is especially apparent when masturbation becomes an addiction. In the least, the practice of self-pleasure is viewed as not honoring the purpose of God's gift of sexuality.[32]
The sexual sins of fornication, adultery and masturbation, as well as hatred, jealousy, drunkenness and other sins are considered to be sins of the heart as much as the body. It is thought that turning away from sexual sin is turning away from self-indulgence for the purpose of self gratification. Instead of turning to the desires of the flesh, the Orthodox Christian turns to the Holy Spirit, whose fruit is believed to be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.[33]
Talking about the Egyptian Gnostics related to his previous experience with them, Epiphanius of Salamis (310/320 – 403), a Byzantine Church Father and Doctor of the Church, states in his Panarion, or Medicine Chest:
They exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption.[34]
John T. Noonan, Jr. says that the Gnostics described by Epiphanius practiced "nonprocreative sexual acts" as a centre in their religious rituals. Epiphanius calls these practices, which include coitus interruptus, masturbation, and homosexual acts, as "the rites and ceremonies of the devil".[34] Shenoute (348-466), other Byzantines which is considered a saint in Oriental Orthodoxy, views masturbation as a sexual "misconduct"[35] and an "outright illicit sexual activity".[36]
Oriental Orthodoxy [ edit ]
The Coptic Orthodox Church views masturbation as a sin because it is regarded as a "form of sexual pleasure outside of God's design".[37]
Roman Catholicism [ edit ]
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church teaches:
By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved." To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.[38]
Although "it is said that psychology and sociology show that [masturbation] is a normal phenomenon of sexual development, especially among the young," this does not change the fact that it "is an intrinsically and seriously disordered act" and "that, whatever the motive for acting this way, the deliberate use of the sexual faculty outside normal conjugal relations essentially contradicts the finality of the faculty. For it lacks the sexual relationship called for by the moral order, namely the relationship which realizes 'the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love.'"[39]
This is because the deliberate use of the sexual faculty outside of marriage is, according to the teaching of the Church, contrary to its primary purpose of procreation and unification of the husband and wife within the sacrament of marriage.[40] In addition, the Church teaches that all other sexual activity—including masturbation, homosexual acts, acts of sodomy, all sex outside of or before marriage (fornication), and the use of any form of contraception or birth control—is gravely disordered,[39] as it frustrates the natural order, purpose, and ends of sexuality.[41] To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.[42]
The Roman Catholic Church's official condemnation on masturbation for example: Pope Leo IX's Ad splendidum nitentis (1054),[43] the decree of the Holy Office dated 2 March 1679,[44] Pope Pius XII's Allocutio (Oct 8th, 1953),[45] and Acta Apostolicae Sedis 48 dated 19 May 1956.[46]
Scholars such as Robert Baker and Simon Lienyueh Wei believe that Augustine of Hippo (354–430), regards masturbation as a sin.[47][48][49] Other scholars, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks and Carly Daniel-Hughes, say that Augustine condemns all sexual activities that contrary to procreation including homosexual acts and masturbation—or "solitary pleasure".[50][51] Carly says that Augustine also regards "mutual masturbation" as "unnatural intercourse" based on Romans 1.[51] Isidore of Seville, another Latin Church Father and Doctor of the Church, regards masturbation as an "effeminate" habit,[52][53] though the early penitential writers seem not particularly concur with him.[54] In his Etymologiae (c. 600–625), Isidore says that by masturbation a man dishonor "the vigor of his sex by his languid body".[53]
According to Simon Lienyueh Wei, as cited by some scholars, John Cassian and Augustine of Hippo hold that it is a sin if the emission is the outcome of "a lustful encounter or pleasurable recollection"; otherwise, it is seen as "a physical function".[48][49]
Aurélie Godefroy explains that masturbation has not always been perceived as a "mortal sin" classified as sexual deviance.[55]
Mark W. Elliott says that Pope Gregory I (c. 540 – 604)—commonly known as Gregory the Great, a Latin Church Father and Doctor of the Church—treats Leviticus 15, which discusses ritual defilement, as "providing rules for all in the church community by relating emission to that of sexual intercourse rather than the previous monastic 'nocturnal emission' interpretation.... He does, however, specify that nocturnal emissions—if caused by natural superfluity or sickness—are unproblematic for holiness, but where there is consent (i.e., masturbation) they are problematic."[56] Making a parallel between women's menstruation and "the involuntary loss of semen", Gregory declares that "natural superfluities" do not prevent both laity and clergy to participate in the Eucharist.[57]
Canon 8 of the Synod of the Grove of Victory from the 6th century imposes penances for "he who [has relations] between the thighs, [three] years. However, if by one's own hand or the hand of another, two years."[58] Those acts refer to "mutual masturbation" and "femoral fornication".[59] Another earliest set of rules which also prescribes penances for masturbation are Excerpts from the Book of St. David[60] and Canons of John the Faster.[61][62] Later, many early penitentials, such as Penitential of Finnian, Penitential of Columban, Penitential of Cummean, Paenitentiale Theodori, Paenitentiale Bedae, and the two "synods of Saint Patrick", impose penances with different levels of severity for masturbation (alone or in company) to monastics and laity.[17]:299[48][58][60][63][64]
From the sixth to the eleventh century, there are more references in the penitentials to masturbation, but it is considered with much more indulgence than the other sins of flesh. In the penitential written by Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus (seventh century), for example, "the penance is from seven days for the cleric who poured out his seed without touching himself, up to fifty days for the one who voluntarily masturbates spread in a church. Fifty days may seem a lot, but it's tiny when you know that at the same time, a young man touching a virgin woman gets a full year."[55]
After the turn of the first millennium, more theologians began to condemn masturbation in an increasingly strident manner. Peter Damian, a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, in his Book of Gomorrah addressed to Pope Leo IX, wrote that masturbation is the lowest grade of homosexual sin. If left unchecked, it can "ascend by grades" to "fondling each other's male parts" (mutual masturbation), which can lead one to "fornicate between the thighs" (femoral intercourse) "or even in the rear" (anal intercourse).[65] Thomas Aquinas, a popular Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, writes that masturbation is an "unnatural vice," which is a species of lust like bestiality, sodomy, and pederasty, and that "by procuring pollution [i.e., ejaculation apart from intercourse], without any copulation, for the sake of venereal pleasure … pertains to the sin of 'uncleanness' which some call 'effeminacy' [Latin: mollitiem, lit.'softness, unmanliness']."[66]
Pope Leo IX himself condemned masturbation more clearly, from which time it was traditionally perceived as a mortal sin, classified as a sexual deviance. But tolerance continued to be great, as the historian François Lebrun notes: "It is significant to note that [masturbation] [...] is of all sins against nature the only one that does not appear never in the list of reserved cases, that is to say, whose absolution is, in view of their gravity, reserved for the bishop alone. Is it not proof that it is far too common for every priest to have the possibility of absolving it immediately without referring to his superior?"[55]
In the late medieval period, Jean Gerson wrote a confessional manual called On the Confession of Masturbation.[67] According to researcher Chloe Taylor, this manual tells clerics to "insist that (male) penitents admit to the sin of masturbation, which... was deemed... [by this time to be an] even more serious sin than raping a nun, incest, or abducting and raping virgins and wives however more common and indeed universal (among males) a sin it was assumed to be, judging from the incredulity with which deniers of masturbation were instructed to be met..."[68]
Taylor goes on to note that "Medieval theologians recognized that by inquiring in... suggestive detail, and with... leading questions, they ran the risk of teaching sinful behaviors to penitents who had not previously been aware of the full range of sexual possibilities available to them. They deduced, however that it was worth teaching a few young penitents how to masturbate in order to save the greater number who were already masturbating without confessing to it." She notes that, according to Gerson's book, "Even once the penitent has admitted his sin the priest is not to be satisfied, and is to ask for further details... Particularly remarkable are the instructions that the priest feign a certain casualness, and that he address the confessant with a disarming affection, calling him "friend" and pretending that masturbation is neither sinful nor shameful in order to make the penitent admit to it, insinuating that he can relate to the penitent's acts—"Friend, I well believe it"—only to then backtrack and condemn the act as sinful and shameful after all."[68]
The laity did not undertake regular confession at this time but, "For those such as the ordained and the scrupulous who did undergo frequent and rigorous confessional examination, the obligation to confess in circumstances such as Gerson describes for even the most routine and private of sins such as masturbation came to cause anxiety... Early medieval penance was only for grave sins, but now the most mundane of sins could be given excruciating attention."[68]
The Roman Catholic Church accused Albigensians of masturbation as part of their propaganda campaign against them.[69]
Brundage notes that medieval "penitentials occasionally mentioned female autoeroticism and lesbianism. They treated female masturbation in much the same way as the male act, although they were more censorious of female sexual play that involved dildos and other mechanical aids than they were of male use of mechanical devices in masturbation."[70]
Pierre Humbert states, "During the Middle Ages, masturbation - so-called "softness" - was considered an unnatural sin, but for the vast majority of theologians, priests and confessors, the offense was much less serious than fornication, adultery or sodomy; and they generally preferred not to talk too much about it so as not to suggest its existence to those who did not know about it."[71]
According to Aurélie Godefroy, "In fact, until the eighteenth century, masturbation did not hold much of a place in the Catholic imagination, where it was most often referred to as simple interruptus coitus", while Protestants treated it much more seriously as a major deviation.[55]
Talking about the dissident Catholic theologian Charles Curran, James J. Walter and Timothy E. O'Connell said that "as long ago as 1968, Curran used the idea [of fundamental option] as a way to make sense of the fact that the Catholic tradition has long held that masturbation is an objectively serious misuse of human sexuality even though statistical evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of human persons — including many whose behavior otherwise suggests a generous and loving approach to life — engage in this behavior. What shall we make of this paradox?... Curran suggests that for various reasons the assertion that masturbation involves "objectively grave matter" is not convincing. In this regard, his argument is about the objective character of the action and not the nature of the moral person."[72] Later, Curran stated in his works: "Generally speaking I believe masturbation is wrong since it fails to integrate sexuality into the service of love. Masturbation indicates a failure at a total integration of sexuality in the person. This wrongness is not always grave; in fact, more times it is not.... Catholic educators should openly teach that masturbation is not always a grave matter and most times, especially for adolescents, is not that important.... However, the teacher should not leave the adolescent with the impression that there is absolutely nothing wrong with masturbation."[73][74] In 1986, Curran was banned to teach Catholic theology by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, because of his teachings on "contraception, sterilization, masturbation, divorce, and homosexuality".[75]
A study[76] commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) in 1972 but not approved by its board of directors when published in 1977, titled Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought, showed that a number of dissident Catholic theologians have come to hold that an act of masturbation should not be judged as an objective moral evil, but assessed within the life context of the person involved. Authors of the book hold similar position as Curran's, not saying that masturbation is not a sin, only that "not every deliberately willed act of masturbation necessarily constitutes the grave matter required for mortal sin."[27]:3 Reaction to the 1977 study showed that the dissent was not unanimous, brought about controversies inside the CTSA itself.[77][78]:73 In 1979, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith publicised an advisory that deplored the books's "erroneous conclusions", identified "numerous misreadings of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council" in it, and said that the book diminished "the morality of sexual love to a matter of 'personal sentiments, feelings, [and] customs....'"[78]:74[79] George Weigel restates that "these theological errors led to practical guidelines that 'either dissociate themselves from or directly contradict Catholic teaching' as taught by the Church's highest teaching authority."[78]:74
While Curran might say that masturbation could be morally acceptable on certain conditions, according to Richard A. Spinello, Pope John Paul II does not say that masturbation is always immoral because "the physical act itself is wrong and disordered". He does not examine the physical act as the sole basis for moral judgment. In Veritatis splendor, John Paul II holds that "the morality of the human act" is judged by considering what one chooses rationally by "the deliberate will", and by "the proximate end". In his encyclical, he writes: "In order to be able to grasp the object of an act which specifies that act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person."[80] Masturbation not always incurs grave sin, or mortal sin, but it can not be said that masturbation is not "gravely wrong" nor constitutes "grave matter".[81] Joseph Farraher concludes that masturbation incurs venial sin in case "the act is performed with only partial realization or only partial choice of the will", or, in Harvey's words, "no grievous sin... while lacking in awareness, as when he is half awake, or half asleep, or when a person is carried away by sudden passion and finds himself committing the act despite the resistance of the will".[82]
In his attempt to explain John Paul II's Theology of the Body, Anthony Percy writes in his book that "pornography and masturbation represent the destruction of the symbolic and nuptial meaning of the human body.... God gives all men and women erotic energy. We call it the sex drive. This is good and it forms part of that attraction between men and women, which itself forms part of the nuptial meaning of the body. Sexual energy, therefore, needs to find its outlet in love, not lust.... In masturbation that erotic energy is turned in on oneself.... Masturbation, therefore, is a symbol, not of love, but of loneliness."[83] Jeffrey Tranzillo adds to explain: "Whenever man and woman employ the body to simulate love or authenticity for reasons that are ultimately self-serving and hence destructive of self and others, they falsify the language it was created to speak. That is what underlies the sin of adultery." He says that "such misuse of the body also underlies other sexual sins like contraception, masturbation, fornication, and homosexual acts".[84]
Protestantism [ edit ]
According to Brian F. Linnane, "until the twentieth century, the actual moral norms for sexual behavior were similar for both Protestants and Roman Catholics, although the justifications for these norms might... be quite dissimilar... For both groups, sexual expression was confined to lifetime, monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Premarital sex, adultery, homosexual relations, masturbation, and the use of birth control were all proscribed by the Christian churches".[85] Rainer Brandes notes, "For a long time Protestant theology has placed sexuality exclusively at the service of reproduction."[86][87] Adrian Thatcher says that Protestants historically regarded masturbation as a sin, though they "appeal directly to the Bible whenever possible".[88]
Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther, the founder of the Lutheran Churches, as well as John Calvin, the founder of the Reformed Churches, condemned masturbation in their works.[89] Likewise, a forerunner of the reformers, Girolamo Savonarola, believed that masturbation was a mortal sin.[90]
Lutheranism [ edit ]
Martin Luther, the founder of the Lutheran Churches regarded masturbation to be immoral. He wrote that he "pitied those poor girls and young men who are tormented in the flesh at night."[91]
Luther saw masturbation as a sin more terrible than heterosexual rape since such rape was considered to be "in accordance with nature", while masturbation was "unnatural".[92] He also viewed masturbation and coitus interruptus the same act as killing children before they have a chance to be born, therefore, for him, masturbation was basically the same as abortion.[93] The Roman Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas, also thought masturbation was worse than rape.[94]
Luther argued that the marital act is a way to avoid the sin of masturbation: "Nature never lets up... we are all driven to the secret sin. To say it crudely but honestly, if it doesn't go into a woman, it goes into your shirt."[95]
Luther, citing the apostle Paul, makes his case: "“For is it better to marry than to be aflame with passion.” I have no doubt that everyone who wants to live chastely, though unmarried and without special grace for it, will understand these words and what they convey. For St. Paul is not speaking of secret matters, but of the common, known feeling of all those who live chastely outside of marriage but do not have the grace to accomplish it. For he ascribes this flaming with passion to all who live chastely but without the necessary grace, and prescribes no other medicine than marriage. If it were no so common or if there were none other advice to be given, he would not have recommended marriage. This thing is known in German as “the secret disease,” but this expression would not be so common either if the ailment were truly rare... There can also be no doubt that those who have the grace of chastity still at times feel evil desires and are tempted. But it is transitory, therefore their problem is not this burning. In short, “aflame with passion” is the heat of the flesh, which rages without ceasing, and daily attraction to woman or to man; we find this wherever there is not desire and love for chastity. People without this heat are just as few and far between as are those who have God’s grace for chastity. Now such heat is stronger in some, and weaker in others. Some among them suffer so severely that they masturbate. All these ought to be in the married estate... If they relieve themselves outside of marriage, then the pangs of conscience are soon there, and this is the most unbearable torment and the most miserable of earthly estates. This is the unavoidable result, that most of those who live without marriage and without grace in celibacy are forced to sin bodily in unchastity, and the others are forced to outward chastity and inward unchastity. The former must needs lead a damnable life, the latter an unholy useless one. And where are the spiritual and secular rulers who consider the plight of these poor souls? Every day they are helping the devil to increase this misery with their pressures and compulsion."[96]
In his writing on 1 Thessalonians 4:3–5 ("It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God;"), Luther advises that, "All young people should... resolve to strengthen themselves against lust and sexual passions by reading and meditating on a psalm or some other portion of God's Word... If your sexual appetites continually tempt you, be patient. Resist them as long as necessary, even if it takes more than a year. But above all, keep praying! If you feel that you can't stand it any longer, pray that God will give you a devout spouse with whom you can live in harmony and true love... I have known many people who, because of their crude and shameful fantasies, indulged their passion with unrestrained lust. Because of their insatiable desires, they abandoned self control, and lapsed into terrible immorality. In the end, they had to endure dreadful punishment."[97]
Immanuel Kant, (who was raised as a Pietist), when writing on masturbation, argued that, "... the question here is whether the human being is subject to a duty to himself with regard to this enjoyment, violation of which is a defiling (not merely a debasing)" of the humanity in his own person. The impetus to this pleasure is called carnal lust (or also simply lust). The vice engendered through it is called lewdness; the virtue with regard to this sensuous impulse is called chastity, which is to be represented here as a duty of the human being to himself. Lust is called unnatural if one is aroused to it not by a real object but by |
of the character you see below. That means we now have three Thors!
The identity of this "Ultimate" Thor promises to be very interesting and appears to be a mystery which Marvel will tease us with for a while (as they did with Jane Foster). The hero - villain? - will be introduced in The Mighty Thor #20 in June and he looks extremely formidable. Given the white beard and the fact one eye is blacked out, I'm going to place my money on this being Odin! Thoughts?
THE SAGA OF THE ALL-NEW ULTIMATE THOR STARTS HERE! • The Ultimate Thor died defending the Multiverse, but his hammer remains. Who will hold the hammer now? • War is coming to the Ten Realms. Can the new Ultimate Thor keep back the bloody tide?John Dunsworth, a Nova Scotia actor best known as the irreverent trailer park supervisor Jim Lahey, has died at the age of 71.
Dunsworth played Mr. Lahey on Trailer Park Boys, and is also known for his portrayal of Dave Teagues in the series Haven.
"With heavy and broken hearts the family of John F. Dunsworth would like to let people know that our amazing husband, father and grandfather John Dunsworth has passed away," his daughter Sarah Dunsworth said in a statement to CBC News.
"John left this world peacefully after a short and unexpected illness," her statement said.
I am beyond devastated. John was a beautiful guy. Brilliant and fascinating. I am forever grateful for having known him. RIP my friend. <a href="https://t.co/tPcyvXIRDy">https://t.co/tPcyvXIRDy</a> —@MSmithBubbles
Longtime theatre actor in Halifax
Born in Bridgewater, N.S., he was a part in the Nova Scotia theatre and acting community for decades.
Born in Bridgewater, N.S., John Dunsworth was a part in the Nova Scotia theatre and acting community for decades. (John Dunsworth/Facebook)
While growing up in Halifax, Dunsworth "didn't have the foggiest notion" he would become an actor, he once told CBC's At the Table.
He moved to Toronto in the mid-'60s, and began performing on stage while attending the University of Guelph.
"I decided then and there that I don't care if I go broke in my life, I am going to be an actor, because I love to live in other people's shoes and learn other [existences]," he told CBC in the 2010 interview.
Sad news to lose John Dunsworth. His wild passion for acting was matched by his love of life and family. One of Canada’s greatest. —@MikeClattenburg
In the '80s, long before Mr. Lahey became a household name, Dunsworth started a casting agency because he said there were so few film opportunities in Nova Scotia. He said that allowed him to go to auditions, and later he helped actors such as Halifax's Ellen Page find work.
He said he did everything from building sets to voiceovers, but always believed in the potential of the film industry in Nova Scotia.
"We'd be way better off if we nurtured our own talent and allowed it to flourish here," he said in 2010.
So sad. RIP John Dunsworth. One of the finest men and most brilliant actors I’ve ever had the honor to work with. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrailerParkBoys?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TrailerParkBoys</a> —@TomArnold
Tour was scheduled
Over the years, Dunsworth appeared in dozens of television shows and movies. He had played Mr. Lahey since 2001 and toured with actor Patrick Roach, who appeared as the trailer park's assistant manager. They were scheduled to perform this week in Florida, but the shows were cancelled earlier Monday.
Unlike his best-known character, Dunsworth didn't drink and advocated against video lottery terminals, motivated by his own battle with a gambling addiction.Car of the Future
PBS Airdate: April 22, 2008
NARRATOR: Eight hundred million cars. If you put them bumper to bumper, they'd circle the Earth about 100 times. That's how many cars are on the road today. They come in all shapes and colors, but have one thing in common.
DAVID L. GREENE (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) : Our transportation system is almost entirely fueled by petroleum, more than 95 percent. A quarter of all the petroleum ever consumed in the history of the world was consumed in the last 10 years. So we're consuming it at an accelerating rate.
JOHN B. HEYWOOD (Sloan Automotive Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) : What is scary is that projections suggest that by 2050 there'll be two billion vehicles, two and a half times as many as there are today.
NARRATOR: Many experts agree there's an energy shortage and soaring gas prices looming in the future, not to mention, melting ice caps from global warming and national security threats from dependence on foreign oil.
TOM MAGLIOZZI (Automobile Mechanic/Co-Host, Car Talk ) : Can I change the station?
RAY MAGLIOZZI (Automobile Mechanic/Co-Host, Car Talk ) : No, you can't. This is important stuff.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: This is scaring me. I don't like it any more.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, come on. Don't be such a sissy.
NARRATOR: Two brothers have embarked on a quest.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Where are we?
RAY MAGLIOZZI: I don't know. We're not in Kansas any more, I can tell you that.
NARRATOR: They want to find out what's being done right now that will keep our cars moving in the future.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Stand back!
NARRATOR: They're testing new technology and alternative fuels, and they're getting behind the wheels of vehicles that might take us down a new and different road.
Join Click and Clack, the guys from Car Talk, on their search for the Car of the Future, right now on NOVA.
DOUG BERMAN (Producer, Car Talk ) : Okay, let's go. Stand by.
Ready? Open them up.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Hello, and welcome to Car Talk, from National Public Radio with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. Are you ready to take a call?
TOM MAGLIOZZI: I'm ready.
NARRATOR: For 30 years, Tom and Ray Magliozzi have helped radio listeners solve their automotive problems.
CAR TALK CALLER: I have a Ford Ranger pickup, and I love the truck, but I hate the gas mileage it gets.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Well, see, if you drove less you'd like it better.
NARRATOR: Today, Click and Clack have a car problem of their own.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: I don't think so, man. It's not going to start.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Come on, it'll start.
NARRATOR: Tom's beloved roadster, a '52 MG, is back in the shop.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, it sounds like a sick cow. No, you know, this car's done for. It really is time to move on and look for another vehicle. This isn't going to do it nymore.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Well, what could be better than this?
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Almost anything.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: But where would I find another car?
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Take a wild guess.
NARRATOR: To replace a relic from the past, Tom and Ray head for Detroit, searching for the car of the future.
Each year in the Motor City, carmakers shop their latest models in what must be the world's largest showroom. It's a sideshow Vegas would envy.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Pretty damn spectacular show.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Sure is. Let's go find your dream car. Let's go find the car of the future, or maybe the car of your future.
I thought you were interested in these models.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: I am.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: I meant the cars.
How many horsepower is this thing, guys? You must know, right?
CAR SHOW ATTENDEE: What is this, 5...?
CAR SHOW SALESPERSON: Yeah, 500.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: A mere 500.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Looks like my MG.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Yeah, right!
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Not the MG engine, the whole MG!
RAY MAGLIOZZI: This is an absurd amount of horsepower to have in anything, I would think.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Ridiculous.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: But...
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Absolutely ridiculous and stupid.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: But people want to buy them...
TOM MAGLIOZZI: They're whackos!
NARRATOR: To lure buyers, cars and trucks have become bigger and more powerful every year. Since 1985, average vehicle weight has increased 1,000 pounds. Horsepower has almost doubled.
JOSEPH B. WHITE ( Wall Street Journal ) : If you look anywhere in the world, not just the United States, you look anywhere in the world, people will buy the most horsepower they can afford. There's something kind of primal and elemental about having a powerful machine at your beck and call and at your command. The car companies know this; they're selling emotion. If we just needed an appliance to get from A to B, we'd all be driving around in Toyota Corollas.
NARRATOR: As weight and horsepower increase, cars are consuming more gasoline than ever before, despite its growing cost. Even a former Texas oilman seems to get it.
GEORGE W. BUSH (President of the United States, 2003) : For too long our nation has been dependent on foreign oil, and this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes and to terrorists.
AMORY B. LOVINS (Rocky Mountain Institute) : Think about where your money goes when you put your credit card in the pump. Some of your oil money is going directly to arm people who are trying to kill us.
NARRATOR: Burning oil is also changing the chemistry of the atmosphere.
AMORY LOVINS: Coming out of your tailpipe are all those carbon dioxide molecules. Those go up in the air. They'll stay there for about a hundred years, messing up the climate.
NARRATOR: Increased carbon emissions are creating climate changes that scientists warn us are dangerous.
DAVID GREENE: We're going to have to find other sources of energy to power the transportation system. And we're going to have to make it more energy-efficient at the same time.
NARRATOR: The Alt.Wheels Festival, in Boston, is a different kind of car show that celebrates alternative energy and efficient transportation. If the Detroit car show is about primal thrills, Alt.Wheels is about social responsibility and concern for future.
Like the green movement itself, Alt.Wheels is small, but bursting with enthusiasm about every conceivable technology that might curb our dependence on oil, including, perhaps, Tom's dream car.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: I love it!
RAY MAGLIOZZI: This is right up your alley. I can tell, as soon as I saw this, that this is the kind of vehicle...
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Yeah, that's me, man.
RAY MAGLIOZZI:...that you would love.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: What makes it run?
ALT WHEELS EXHIBITOR: The motor scooter.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: It's got a gas, it's got a gasoline engine that's running, yeah?
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Oh, it's got a gasoline engine.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: So, the only alternative about this is that it's dangerous.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Where's the accelerator?
RAY MAGLIOZZI: This is the accelerator.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Is there a reverse?
RAY MAGLIOZZI: No. Stop!
NARRATOR: Creating the car of the future is no small feat. Whatever their environmental benefit, we expect our cars to be reliable, practical and safe.
The car of the future also needs to store a lot of energy in a small space. And nothing does this better than petroleum, which comes from plants and tiny plankton, like these, that were buried in mud millions of years ago. Over time, these ancient fossils were transformed into energy-rich molecules of hydrogen and carbon, or hydrocarbons, that are refined into gasoline.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: And you're getting a hundred miles a gallon? It doesn't seem like quite enough to justify the danger.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: This is the kind of car you want to leave to your first wife.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: How you doing?
BOB, FORD REPRESENTATIVE: Hi, guys.
NARRATOR: Car companies have great hopes that hydrogen will someday replace carbon and power cars that are emissions free.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: So you fill up the tank. The tank must be in the back.
BOB, FORD REPRESENTATIVE: Yeah.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Right. One tank?
BOB, FORD REPRESENTATIVE: One tank.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Can we see it?
NARRATOR: These companies have invested billions to produce small fleets of prototypes like this one.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Now, if you've got a very narrow suitcase here, you're in good shape.
BOB, FORD REPRESENTATIVE: You're in good shape, right.
NARRATOR: But until more hydrogen cars are on the road, it'll be hard to find places to fill the tank.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: But they're not going to start investing in making the fuel available unless they have a commitment from Ford and the other companies that they're going to.... It's a chicken and the egg kind of thing. I mean, you have to start building the cars and...
BOB, FORD REPRESENTATIVE: Exactly, you've got to get those chickens out there before the, before the eggs, so the...
TOM MAGLIOZZI: So the chickens are first? This is a time honored question. This is an age old question you're about to answer here.
NARRATOR: This chicken and egg question has no clear answer. History shows that cars and gasoline evolved together over many, many years.
BETH LOWERY (General Motors, Vice President, Environment and Energy) : There's about 170,000 gas stations in the country now, so we have a very established infrastructure of internal combustion engine that everybody knows and loves in their vehicles today. And they go to the local gas station and they fill up their gas tank. And that's a system we know.
JOSEPH ROMM (Center for Energy and Climate Solutions) : We have a fueling infrastructure of gasoline that was built over the course of many decades. And it has been paid off a long time ago, and it is delivering gasoline very cheaply. So to deliver an alternative fuel other than gasoline is no mean feat.
NARRATOR: Changing an economy based on petroleum is an almost insurmountable task. But a small island nation is hoping to do to do just that.
Iceland has a thousand times fewer people and cars than the U.S. Still, rush hour in Reykjavik is no joke. In a country where gas costs almost eight dollars a gallon, Iceland's dream is to stop importing oil by replacing conventional cars with hydrogen vehicles, if and when they come to market. In the meantime, a small fleet of buses has been warming the population to the new technology.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: This is a nice bus, but it's a bus.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Yes, it is the bus. Yeah, it's just a bus. Oh, yeah. No, there's nothing different about it except that it's a fuel cell bus, which is pretty interesting.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Yeah, but it sounds the same.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: No smell, though; have you noticed that?
TOM MAGLIOZZI: No smell.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: No smell, which is very nice, especially in the city.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: There's a little smell, but I think that's you.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: When we go back to the station, can we see you refuel the bus?
REYKJEVIK BUS DRIVER: Yes.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Is there a brick wall we can stand behind?
REYKJEVIK BUS DRIVER: If you dare.
NARRATOR: Like gasoline, hydrogen is volatile stuff. Remember the Hindenburg? That disaster almost ruined hydrogen's reputation for good. But at the world's first public hydrogen fueling station, it's stored safely in pressurized tanks.
Let's hope so anyway.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Wait, I want to get a look at this.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Okay. Go ahead. We're not afraid.
REYKJEVIK BUS DRIVER: Really? You look like chickens.
NARRATOR: Pressurized hydrogen is pumped into storage tanks on the roof of the bus, where it's combined with oxygen in layers of thin membranes called fuel cells. Hydrogen atoms are broken apart, releasing electrons that flow through a circuit, providing electricity that propels the bus. The only emission is water vapor.
DAVID GREENE: There's been a lot of progress in the technology, but hydrogen vehicles are not anywhere near ready for the market yet. They're too expensive, the fuel cells are not durable enough, and, of course, we have problems with how do you store sufficient amount of hydrogen on board the vehicle.
NARRATOR: Iceland prides itself on helping to improve this technology by testing it every day.
JíN BJíRN SKíLASON (Icelandic New Energy Ltd.) : You go to a small society like Iceland where a lot of things are simpler than a big society like the U.S. or Europe, you can actually test things out here. That's actually how we think we can help the world.
NARRATOR: While vehicles are tested in Reykjavik, the fueling infrastructure is being developed in the countryside. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but doesn't exist in pure form. It's made by splitting water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, and that takes energy. Iceland gets this energy from water that flows from melting glaciers and from steam that rises from the ground.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Where are we?
RAY MAGLIOZZI: I don't know. We're not in Kansas any more, I can tell you that. But there's steam coming up out of the ground.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: This is so weird.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: How do I look?
TOM MAGLIOZZI: You look marvelous. This is something.
NARRATOR: Iceland itself was created by volcanoes erupting from a crack between two plates on the Earth's surface. Power plants harness this geothermal energy to generate electricity that can be used to make hydrogen.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Why is Iceland engaged in this geothermal power project, so to speak?
ALBERT ALBERTSSON (Svartsengi Power Plant) : You know, geothermal and hydro is Iceland's oil, actually. And, you know, Iceland is straddling two tectonic plates, the North American plate and the Eurasian plate. And gentlemen, we are just in the middle of the two plates.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Move over a couple of feet. You might be sitting in a bad spot.
ALBERT ALBERTSSON: There is enough renewable energy sources in Iceland to produce all the hydrogen this nation needs.
NARRATOR: Someday Iceland may harness volcanoes to power cars, but the transition to hydrogen could take 50 years.
JíN BJíRN SKíLASON: A 50-year timeframe is not a long timeframe, actually. When you talk about a full energy paradigm shift in 50 years, that means a lot, a lot of changes for society.
NARRATOR: New technology does not spring full-grown from the womb. And it's too soon to tell if and when hydrogen transportation will come of age. But Iceland's efforts may bring us closer to the answer.
DAVID GREENE: They have vast amounts of renewable energy available to them and a very small population. There's no way, today, we can do what they're doing. But we will learn from their experience. We're going to gain from this effort that they're making.
NARRATOR: The future of hydrogen may be shaped here, but for automakers, its greatest potential lies in larger countries where transportation systems are not yet developed. In China, bicycles are vanishing quickly. Experts predict that in two decades China will have the same number of cars as the U.S. and gas stations are racing to keep up.
BETH LOWERY: In China, we don't have a gas station on every corner. And we're looking at opportunities for fuel cells and hydrogen infrastructure in economies, such as China, where you're not taking over an entire infrastructure and trying to start all over again.
NARRATOR: But for developed nations like the U.S., is there some alternative to gasoline that doesn't involve reinventing the wheel?
It could be ethanol, or E85. Like gasoline it's a hydrocarbon, but government studies show it produces 25 percent less greenhouse emissions. Ethanol is made from corn sugar. If Iceland has volcanoes, we've got cornfields, which can be harvested year after year. In Brazil, ethanol produced from sugar cane now provides 40 percent of the nation's motor fuel.
CHEVROLET COMMERCIAL: What if cars and trucks could be fueled by corn?
NARRATOR: Flex fuel vehicles that can burn ethanol and gasoline don't cost much more than conventional cars. So that's all the good news.
Now the bad news:
JOSEPH ROMM: It's not that great for the environment. It's, it's very energy-intensive to grow corn and extract energy from it.
NARRATOR: Fossil fuels are used to make fertilizer and pesticides to help corn grow and are also needed to ferment corn sugar. Some critics claim it takes more energy to make ethanol than you get out of it, while others caution that we can never grow enough corn to meet demands.
DAVID GREENE: There's simply not enough of it, and we need a lot of it for food. So that's not going to be the solution, but it's going to be part of the solution, I think.
NARRATOR: Still, ethanol does have great potential.
LEE R. LYND (Mascoma Corporation) : There's really not much question, this is a good motor fuel. The question is, how inexpensively can we make it, and how much of it can we make?
NARRATOR: For 20 years, Lee Lynd has been trying to answer these questions. And, like many, he believes the solution involves something else besides corn.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Don't go down here. It's dangerous down there. It's this way. Pay attention, will you?
Lee. Hey, how are you?
LEE R. LYND: Great. How are you?
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Hey, did you bring the corn?
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Well, of course I brought the corn.
LEE R. LYND: You guys are armed and dangerous.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Look, we're down to about a quarter of a tank. Will this be enough to get us home? If not, we have a couple of cans of Jolly Green Giant Niblets out there, too. Maybe we can...
LEE R. LYND: We're looking at making ethanol, and we're looking at making it from a different part of the plant. So the actual corn ethanol comes from the seeds, same stuff we would eat, same stuff we'd feed the cattle. And there's a lot of the rest of the corn plant, and there's also a lot of other kinds of plants that can be grown. And what we're interested in is called cellulosic biomass, not a household word, perhaps.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Yet.
LEE R. LYND: Not yet, thank you. And so...
TOM MAGLIOZZI: But right now, what we use is the kernel.
LEE R. LYND: Is the kernel, right there, yep.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Those guys.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Now what's the difference between cellulosic biomass and the kernels here?
LEE R. LYND: Good question. This is cellulosic biomass, the cob, in here, is cellulosic biomass, and the whole stalk that held this up...
RAY MAGLIOZZI: So everything that isn't the niblets is cellulosic biomass.
LEE R. LYND: There you go, exactly.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: It's the stuff that we would ordinarily throw away.
NARRATOR: Cellulosic biomass is the woody structure that props up the plant. It's found in waste products like wood chips, paper sludge, wheat straw and corn stalks, as well as switchgrass, a native plant that grows without fertilizer and pesticides. Like all plants, switchgrass pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to grow. When the grass becomes ethanol that's burned under the hood, the carbon dioxide is released back into the air and reabsorbed by the next crop of grass. If cellulosic ethanol can be manufactured without burning fossil fuel, net carbon emissions are, essentially, zero.
LEE R. LYND: This is nothing but ground-up corn stalks right here.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, it is?
LEE R. LYND: This stuff is less expensive, very cost-effective raw material. So you might say, "Well, why aren't we doing this already?" Answer? Converting this stuff, the cellulosic biomass, into ethanol, is more difficult than converting...
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Ah.
LEE R. LYND: This stuff.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: So how do you make it? Can you take us to the lab and show us?
LEE R. LYND: I'd love to. Come on in.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: You're not going to kill us afterwards, are you? I'm afraid if we learn too much it might be dangerous.
LEE R. LYND: So, the question is, "How do we do this?" And it starts off with microorganisms, very small living things that you can only see with a microscope.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: What's the big thing? It looks like Tom's car.
LEE R. LYND: That is a lump of cellulose. And you'll notice that attached to it there are the same sort of black rods. Those are bacteria that are adhered to the cellulose. In fact, there are some more of them on that little particle there.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: They're doing a job on him.
LEE R. LYND: Yeah, they're kind of ganging up on that little...
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, yeah, he's in trouble.
NARRATOR: These microbes are tearing cellulose apart, releasing sugar compounds locked within. In fermentation tanks, another microbial species turns that sugar into ethanol. Lynd's goal is to combine genetic material from the two species into a single microbe that can make ethanol from cellulose in one efficient step.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Why is that turning two steps into one step such a big deal? I mean, what effect will it have overall on the costs of what we're doing?
LEE R. LYND: This would be revolutionary, from an economic point of view, if you could get this into one rapid, efficient step. And we think we can prove this in a few years, and other people are assuming this is decades away. And time will tell if we're right.
TOM MAGLIOZZI: Thanks a lot, Lee. Hey, sounds great.
LEE R. LYND: Thanks for all the questions and all the interest. I really appreciate it.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Great, thanks so much. Bye-bye.
LEE R. LYND: Oh, hey.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh. We're going to need these I think. It's a long ride home.
Good bye.
It's a good thing there are smart guys like Lee working on this stuff. If they had to depend on you and me, it'd take centuries.
NARRATOR: Advocates argue that we have the land to grow enough biomass to replace at least a quarter of the gas we now consume with cellulosic ethanol. They also believe it could replace gasoline altogether, if cars were more efficient.
Surprisingly, today's cars aren't very efficient. In fact, less than one percent of the energy in the tank actually moves the driver. Ninety percent is lost between the tank and the wheels, and the rest is used to push the mass of the vehicle.
At the Sloan Automotive Lab at M.I.T., John Heywood and his students are on a mission to save energy by improving engine performance.
For more than a century, gasoline engines have powered cars by turning chemical energy into mechanical work. Vaporized gasoline enters the combustion chamber; a piston compresses the vapor until it's ignited by a spark, creating pressure that forces the piston downward; the spent gas is vented as exhaust. Working together, pistons turn the crankshaft that sends power to the wheels.
JOHN HEYWOOD: People say, "The internal combustion engine, it's old technology. Why don't we replace it?" It's going to take a really long time to change to something else, even if we got something else there, developed and ready. And we don't yet.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Hey, John. Hi. Long time no see.
NARRATOR: Lured by smell of engine fumes, Tom and Ray return to the lab where they once spent time as M.I.T. students.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Well, you know, the last time I was here, I was with a classmate and Professor Keck, and I blew the cylinder head off an engine. I hope they won't hold that against me.
JOHN HEYWOOD: Some of those things still happen.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: I'm sure they do.
You folks have been working for a while on improving engines, and this is what you do here. And we want to know what you're doing, what the future holds, where the frontier is. Enlighten us, please. We need all the help we can get.
JOHN HEYWOOD: Okay. Well, we're trying to help move the technology forward. Some things we don't understand very well. You know that.
This is where we're working on engine lubrication and friction.
NARRATOR: One of the ways Heywood is improving engines is by reducing friction. Almost half the energy in the combustion chamber is lost to friction, as pistons rub against the walls of the cylinder. Using a laser to observe the process, Heywood tests different lubricants and piston geometries to find small ways to save energy.
MIT LAB WORKER: Anywhere you see white, like here, is oil.
JOHN HEYWOOD: And what we want is where the rings are, it's dark, you want a little oil to lubricate the rings, keep friction low, but just enough. If it's too much, it'll go into the cylinder and we'll lose some oil. So that's what we're learning about. And it really feeds back into designing all of this better and improving fuel consumption.
NARRATOR: Over several decades, automotive engineers at Sloan and other labs around the world have increased engine efficiency by 30 percent.
JOHN HEYWOOD: Engines and transmissions have got steadily more efficient, year by year by year by year by year. So it's better technology. Then the question is: "What do we do with these more powerful and more efficient engines?" We've put them into increasing vehicle performance so our vehicles accelerate faster, more aggressively, and we've put them into larger vehicles, heavier vehicles. We're better off because these vehicles are more efficient. Had they not been more efficient, we'd be even worse off. But we haven't gained. We've sort of stood still.
JOSEPH ROMM: Technology, by itself, does not increase fuel economy. The role of technology is to enable smart regulations, is to enable reductions in oil consumption and greenhouse gases through federal action, not in place of federal action.
NARRATOR: History shows regulation does increase fuel economy. After the 1973 oil shortage, Congress created mileage standards, forcing automakers to build more efficient vehicles. By 1987, average mileage had increased dramatically. But that caused oil prices to fall, which in turn led to public indifference.
JOSEPH ROMM: In the 1970s to early 1980s, we doubled the fuel economy of cars. And then starting in the mid-80s, we stopped.
NARRATOR: Mileage standards remained unchanged from 1985 to 2007, and truck and S.U.V. sales almost doubled. Because these vehicles have lower standards than cars, average fuel economy today is actually a bit less than it was 20 years ago, despite hard-won gains in engine efficiency.
Many people buy heavy, inefficient vehicles because they feel safer. Amory Lovins is a champion of a revolutionary approach to making cars that are efficient and safe.
AMORY LOVINS: I'm a recovering experimental physicist. And I'd been thinking about the physics of cars and why are they so inefficient that you know, your car's using a hundred times its weight in ancient plants every day, and yet only 0.3 percent of that energy ends up moving the driver. This didn't seem very good.
NARRATOR: In 1982, Lovins founded the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado think tank. Among the 50 fulltime staff are a handful of automotive engineers who have helped Lovins rethink the physics of the car.
MIKE, AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEER: One would argue, if you had half the car, you would need half the battery and half the motor to push it around.
AMORY LOVINS: And half the money to pay for it.
MIKE, AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEER: And half the money to pay for it, exactly.
NARRATOR: Lovins realized that cars could be more efficient if he could find ways to make the engine move less weight.
AMORY LOVINS: We started digging into how to make the car lighter, with better aerodynamics, with lower rolling resistance. We ended up concluding it was quite straightforward to triple the efficiency of a car, at roughly the same cost.
NARRATOR: Lovins's group replaced the conventional auto body with 14 light-weight components that lock together to form a reinforced shell with half the weight of steel. From the tapered roofline to the smooth underbody, every surface is streamlined to reduce drag.
AMORY LOVINS: If you directly save a pound in a car, then you actually save more like a pound and a half, from needing less engine to accelerate it, less brake to stop it, less suspension to hold it up and so on.
NARRATOR: The "Hypercar" reduces weight without reducing size, by making parts from tiny carbon fibers that are heated with nylon to form a composite stronger than steel. The wings and much of the fuselage of Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner are made with carbon composites, which will save 20 percent in fuel.
Race cars are also made with carbon composites. After hitting a wall at 160 miles an hour, the driver in this car walked away.
NEWS REPORTER: How are you feeling?
KATHERINE LEGGE, DRIVER: A bit shaken, but I'm okay, as you can see. Oops, sorry. All my bits are intact, so it's good. Goes to show how strong the cars are.
AMORY LOVINS: With such light but strong materials, you can make cars that are big, which is protective and comfortable, without also making them heavy, which is hostile and inefficient. Therefore you can save oil and lives and, indeed, money, all at the same time.
NARRATOR: Today the Hypercar is still just an idea embodied by this one-of-a-kind prototype sitting in the corner of Lovins's shop. Carmakers have spent a hundred years perfecting ways to mass-produce cars from steel, and Lovins has failed to convince them to make a radical change in materials. Carbon fiber is expensive, and molding it into parts is labor-intensive. Undaunted, Lovins is now developing machinery that can mass produce parts at an affordable price.
Drawn by curiosity and skepticism, Ray has come to the Rockies, leaving Tom in bed with a cold.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Yeah, my brother didn't want to come out here. I knew it. Too cold. He saw the weather forecast, figured he'd call in sick. He had that phony little sniffle. Hah.
Hey, Amory.
AMORY LOVINS: Ray. Hey, welcome.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Thanks for inviting me.
AMORY LOVINS: Oh, my pleasure. We've got such cool stuff to show you.
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Jeez, I'm really impressed because I thought this was going to be like a carnival car, you know, some little tiny little thing that you'd have to get shoehorned into. This is a real car.
AMORY LOVINS: This will carry five modern-size adults in comfort...
RAY MAGLIOZZI: Super-sized adults.
AMORY LOVINS:...and up to 69 cubic feet of cargo. In fact, we figured this could cruise on the highway at 55 miles an hour on the same power to the wheels that today's SUVs use on a hot day to run the |
newspapers and media that this is because we are all freewheeling and dealing, blowing cash on anything we can, just for the hell of it! The truth is this: The cost of living in cities like Vancouver and Toronto is so ridicuously out of proportion with what the people in those cities actually earn it is staggering. People can’t make rent, they have to borrow money, they go into debt. They want to go to school to obtain an education and get a better paying job, they have to borrow money, they go into debt. This isn’t some nation wide frat party. This is people just trying to exist.
But all you see in the news is report after report about how strong our economy is, and how well our banks are doing. How we’ve “weathered the storm” and what a shining example we are for the rest of the world. If we actually think we’ve avoided the kind of total economic collapse that has rocked the rest of the world, it’s time for a serious wake up call… we may be a little behind, but the crisis is coming to Canada. First of all, the housing market will crash, that much is inevitable. Don’t believe me? See if you can tell the difference between a Vancouver crack shack and a million dollar mansion. So that will cripple construction, hammer the banks and real estate… and generally devastate many a profession based around this hyper inflated market. Then there’s the little fact that these levels of “personal” debt (you know, that of real, actual people, not just institutions and governments) are 100% unsustainable. Here’s the reality of our economy: A dual income couple with no dependants living in a one bedroom apartment, can just barely make rent with a little left over for food and transportation to and from work. In order to pay bills and BREAK EVEN (that’s no extra cash for anything, no savings, no paying off of debt, no visits to the dentist… we’re talking basic existance here) they HAVE TO go into debt, with the hopes they will one day make more money in the future. They won’t. Why? Because employers are routinely and systematically stripping away whatever is left of the dignity and decency of their employees. Increasingly, you see job postings offering less and less money, with more and more qualifications and experience required. How exactly is someone paying off a 4+ year degree supposed to survive on $12/hr? More credit and debt of course! Gotta keep those banks well paid. We’re told we should feel lucky to have any work at all. Meanwhile, employers are hacking away at any semblance of workers rights, acting as if a lunch break or paying for holidays is optional in this country. They think they can not pay overtime and fabricate lies to take money off of paycheques. They are demanding outlandish hours with no notification of how many days, or how many hours, you will be working. Or perhaps they’ll offer you 20 hours a week at minimum wage and then have the audacity to demand you are available every day, for weeks in advance, when they only post the schedule one week in advance. They try to control your home life and ‘extra-curricular activities.’ They have no respect for you as an individual, and the work force remains silent, passively accepting the worsening conditions because they should just feel lucky to have a job, right? Shut up, put up, and take it Canada.
You know why they believe all of this? Because they are right. They can and will get away with anything they want. You know why they behave this way? Because they can. They know they are winning, and we are losing, and we won’t fight back. We have no means to do so. The laws are shifting more and more in favor of the businesses and the banks, because we, the actual people, have no voice. No one speaks for us. No one cares about us. Which is funny considering… WE ARE THE COUNTRY! This is OUR country. “We” is not some fringe group of outcasts. “Workers” are not a small portion of the population. This is not the middle ages. We are not serfs. We are not slaves. But only if we don’t allow ourselves to be. Right now, we are slowly being enslaved with the same ancient methods used by many oppressive civilizations of the past, and no one is saying a word.
Sure, our ‘leaders’ will carve out a nice little bit of rhetoric for us in one of their speeches, but it never translates to anything meaningful. We are just bags of flesh whose only purpose is to pay every cent of our wages to the bank. Don’t fool yourself, your rent doesn’t go to the landlord, it goes through your landlord, straight to the banks. The banks get it all in the end. That’s why they’re doing so well. We get nothing. We get to exist, barely, as if we should be grateful that these rich, evil institutions allow us to do so. Grateful that they have a constricting choke-hold on our lives. Make no mistake, we will never be truly free again as long as they continue to do so. People would much rather lash out at anyone who dare criticize and make obvious observations, regurgitating what they hear on the news. They say the problem is that we’re all out buying new houses and yachts and cars because of low interest rates. We’re all reckless, freewheeling spenders. The reality is that they are, and we are taking the blame. We have been successfully divided and conquered. The average citizen blames other citizens. They lash out at each other, dismissing any criticism of how the banks are operating as ludicrous. No newspaper or magazine dares report the truth of what real Canadian people are going through… they are all owned by big businesses who are owned by the banks. They say what they are told to say. They blame the greedy consumer. There is no reporting of the real struggles of real people. There is no article on people having their rent increased by $50 to $100 a year while their wages stay the same. There is no talk of desperate people having to take out loans to pay for dental work because their benefits were severed and their wages slashed in half. There are no articles on abusive employers and students being manhandled and burdened with massive debt loads straight out of high school. There is only distractions, more blame piled onto the overworked and underpaid Canadian just trying to survive. There is talk of a farcical ‘jobless recovery’ and ever more news, that the banks are doing just fine with all our money.
At least someone is doing fine with it, because the Canadian people, are not.
AdvertisementsHAWKS NAME JIM THOMAS ASSISTANT COACH
ATLANTA -- The Atlanta Hawks have named Jim Thomas as an assistant coach, Hawks Head Coach Mike Budenholzer announced Friday.
Most recently a college scout for the Oklahoma City Thunder for the last four years, Thomas was previously with the New York Knicks (scout, 2005-07), Indiana University (assistant coach, 2001-04), and Toronto Raptors as an assistant coach (1996-99) and scout (1994-96).
“We’re pleased to add Jim to our coaching staff,” Budenholzer said. “He’s been a part of a number of successful programs, and his coaching and playing experience will blend well with our group.”
Selected in the second round (40th overall) of the 1983 NBA Draft by the Pacers, the 52-year-old Thomas appeared in 161 games over four seasons with Indiana, the Los Angeles Clippers and Minnesota, averaging 8.4 points, 2.6 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 20.9 minutes (.471 FG%,.763 FT%). He also spent time playing in the Continental Basketball Association, World Basketball League and with Baloncesto Murcia in Spain.
Thomas played collegiately at Indiana from 1979-83, where he was the starting shooting guard on the Hoosiers’ 1981 National Championship team. He was also a 10th round draft pick of the Green Bay Packers in the 1983 NFL Draft as a defensive back. He grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.It’s no secret that Saigon has done little to protect its historic buildings in the face of rapid urban development. As a result, the city has lost 56% of its heritage buildings since 2004, according to experts.
A Vietnamese-French urban research agency, Center for Prospective and Urban Studies (PADDI), has found that over 207 historic buildings in Districts 1 and 3 have been destroyed or defaced over the past decade, reports Thanh Nien.
A 1993 survey by the agency identified 377 structures as heritage sites and according to Dr. Fanny Quertamp Nguyen, director of (PADDI), an agency set up by Rhône – Alpes Region and HCMC, only 96 have been preserved.
Saigoneer’s resident historian, Tim Doling, told the paper that over the past 6 months, he has had to remove 5 buildings from his forthcoming walking tours book, Exploring Ho Chi Minh City (due to be published in June or July) as they have been demolished.
These saddening statistics, presented at a recent conference held by Thoi bao Kinh te Sai Gon (Saigon Times) newspaper, shocked Vietnamese experts:
“Le Quang Ninh of the Vietnam Association of Architects said he was aware that many old houses were recently destroyed in the city center for the construction of new buildings, but his estimate of the loss had been much lower.”
Related Articles:
- A Date with the Wrecking Ball: 2 Historic Saigon Buildings Slated for Demolition
- Can Saigon Preserve its Historic Architecture?
He said it is “alarming” that more than 56 percent of historic structures have disappeared.
Ton Nu Thi Ninh, a former vice chairwoman of the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee, said that it is necessary to have a “strong” legal framework to preserve historic sites.
In the end, it all comes down to money and community awareness. Doling said that each historic building has its own story and that people can make use of these stories to attract tourists.
Some may complain about Saigon’s hectic traffic, but the unchecked destruction of the city’s architectural soul wares on us the most.
Saigon should look to Hanoi, which places tight restrictions on alterations to its old buildings as an example of how to better preserve its architectural heritage.
[Thanh Nien]Image caption The seminary marks a new stage in Church-state ties in Cuba
Cuban President Raul Castro has attended the inauguration of the first new Catholic building on the communist island in more than half a century.
Mr Castro joined priests, including Vatican officials, at a new seminary outside of the capital, Havana.
Ties between the Roman Catholic Church and state soured in the aftermath of the 1959 Cuban revolution.
Relations have eased in recent years and Church officials recently helped to broker the release of 52 dissidents.
The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, had warm words for Mr Castro and his brother Fidel during the opening of the new San Carlos and San Ambrosio seminary on Wednesday.
"In the name of the Church, I thank both the former president, as well as current President Raul Castro, who honours us with his presence, for the state's support of this work," Cardinal Ortega said.
The inauguration was also attended by senior Vatican officials and a group of bishops from the US, including Thomas Wenski, the Archbishop of Miami, which is the centre of the Cuban exile community.
Papal visit
The new seminary, where students will be trained for the priesthood, is a symbol of just how far Church-state relations have improved in recent years, says the BBC's Michael Voss in Havana.
Image caption Raul Castro turned to the Church to broker a deal over dissidents
The original seminary was taken over by the Cuban authorities in 1966 and men wanting to become priests were forced to study at an old building in Havana.
After the 1959 revolution, many priests left Cuba and Fidel Castro declared the island an atheist state, although diplomatic ties with the Vatican were never severed.
The major turning point in relations came in 1998 when Pope John Paul II was permitted to visit Cuba.
Earlier this year, President Raul Castro, facing growing international pressure, turned to the Catholic Church to help arrange the release of 52 political prisoners.
Under the agreement, the government promised to free - by 8 November - 52 political prisoners imprisoned in 2003 after a crackdown on opposition activists, government critics and commentators.
So far, 39 have flown to Spain, along with members of their families. However, seven of the 13 dissidents still in prison have rejected the Church deal because they do not want to leave Cuba.This article was originally published in PC Gamer issue 293. For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in the UK and the US.
The great old houses of the stealth genre are enjoying a long indian summer. Deus Ex has held on to its core values even as it adapts to the mainstream, and the latest Hitman episodes have absolved the series of, well, Absolution. Thief has struggled—after such a long absence, 2014’s patchy reboot was a let-down—but we haven’t needed Thief, really, since 2012. Dishonored’s claim to that particular throne was strong from the outset.
Soulful, clever and violent, Arkane’s new immersive sim revived the fantasy of the agent in the shadows. Yet Dishonored wasn’t special just because it resurrected an old legacy—it was special because it challenged it. Stealth games are always in some way about the fragility of power: in the dark you might as well be god, but exposed you’re just a person in formfitting leather. When Corvo Attano is granted his otherworldly powers near the start of the game, that changes.
In the dark he is a god, manipulating minds and bodies—sometimes literally—to bring about his revenge. In the light he’s a terror, slitting throats with impossible speed and freezing opponents in time before feeding them their own bullets. If the stealth game was traditionally about having godlike power that could be taken away by a stray beam of light, Dishonored was a little more open, more of a sandbox—about having godlike power in either case but being responsible for the world you bring about. It wasn’t just about continuing an old legacy—it was about creating a new one.
Set 15 years after the original game, Dishonored 2 is—in creative director Harvey Smith’s words—“the second half of the original story.” The assassination of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin at the beginning of Dishonored casts a long shadow. Jessamine’s daughter Emily is now 25 and Empress herself, and the game opens with you experiencing a day in her life in Dunwall, the setting for the first game. Then, perhaps predictably, something goes terribly wrong. Emily finds herself fighting back-to-back with her father, Corvo. (Arkane is being much more open about that particular detail this time around.) At this point you’re asked to choose: who do you want to control for the rest of the story?
Emily and Corvo both journey to a new city, Karnaca, and both encounter the same missions and enemies when they get there. Each brings a different perspective, however. Emily is a ruler without an empire, digging into both sides of her heritage—empress and supernatural assassin—as she explores a new kind of power. Corvo is getting old. “In Dishonored 2 he’s a man going home,” Smith says. “He’s getting older and deciding ‘how many more times can I protect my daughter?’”
Unlike the first game, which had a silent protagonist, both leads will speak in Dishonored 2. Emily is played by Erica Luttrell, Corvo by Stephen Russell. Yes, the same Stephen Russell who played Garrett in the original Thief games. I ask Smith if this choice was deliberate fan service, or—I don’t know—accidental fan service. He smiles. “It’s fantastic for us,” he says. “Early on in Dishonored 1, Raf Colantonio and I talked about giving Corvo a voice and ultimately decided to leave him a blank slate. But in our fantasy dream world, when we asked what he would sound like if he had a voice it was Stephen Russell—because we’re big fans of Thief and we just like his acting. But it never came together.”
Karnaca is rotting from within—there’s sickness, corruption, and a stark divide between rich and poor.
The team experimented with a voiced lead for the expansion Knife of Dunwall, and having decided to continue with this for the sequel Russell was the obvious choice. “For Dishonored 2 it was even more perfect,” Smith says. “We decided to have a voice, and Corvo is fifteen years older, and he’s a little world-weary... there was a magic synergy there.” (The last Russell-voiced Thief game was, if you’re wondering, twelve years ago.)
Luttrell and Russell are joined by a cast that includes Vincent D’Onofrio (Daredevil’s Wilson Fisk) as the Duke of Serkonos, Pedro Pascal as a gang leader, Sam Rockwell as a Dunwall city watchman, and Robin Lord Taylor (The Penguin in Gotham) as the new voice of the Outsider. Rosario Dawson plays Meagan Foster, captain of the Dreadful Wale—a hulking ironclad whaling vessel that the player uses as a base between expeditions to Karnaca.
Like Dunwall, Karnaca is rotting from within—there’s sickness, corruption, and a stark divide between rich and poor. The new city presents these themes in a new way, however. This is (or was) an opulent southern colony of the Empire. Tall pastel terraces line a bay at the fringe of deep jungle in the shadow of a mountain. It’s a little bit Havana, a little bit Barcelona, a little bit British Raj. There are rats (this is Dishonored, after all) but no plague. Instead, perennial infestations of bloodflies (think giant mosquitos) are getting worse. They lay their eggs in corpses. As crime and corruption create more bodies, the situation worsens.
This very much feels like a different place in the same world. Whale oil is a power source, but a less prevalent one than it was in Dunwall. In Karnaca, a cleft in the mountain channels wind down through the city. Here, walls of light and alarm systems are powered by turbines as often as explosive fuel. This impacts how you manipulate these devices and how they fit into the world.
Arkane is a relatively small studio and the different disciplines that go into creating a game world are closely linked to one another: history inspires concept art which inspires design which inspires the emerging history of the world which inspires concept art and so on. “Working with design on a daily basis, I can anticipate their needs,” says art director Sébastien Mitton. “It’s an organic process.”
He gives the example of the Dust District, an area of Karnaca in the shadow of great pipes that funnel dust from mountainside silver mines down the wind corridor and out to the bay. It started with the idea of a poor area choked by dust due to over-mining. Mitton’s team, accounting for the impact of wind on city streets, created a system of diamond-shaped city blocks flanked by massive wooden windbreakers: the kind of solution an intelligent architect might have devised to solve an environmental problem. These designs then inspired the way the area plays: the inside of each windbreaker offers a stealthy aerial route for subtle players, while the prevalence of rooftop power turbines offers a clue to the best way to subvert ground-level security devices. With flat rooftops comes increased guard presence at higher levels, however, making vertical exploration less secure than it was in the previous game. Periodically a distant horn heralds an incoming dust storm, at which point the entire district is shrouded in visionand- noise-obscuring ochre dust, perfect for an infiltration or a killing spree.
Many of these features are exclusive to the Dust District, which is only one of Dishonored 2’s dozen-or-so mission areas. The appeal of Arkane’s approach to worldbuilding isn’t just that they tailor the environment to offer specific opportunities to the player—all stealth games do that—but that they carefully consider why a city would be the way it is. These places are as impressive as they are because they emerge from a feeling and a sense of history as much as a game design need.
Arkane is using a new engine (Void Engine, based on id Tech 5) to enable better lighting and post-processing effects. Even so, Dishonored 2 is very much led by the same painterly sensibility as the first game. It’s a much better-looking game, but strict realism isn’t the goal—although some screenshots are surprisingly easy to mistake for concept art. Watching the Dust District mission play out in several ways, one thing that strikes me is the sense of heat. “Some senses work well in games,” Mitton says. “You have visual, sound, the vibration of your pad, but you miss the smell, the cold or the heat... It falls where?The Punisher's big reveal at New York Comic Con has been canceled due to the tragic events in Las Vegas, but Marvel and Netflix might not be stopping there.
A recent report surfaced from Verne Gay of Newsday that says Marvel and Netflix are delaying the show's launch, in addition to the recent removal of the show from New York Comic Con. The report says it is aiming for a release sometime in the late fall and is in direct response to the Las Vegas shooting.
Have heard: Netflix will delay mid-Oct. launch of #ThePunisher (which also dropped out of #NYCC) until late fall, citing Las Vegas massacre. — vernejgay (@vernejgay) October 5, 2017
It seems Netflix was orchestrating a surprise drop this weekend, hence all the teases without release dates over the past few weeks. It isn't hard to surmise why Marvel and Netflix decided against that, as the character is particularly violent and of a much darker tone than the rest of the Marvel Netflix series. That's saying something when one of those shows is Daredevil.
The studios also canceled an event in Paris that would have taken place simultaneously alongside New York Comic Con. The first two episodes were to be streamed for fans, with the rest dropping on Netflix soon after.
We've reached out to Netflix and Marvel for clarification, and neither studio has confirmed the show is being delayed.
The show follows Frank Castle, who debuted in Marvel's Netflix universe during Daredevil season 2. His tragic past was a focal point of his time there, and will again be a focus in the upcoming series. Aspects of this are even seen in the first trailer, again spotlighting the brutal nature of Frank Castle's world. He was vicious enough with Daredevil getting in his way constantly, so imagine what he's like when no one is there to keep him in check.
That isn't completely the case though, as Daredevil's Karen Page will be along for the ride, though it isn't known if even she can keep him from going over the edge.
The Punisher will hit Netflix later this year.Active Recall: 1 Amazing Technique To Crush Exam Problems
If there’s one study technique to learn that can make or break your next exam grade, active recall is it.
Interested?
Read on.
Bonus: Download the free Active Recall Technique Guide you can take with you.
Take a look at the quote below, from an engineering student, who just barely managed to pass her Physics 1 course.
“I went to every lecture and felt like I understood all the concepts he was talking about. When I went to do the exams though, I would have no clue what to do and just half-ass it.”
Imagine your thoughts as you sit down in the dark, dungeon-like, 1980’s-style lecture hall for your first Physics 1 midterm.
You’re already nervous, and slightly edgy from getting 4-hours less sleep than your usual, and downing a double-espresso at the student cafe an hour prior. The professor is intimidating, and slightly condescending as usual.
The test begins.
Multiple-choice question 4: “Uh oh, don’t remember seeing that before. Let’s check the free response.”
Free-response question 1: “Crap! I didn’t think that was going to be on here.”
Panic sets in, and it’s all downhill from there.
The story is so common, and the memories so seared into our brains, that almost all of us can still feel the pain and anxiety from taking exams in school, regardless of how long it’s been since graduation day.
Some of the worst nightmares I’ve had have been about never going to class, and then showing up at the final with no clue how to do any of the problems.
It seems like exams are a crap-shoot. How is it possible to study all of this stuff? And whenever I sit down to take one, I feel like I completely blank on how to solve it. What gives?
Well let’s break down some of those questions.
I feel like I know it, but it’s not there for me on test day…
You feel like you’re learning the material, but when you’re on your own with a difficult problem to solve, the material isn’t there for you. You can’t retrieve it.
Here’s the problem though, you never really “learned” it in the first place.
Listening to your professor’s logical, organized explanation of a new concept and thinking, “oh ok, got it”
Mindlessly reading through your lecture notes while nodding and murmuring, “makes sense”
Doing problem sets with the textbook open to the example problems, and plugging and chugging until the correct answer pops out
These are all things we do when we “learn” during the semester.
They make us feel warm and fuzzy.
But the truth is, these things are embarrassingly ineffective when it comes to put pencil to paper. We’re setting ourselves up for failure.
Why?
Well partly because that’s part of the delusion the school system has so graciously burdened us with from age 6 onwards.
But really, it’s because all of these things are PASSIVE. It’s just surface-level tidbits. The information isn’t getting through your thick skull.
Passive Learning
Is this you?
We run into this unfortunate situation because we think of ourselves like sponges – we’ll somehow absorb this new (albeit extremely uninteresting) information as it washes over us like a warm bath.
As the professor keeps droning on, it’s a battle to stay with it. Your attention drifts. Your brain is shutting down.
This is what we call passive learning.
You are sitting there as the recipient of the information, comprehending what is being said, but not necessarily doing anything with it. Remember that the brain will always conserve energy when possible, so unless there is a specific problem for it to solve, unnecessary information is quickly discarded.
That’s why you can walk out of a lecture you think you understood, until someone asks you to describe what you just learned, at which time that feeling of doom and despair sets in, that often accompanies the thought that you really don’t know much of anything…
Don’t be Jackie Chan: http://troll.me?p=63374
You’re generally able to recognize similar information, and regurgitate what you have associated with that information in your head, but won’t be able to do much more than that.
This is why listening to lectures and reading through the textbook can lull us into a false sense of security. When we see an example in the context of related information, it’s relatively straightforward to retrieve and apply formulas related to it. But in the absence of the professor’s slides, and the diagrams and explanations in the text, we’re mostly at a loss.
“Don’t confuse recognizing information with being able to recall it.” “Most of the time students spend studying for exams in the traditional way is wasted because they aren’t practicing what they’ll have to do on the test.” ~Adam Robinson, What Smart Students Know
Active Learning
Active learning, on the other hand, is just as it sounds. In order to truly learn a new piece of information, you need to somehow trick your brain into working on it, activating new neural pathways that make it easy to access when needed.
Listen to Cal Newport, author of How to Win at College, break it down for us:
What he’s saying is: if you put in short bursts of hard work (solving problems from scratch), then you can save yourself hours and hours of wasted time mulling over useless material.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking:
“NO DUH DUDE! Solve hard problems off the top of your head and you’ll do well? Tell me something that doesn’t make me despise you, and everyone else who’s ever done well in Physics.”
Or even for those of you who might have bought in to the idea, I bet you’re thinking:
“Well I’m sure that works for some people, but I just don’t get it. I don’t know where to start and none of it makes sense to me.”
But what about people like this?
Clearly they weren’t “naturally good” at the subject. They didn’t just “get it.” But damn, they sure figured something out.
Imagine what they were thinking during the first semester they failed Physics…
Now imagine what it felt like the second time they failed that same Physics course!
But lo and behold, something changed. And over time they experienced a dramatic improvement in their level of understanding of the material.
Turnaround stories like this one illustrate that it’s possible to make a small tweak to how you do things, and get MASSIVE results over time.
So here’s how I would approach it:
Step (1): Copy it all down
Copy down every step of the example problems the professor or TA solves in class. That’s all you have to do at first. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it just yet.
Step (2): Start solving what you can
Start small. Start with the most basic problems from that lecture, and go through them step-by-step. Break down each piece of the problem until you feel comfortable with drawing out the concepts, figuring out what the variables and equations are, and putting it all together in a solution.
This is what I designed my Problem-Solving Guide to do.
So for example, let’s say you’re trying to figure out Kinetic Energy. A good problem to start with for developing a basic understanding might be:
From The Physics Classroom
From this point, I’m sure most of you can recognize that they’re plugging in 625 kg for m and 18.3 m/s for v in the equation for KE, and then plugging into a calculator to find the energy.
You’re starting with a basic understanding of the problem solving mechanics.
Here you can break down each step, draw it out, identify your variables and equations and units, and begin to learn the “rules” of the concept, like so:
Work your way up from this point through slightly more difficult problems, still taking your time to understand the variables, relationships, and steps.
Eventually you’ll reach more complex problems like the one shown below, and can further enhance your “mental model” for Kinetic Energy, setting the foundation for mastering the concept.
Step (3): Do active recall
Once you feel comfortable that you understand the fundamentals of how to solve a particular type of problem, take advantage of active recall.
Start with a problem and no solution. Try to come up with the solution method and steps off the top of your head, without any supporting materials.
Do the best you can and even guess if you have to. Write down what you can, and then go back and verify whether you were correct with a provided solution.
Repeat this process throughout the semester with a diverse variety of problems and you’ll build your preparation for seeing and responding to tough questions on the exam.
You might even be able to sit down to a problem like this, and not cry.
So throw away the lecture slides, do the work of breaking down problems step-by-step, replace your useless passive review with active recall, and joyfully chuckle to yourself as you pass by your classmates, still toiling away in the study lounge late into Sunday night…
Featured image credit: CalsidyroseDM: Would you like to talk about one of the recent project you designed?
MV: Firstly, I would like to mention my new typeface Matter. It seems to be an ordinary sans-serif font family but it has tiny nuances. It began when I was looking for something like Akzidenz-Grotesk but I wasn’t satisfied with what I found.
You know nowadays we have many sans-serif fonts but designers are continually looking for new ones. They still expect new shapes of classical forms, new details and a new, general overall look. One could say this doesn’t matter but it does. From this starting point comes Matter. It was drawn for the first time in June 2015 and has since been used for some projects. It is a Grotesk typeface with a subtle, warm touch. This is caused by lively forms and diagonal terminals. The vertical terminals still have some angles even when it seems there are not.
Secondly, I would like to say I really appreciate the collaboration with Neo Violence label on visuals for gigs (e.g. Mutation nights) and releases. The aim is to be quite quick in designing. So in one series of EPs I decided to explore simple geometric relations.
Next I have to mention one of the first tasks we got at university. We had to create a magazine with students of Photography from FAMU and our team spontaneously decided to go to Romania and document everything during this trip. We were only the ones who left Prague I think. We collected a lot of material, I made some illustrations and modified Helvetica Textbook for the magazine. The deadlines were printed on paper, crumpled and vectorized again as a reference to the Romanian mountains, valleys and rough roads. That is how Terrain magazine was created. I thought we were going to do more issues and more trips but other project got in the way. But the dream is still in my head.
Finally, I really enjoyed working in Studio Najbrt for Field restaurant (by the way they got their first Michelin star last year). I developed the logotype and other graphics. I even had the opportunity to create the decorations in the windows and in the interior. So I carefully picked objects connected with the cultivation of fields to make it appear like pieces of art. You can find over-hanging objects with engraved information about dimensions, material and serial number underneath. A bespoke red plough dominates the interior, a real one would be too big and heavy to be integrated onto the wall hanging over visitors’ heads! Near the wine cellar under the stairs you can find real bales of straw and so on.don't know why I sat on this one for so long. I loved it! It was admittedly difficult to follow along at first, but it got easier as the book went on. I had already read Leckie's Provenance which is actually not a bad introduction to the world at all, but I might have to re-read and see if there's anything I missed.
At first, this book is told in two plot threads that focus on the same character, a present timeline and a series of flashbacks. Although it's not always a format that works for me (I usually become more interested in one story over another) it worked here. In the present timeline the reader is trying to figure out what all Breq, the MC, is actually doing and why she's doing it, and that story is given to you in tidbits, via the past. So they worked in tandem very well.
I absolutely loved the world building, the different religions and gods, the quirks of Breq's character (she has a penchant for singing, humming, and learning new songs). There is an absolutely fascinating concept introduced here that I can honestly say I've only seen in about two other books, that is: one mind (whether human or AI) sharing multiple bodies. I can't expand on it without spoilers, but Leckie utilized the concept in a wonderful way and didn't waste it.
One of my only complaints, is that I cannot actually tell you the physical sex of a single character in this book. Breq tends to use "she" for everyone, as she repeatedly states that she is very bad at guessing the gender of anyone, and the Radch do not actually use gendered pronouns. Sometimes gender is revealed in her conversations with other people in languages that are not Radch, but honestly in my head I was picturing planets of Amazons. Looking back the only character that registered as male to me was incredibly minor and had no speaking lines.
Which brings me onto the characters themselves: I adored them. Breq is a clear favorite, and even as an AI she had more life to her than most fictional characters. Through the entire beginning of the book, I hated Seivarden, but she experiences a lot of character growth over the course of the book and by the end she was one of my favorites. Even though the plot was complex and I still don't entirely understand everything that happened, the characters and their relationships with each other was enough for me to keep reading.
I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys character driven space operas.Crenshaw House: The Reverse Underground Railroad “Station” 1
By: Jae Jones
The Crenshaw House, which was formerly known as the Crenshaw Mansion, Hickory Hill in Gallatin, Illinois. Many people also referred to it as the Old Slave House. The National Park Service named the mansion in 2004 as a “station” Reverse Underground Railroad to acknowledge the owner’s, John Hart Crenshaw’s, practice of kidnapping free Blacks in Illinois and selling them in the southern slave states.
The house was used as a pit stop to house captured escaped slaves and kidnapped free black slaves before selling them to back to the southern slave states. The third floor of the home had 12 rooms. These rooms were believed to have been where Crenshaw kept the slaves chained in a jail. Crenshaw was believed to be the master mind behind the capturing of these Blacks, because there was no way he could not have known the Blacks were being chained and housed on his property, although he owned several acres of land. Crenshaw was well-known and a very wealthy man during his time. Illinois was a free state, and no one was allowed to have slaves. However, there was an exception to Crenshaw because of his business in salt. The law permitted the use of slaves at the salt works since the labor was so arduous that no free men could be found to do it.
Crenshaw was indicted in 1820 for operating the slave jail, and again in 1842 but not |
I’m not a drug addict,” Ford told Roberts. Full transcript of the interview
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Ford said he isn’t getting help for substance abuse problems because he is not an addict. Instead, he said his weight was “a huge issue.” “We have a team of professionals that are working with me on some health issues and I’m gonna leave it at that,” Ford said. “It’s really no one’s business what I do in my personal life, what I do in a gym, or the professionals I talk to.” “The professionals have said no, you don’t have an addiction. We’ve got ways of curbing your drinking and losing some weight and working on some other issues,” Ford said. Roberts, who began his career in Toronto, said Ford refused to answer questions about why he smoked crack cocaine or explain the circumstances around the incident. But Ford did compare his admission of drug use to Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s admission this past summer that he had smoked marijuana as an MP.
“I don’t believe Mr. Trudeau’s gonna be the next PM, I believe Mr. Harper’s gonna get re-elected as PM,” Ford said. “You look at their record and put it to Mr. Trudeau’s record it’s like night and day. Illegal drugs are illegal drugs.” Ford said he would continue to act as mayor even if city council votes to remove his special privileges, which they did on Friday, and reduces his office budget, which council will decide on Monday.
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“I can assure you if the council wants to continue what it’s doing – stripping me of all my powers, taking away my staff – they can’t stop me from showing up to council, debating every issue,” Ford said. “No one can stop me from returning phone calls, no one can stop me campaigning.” While Ford acknowledged making mistakes in his personal life, he stood by his record in office, including the Scarborough subway proposal. “People said it couldn’t be built. Well, we built the subway. When was the last time in Toronto a subway was built?” Ford said. “We’re going to move forward and I am going to continue to fight for the little guy, I’m going to continue to save taxpayer’s money, and if the councilors want to strip all my power, that’s up to them,” Ford said. Ford said he is ready to fight for re-election next fall, promising to start campaigning and fundraising on Jan. 2. “The people haven’t spoken yet, John. Mark my words, on Oct. 27, the people are going to speak loud and clear,” Ford said. With files from Hannah LoganIntel’s long years investing in mobile processors are about to pay off with its biggest win to date. We’ve confirmed that the next Samsung Galaxy tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3, will have an Intel Atom chip based on the Clover Trail code name.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed to us that Samsung has chosen the Intel chip over other competing ARM-based solutions, including Samsung’s own Exynos mobile processors. If it’s true, that could mean that Intel’s mobile processor business is finally getting some traction.
Benchmark testing sits leaked that news this week. The GFXBench site and the SamMobile site noted the Intel chip appeared to be inside a device dubbed the Samsung Santos 103 tablet with the product name GT-P5200 running Android on an Intel Clover Trail chip. Various sites concluded that was Samsung’s third-generation Galaxy Tab slate, which has a 10.1-inch touchscreen.
Test results say the device has a 1,280-by-800 display and is running Android 4.2.2 operating system. The processor can run between from 800MHz to 1.6GHz in terms of clock speed. That’s within the stated capabilities of the dual-core Atom Z2520 processor. The Intel chip is made in a 32-nanometer high-k metal gate manufacturing process.
Other sources have noted that the Samsung tablet will come in multiple versions and will have an Exynos processor. That may mean that Intel has just one of the versions. Other rivals competing for the business include Nvidia’s Tegra chip.
Intel expects to make more progress in mobile over time. It is releasing chips now with the code-named Haswell microarchitecture that will improve power efficiency and graphics performance dramatically. The graphics will be twice as good as previous Atom chips, and active power will be 50 percent better.
Intel will release new information in a talk at the upcoming Computex trade show in Taiwan. That will include new designs and upcoming low-power chip microarchitectures including Silvermont (used in Bay Trail tablets for this holiday), Avoton (for micro servers) and Merrifield for smartphones.Nairobi police continue to urge gay people to come forward to aid investigations of a group known for extorting, and sometimes raping, gay men and women
Kenyan police have arrested a suspected member of a gay blackmail ring where people were extorted, humiliated and even raped for cash.
Last weekend, the suspected blackmailer was arrested when he tried to get away but was trapped in a police sting.
According to activists, four gay male victims came forward to the police to report they had fell victim to the extortionist.
After meeting the blackmailers for an online date, one victim recalled when he realized it was a trick.
‘They took my laptop, phones and school fees,’ one victim told Identity Kenya.
‘They then took photos of me naked and threatened to send them to my family and school if I did not give them the money they wanted.’
Other victims have claimed if they refused to be photographed to a point where they could be blackmailed, they were raped.
It was alleged some were terrified of going to the police because one of the blackmailers posed as an officer.
However Kenyan police said the identification they used did not match to any of the records they have.
The Gay and Lesbian Coalition for Kenya (GALCK) say these incidents of blackmail are growing, stating extortion is one of the biggest crimes facing gay Kenyans today.
In a statement, GALCK’s legal officer Anthony Olouch said: ‘Blackmail and extortion is illegal in Kenya and LGBTI people should not hesitate to report such cases.
‘A blackmail case shall be treated as such regardless of the circumstances that landed you in the hand of the blackmailers.’
While same-sex relations are illegal in Kenya, punished by up to 14 years imprisonment, arrests and convictions are reportedly rare.Today, a group of internet service and communications providers are filing a legal complaint against GCHQ and the UK government. They are calling for an end to the intelligence agency's exploitation of network infrastructure, which allows it to illegally access potentially millions of individuals' private communications.
Those involved are a mixture of organisations from various countries. Riseup is an email provider from the US favoured by activists; Chaos Computer Club is the infamous group of hacktivists from Hamburg; and GreenNet describes itself as an "ethical" Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Others include Mango from Zimbabwe, Jinbonet from South Korea, Greenhost from the Netherlands, and finally May First/People Link from New York. They may not be big dogs like BT or Yahoo, but this is the first time that both internet and communication providers have taken collective action against GCHQ's targeted attack efforts.
Specifically, there are a few cases that this group—along with Privacy International, which supports the action—are concerned about. The first is GCHQ's alleged attack on Belgian telecommunications group Belgacom. German newspaper Der Spiegel reported in September 2013 that Belgacom determined it had been targeted in an elaborate ploy which involved redirecting its staff to websites that planted malware onto their devices. Belgacom's customers include the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament.
Another project that has worried the ISPs is TURBINE—a system that is said to allow the automated hacking of networks and computers. Detailed in The Intercept in March, TURBINE is capable of reaching a truly colossal scale, consisting of “millions” of malware implants.
A third outlines that companies including three German internet exchange points were directly targeted by GCHQ, allowing intelligence agencies to spy on all traffic travelling through them. That was also reported by Der Spiegel in March.
"These widespread attacks on providers and collectives undermine the trust we all place on the internet."
The group is concerned more generally with the NSA and GCHQ's “network exploitation and intrusion capabilities,” according to a press release provided by Privacy International.
When it comes to the legal grit, the claimants assert that GCHQ has contravened the UK Computer Misuse Act and the European Convention of Human Rights, because of the agency's effect on privacy and freedom of expression.
This latest case follows two others filed by Privacy International. The first was targeted towards the mass surveillance programmes TEMPORA, PRISM and UPSTREAM, and the other was directed at GCHQ's use of spyware.
I asked GCHQ to comment on the challenge, and they emphasised the legality of this work. A spokesperson said: “It is a longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters. Furthermore, all of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. All our operational processes rigorously support this position.”
They added, “The United Kingdom's interception regime is entirely compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.”
You may be asking, if these companies weren't specifically targeted by GCHQ, why are they doing all of this? Although none of those filing the legal challenge were directly mentioned in the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, “the type of surveillance being carried out allows them to challenge the practices […] because they and their users are at threat of being targeted,” Privacy International explained. This is because the surveillance methods detailed in the documents and subsequent articles could, theoretically, be carried out against any internet or communications provider.
"Ideally, of course, we'd like to get an order finding that this practice... is an illegal usurpation of the fundamental right to communicate freely."
Cedric Knight of GreenNet said that “we could be unknowingly used to collect data on our users.”
As for the motivation behind this challenge, Eric King, Deputy Director of Privacy International said, “These widespread attacks on providers and collectives undermine the trust we all place on the internet and greatly endangers the world’s most powerful tool for democracy and free expression. It completely cripples our confidence in the internet economy and threatens the rights of all those who use it. These unlawful activities, run jointly by GCHQ and the NSA, must come to an end immediately.” So it's not just about the legality of the actions, but also their consequences on the internet as a space for free speech.
Whether this latest legal battle will bring about any tangible change in GCHQ's policies and actions remains to be seen. Being challenged by a group of relatively small companies is unlikely to make the agency or UK government quake in its boots, even if their actions are illegal.
Riseup, the US email provider, seems to know this. “Ideally, of course, we'd like to get an order finding that this practice, like the similar practices of the NSA and other organizations, is an illegal usurpation of the fundamental right to communicate freely,” a representative told me. “Failing that, we hope to continue the critical discussion taking place around the world about the issue of widespread, state surveillance.”
I reached out to BT, Britain's largest ISP, to ask if they had anything similar planned. They didn't get back to me by the time of publication.
Even if it isn't necessarily going to halt GCHQ dead in its tracks, the challenge can't be completely shrugged off. The international spread of companies that have come together, and the fact that some of them are ISPs—the type of company that is absolutely fundamental to the type of mass surveillance programs that have been revealed—could set the precedent for future cases, and may encourage more organisations to take a stand against what they see as an attack on their services.Ex-pat Aucklander Ed Kjaer says the long-term economic gains for New Zealand from electric vehicles are beyond those that can be expected for many other countries.
Kjaer is an expert on electric vehicles (EVs), and he makes his living working for one of the largest American utility companies, Southern California Edison (SCE).
California is the electric vehicle capital of the US so Kjaer has seen first-hand their potential to transform motoring and wean economies off dependency on imported oil.
Having left Auckland at the age of 25, Kjaer is returning briefly to speak at Electric Vehicle Symposia in Auckland and Wellington next Thursday and Friday.
He says New Zealand suits EVs particularly well because as with the US, it has excess electricity capacity at night when most people are asleep and when electric vehicles are generally charged.
Urbanites in our main centres tend to have garages where EVs can be charged, whereas half of city-dwellers in the US don't. New Zealand's electricity supply is particularly clean, which offers the possibility of cleaner air and a big dent in the country's carbon emissions.
Also, the New Zealand economy is hostage to volatile oil prices as it has to import nearly all its oil compared to the US which is a big oil producer and is ramping up extraction rapidly.
"The New Zealand economy is a slave to the volatility of gasoline," Kjaer said.
In addition, New Zealand taxes petrol more heavily than the US, making it more worthwhile for households to reduce petrol consumption.
Already, said Kjaer, the lifetime costs of EV motoring beat that of petrol-powered.
Kjaer runs only EVs in his household, charging them at night in the garage, and says he gets the equivalent of 100 kilometres of driving from 1.3 litres of petrol.
His lifetime costs will be significantly less than those of petrol-car owners.
Despite the persuasive cost figures, the EV revolution is still going slowly and part of the problem is that the costs are front-loaded and EVS remain more expensive to buy than petrol cars.
Ask a Prius-driving Auckland taxi driver why they have plumped for a hybrid and the answer is either the green colour they can paint their car to woo customers, or that over the lifetime of the vehicle, they are more cost efficient. But that's not how most people tend to think about EVs, if they consider them at all.
For many the initial cost is daunting and other factors holding back uptake include pre-conceived notions about how EVs drive.
But Kjaer says technology is improving at an impressive rate and all major car makers now have EVs in their ranges.
'It is a marathon not a sprint. It is going to take two to three generations."
The US figures bear that out.
There are about 270 million cars on the road in the US and 14 million new vehicles a year.
"Naught point naught, naught, naught whatever of that are electric vehicles.," Kjaer says.
There's huge potential for utilities like SCE to insert themselves into the vehicle-fuelling business, but the picking are as yet slim, he says.
SCE delivers electricity to around 14 million Americans, its corporate profile boasts, but the number of plug-in vehicle customers is just 8000.
Though the uptake of EVs will be a bottom-up affairs with motorists making the choice for themselves, government has a role to play, and there are a range of possible monetary and non-monetary support mechanisms, Kjaer said.
Non-monetary ways include allowing EVs to use restricted road lanes, or give them preferential parking in the same way disabled people are.
Monetary incentives, and New Zealand does have some modest subsidies, could include things that help reduce the initial purchase price for an EV to get people on the road.An air bag exploded in a Honda Accord in 2004 in Alabama, shooting out metal fragments and injuring the car’s driver. At a loss to explain the incident, Honda and its Japanese air bag supplier deemed it “an anomaly” and did not issue a recall or seek the involvement of federal safety regulators.
Today, more than 14 million vehicles have been recalled by 11 automakers over rupture risks involving air bags manufactured by the supplier, Takata. That is about five times the number of vehicles recalled this year by General Motors for its deadly ignition switch defect.
Two deaths and more than 30 injuries have been linked to ruptures in Honda vehicles, and complaints received by regulators about various automakers blame Takata air bags for at least 139 injuries, including 37 people who reported air bags that ruptured or spewed shrapnel or chemicals. In one incident in December 2009, a Honda Accord driven by Gurjit Rathore, 33, hit a mail truck in Richmond, Va. Her air bag exploded, propelling shrapnel into her neck and chest, and she bled to death in front of her three children, according to a lawsuit filed by her family.
The details of Honda’s air bag problems, which have not been previously reported, come as General Motors continues to face questions about its ignition switch defect, which some G.M. officials knew about for a decade before the recalls were issued. In echoes of that safety crisis, The New York Times found the inadequate response to the risk of rupturing air bags was rooted in the industry’s ability to report safety problems in a minimal way, a weak regulatory agency and a disconnect between what automakers are aware of internally and what they reveal publicly.MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — A rivulet gurgling into Larson Creek along East Barnett Road is so overlooked that it doesn't appear on most maps and doesn't even have a name.
But it has wild steelhead.
Juvenile wild steelhead are taking refuge in this tiny little backyard creek with no riparian zone, proving once again even the Rogue River Basin's most urbanized streams still have a little wild left in them.
The creek is the latest surveyed for wild steelhead by volunteers like Ken Foster who use a basic trap to capture, mark and release wild juvenile steelhead and possibly even threatened coho salmon as part of a 12-year effort to understand the role these creeks play in wild Rogue fish production.
"I don't think people understand there's fish in here," says Foster, a member of the Medford-based Rogue FlyFishers Association. "We've only been here a few days and there are quite a few fish in here."
Since the effort began in 2005, volunteers working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife have set basic "hoop traps" in 38 streams throughout the Rogue Basin and discovered new wild salmon or steelhead — called salmonids — in 21 of them, says Ryan Battleson, the ODFW's Salmon, Trout Enhancement Program biologist here.
Of those, six streams have been remapped to reflect confirmed salmonid presence, which could lead to better riparian protections as well as help them qualify for riparian habitat improvements that could bolster steelhead production, Battleson says.
In this photo taken Nov. 22, 2017, Ryan Battleson, left, fisheries biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; Harry Foster, volunteer with the Rogue Flyfishers, and Mike Vaara, volunteer with the Middle Rogue Steelheads, check a fish trap on a small creek in Medford, Ore. (Jamie Lusch/The Medford Mail Tribune via AP)
Larson Creek is a key tributary to Bear Creek, which is the Rogue Basin's most urbanized stream, yet still produces wild steelhead, chinook and coho as well as the most overlooked of Oregon's anadromous fishes — Pacific lamprey.
During their two years in freshwater before heading to the ocean as smolts, juvenile wild steelhead migrate throughout the Bear Creek Basin depending upon the time of year. While small streams like this one usually run too low and warm to provide summer refuge, they are key hiding places in winter when the juveniles need to escape high, turbid flows.
"It's an essential part of their life history," Battleson says.
Last week brought the first proof of that in this stream.
Battleson installed a hoop trap to capture upstream migrants through the section off Asante Court in the middle of east Medford's health-care firms.
Foster and fellow volunteer Mike Vaara check the trap every other day, carefully handling, measuring and logging their catch. Wednesday's haul netted one wild steelhead, a 4-inch fish off which Battleson sliced a tiny portion of its tail so that, if caught again, it won't be counted.
Since it never has been chronicled as a wild steelhead stream, this creek is not afforded the 50-foot riparian setbacks that other Medford streams see. The creek flows through private lands, mostly mowed within a few feet of the creek. Even signs of herbicide use right along the creek's edge shows what's really there may be heavily overlooked.
"If they knew there were fish in here, I don't think they'd do that," Foster says.
-- The Associated PressCoordinates:
Mock semi-ruined castle designed by Miller, in the grounds of Wimpole Hall
Wimpole's Folly is a folly ruin located on the grounds of Wimpole Hall, in the parish of Wimpole, in Cambridgeshire, England.
The folly is designed to resemble the ruins of a medieval castle. It was built on the grounds of Wimpole Hall in the mid-1770s at the order of Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, the then owner of Wimpole Hall. The Earl of Hardwicke commissioned Sanderson Miller (the noted follies architect of the day) to design the folly in 1751, to then have it later built by Capability Brown in 1769. The folly is Grade II* listed on the National Heritage List for England.[1]
The ruins are substantially built and stretch for two hundred feet in length, and include a four-storey Gothic tower. They, and Wimpole Hall, are currently owned by the National Trust and open to the public.
References [ edit ]Over on the Android side of the world, leaked renders of the upcoming OnePlus 5 flagship have hit the web today. While they don’t unveil anything too crazy about the handset itself, we do get our first look at its design. Instead of keeping with its previous design language, the OnePlus 5 will most likely ship looking almost identical to the iPhone 7 Plus…
UAG Samsung Galaxy S8 Cases
As almost everyone knows, Apple has been in court for years now over Samsung violating the company’s design patents for the iPhone. While many argued that it was inevitable that these two companies would eventually create devices that resembled one another’s, the newly leaked renders of the OnePlus 5 look like a complete iPhone 7 Plus clone.
When I say that the OnePlus 5 looks like a blatant copy, I don’t mean that it just resembles the iPhone 7 Plus. As you can see in the above comparison photo, the OnePlus 5 features a dual-camera setup located on the upper left side of the phone’s back, a similar lineup of the device’s microphone and flash, antenna bands that wrap around the top and bottom of the handset, and a similar placement of the company’s logo.
The only real difference between the two smartphones is the placement of the home and volume buttons. While the iPhone has the power button on the right side and the volume buttons on the left, the OnePlus has its on the opposite sides. Both phones do offer a mute switch of sorts which can be found on the left side of the devices.
Obviously, these are leaked renders of the OnePlus 5 but we are pretty confident that this is the device’s final design. Apple has yet to publically state anything about the striking similarity between the iPhone 7 Plus and the OnePlus 5 and most likely won’t until the handset is unveiled on June 20th.
This isn’t the first time that a company has released a product that looked familiar to something from Apple. Back in 2015, HTC announced the One A9 which looked identical to the iPhone 6 except that its camera bump was placed in the middle of the phone instead of on the side. And last year, HP released the Core M EliteBook Folio that looked identical to the 12-inch Macbook.
We will just have to wait to see if Apple does send OnePlus a cease and desist letter for copying its iPhone’s design.LONDON (Reuters) - The man accused of murdering MP Jo Cox in June was heard saying “this is for Britain” during an attack that was motivated by politics or ideology, a London jury was told at the opening of his trial on Monday.
Rain drops land on a framed photograph of murdered Labour Party MP Jo Cox, who was shot dead in Birstall, at Parliament Square in London, Britain June 20, 2016. REUTERS/Toby Melville/Files
Thomas Mair, 53, is charged with Cox’ murder, which took place a week before Britain’s referendum on EU membership and led to the suspension of campaigning for several days. A plea of not guilty was recorded on his behalf at an earlier hearing after he stayed silent when asked to enter his plea.
Cox, a 41-year-old mother of two young children, was shot and stabbed on the street in the town of Birstall, part of her electoral district in northern England, as she arrived for an advice session with local residents at a library.
Mair was arrested nearby shortly after the killing. He said words to the effect of “it’s me” and described himself to police as a political activist, prosecutor Richard Whittam told London’s Old Bailey court.
Police later found publications at Mair’s home about white supremacists, Nazi Germany, shootings and assassinations. He had also accessed websites on topics such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Waffen SS in the days and weeks before the killing.
“Thomas Mair clearly held views that provided him with a motive, utterly misplaced of course, to kill. He killed her because she was an MP who did not share his views,” Whittam said, adding that Mair had researched Cox on the Internet.
A former aid worker before she was elected to parliament, Cox was an ardent supporter of staying in the EU. She was shot three times and stabbed 15 times in what Whittam described as a “dynamic, fast-moving and shocking” scene.
He told the court several witnesses reported hearing gun shots and seeing Mair wielding what one of them described as a large steak knife with a jagged blade. He was heard repeating the words “Britain first”.
Whittam said Cox’s aide Fazila Aswat, who was with Cox at the time of the murder, had heard him say “Britain first, this is for Britain, Britain will always come first”.
“DEATH TO TRAITORS”
Whittam did not draw a direct link between the referendum and the murder, nor did he elaborate on the meaning of “Britain first” or Mair’s other words.
Mair, a Birstall resident, is also charged with causing grievous bodily harm to 77-year-old Bernard Carter-Kenny, who tried to help Cox during the attack, and possession of a firearm and a dagger.
Carter-Kenny risked his own life and was stabbed with the same knife Mair used to attack Cox, Whittam said.
A few days before the murder, Mair had looked up Cox’s Twitter page as well as a Wikipedia entry on Ian Gow, the last British member of parliament to have been killed before Cox.
Police vehicles escort a prison van as it arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, Britain June 18, 2016. Anthony Devlin/Press Association via REUTERS
Gow was killed in 1990 by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which was fighting for Northern Ireland to split from the United Kingdom and become part of the Republic of Ireland. An IRA bomb exploded under Gow’s car at his home.
Balding with a grey goatee beard and wearing a dark blue suit and black tie, Mair sat silently in the dock flanked by three security guards as Whittam delivered his statement.
At the first court hearing shortly after his arrest, Mair had said his name was “death to traitors, freedom for Britain”. The case, due to last two weeks, is being treated as a terrorism matter.Crestron are now shipping their new TSW-560, TSW-760, and TSW-1060 touch screens promising powerful software features (including Sonos integration) along with beautiful hardware with PoE for easy installations…
Crestron, the global leader in luxury home automation technology, is now shipping the new generation of their award-winning line of TSW touch screens. The TSW-560, TSW-760, and TSW 1060 deliver a bold new level of touch screen performance for home entertainment and automation. On top of that, the new touch screens are available at the same, or even lower, pricing as the prior generation.
“Crestron TSW touch screens offer an incredible user experience, from audio to video to amazing applications,” said Byron Wendling, Technology Manager at Crestron. “For the new generation, we focused on the exceptionally fast new processor and making strategic improvements that deliver big benefits to integrators and their customers.”
New TSW touch screen features include:
Ultra fast processor – The latest TSWs feature a state-of-art Crestron processor that delivers a whole new level of performance. Touch screen control and navigation is fast and responsive, perfect for custom home automation.
The latest TSWs feature a state-of-art Crestron processor that delivers a whole new level of performance. Touch screen control and navigation is fast and responsive, perfect for custom home automation. Native Sonos integration – Only new Crestron TSWs are able to run the full Sonos application and interface right on the touch screen as part of a perfectly integrated whole home audio system. And this is just the start – the new generation of TSW touch screens is designed to deliver even more incredible applications for the luxury home market.
– Only new Crestron TSWs are able to run the full Sonos application and interface right on the touch screen as part of a perfectly integrated whole home audio system. And this is just the start – the new generation of TSW touch screens is designed to deliver even more incredible applications for the luxury home market. Optional camera and microphone – To support high quality video intercom experiences between residents in different rooms and buildings, models are available with built-in cameras and microphones.
– To support high quality video intercom experiences between residents in different rooms and buildings, models are available with built-in cameras and microphones. Backlit capacitive buttons – The screen border now features backlit capacitive buttons that illuminate according to user needs. The result is an even sleeker look and more intuitive user navigation
The screen border now features backlit capacitive buttons that illuminate according to user needs. The result is an even sleeker look and more intuitive user navigation Ambient light sensor – Like popular mobile devices, screen brightness and LED backlights now adjust automatically according to ambient light levels in the room.
Like popular mobile devices, screen brightness and LED backlights now adjust automatically according to ambient light levels in the room. Secure mounting option – All TSWs now ship with a special mounting latch that makes it easy to lock touch screens in place.
Even better performance with no surprises
In upgrading such an important and popular product line, Crestron took special care not to make any changes that disrupt how integrators install and commission TSWs. The sleek styling and colours remain the same, as does power via PoE and easy mounting options.
crestron.com
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S.C. State Sen. Mike Fair (R), who introduced the bill in the Senate, recently portrayed the bill as a necessary guard against constitutionally-prohibited considerations of foreign law that were being pushed by immigrants with different religious beliefs.
"S.C., like other states, recognizes the need to assert the fact that our state and U.S. constitutions are the basis for civil law in our country," Fair told Human Events in a recent interview. "Some locales have been threatened by the encroachment of foreign law into local, state and or federal law despite obvious violations of our constitutions. A growing concern is the immigration of people who are accustomed to their religion and their civil laws being inextricably connected. For those newcomers to our state, this bill will be helpful to them as they are assimilated into our culture maintaining complete freedom to worship as they please."
In a later interview with Talking Points Memo, Fair stood by his contention, and went as far as to claim that Sharia had been implemented in some parts of the United States.
"This bill has been called anti-Sharia law, and I suppose it does deal with that," Fair told TPM. "There are some localities around the country that have imposed Sharia law in lieu of local laws."
Fair later told TPM that his state was "big on religious freedom," and that he didn't want his proposal to be interpreted "as anti-sharia law and statute."
Loud fears and claims of the supposed threat of Islam and application of Sharia law in the United States have been found to be largely overstated and often unsubstantiated, though that hasn't slowed a steady stream of legislation meant to address the issue.The European Court of Justice has pointed the finger at unequal retirement plans between men and women in the French civil service. EURACTIV France reports.
According to a judgment by the ECJ (17 July), the French retirement system for civil servants is discriminating against men.
“French rules on certain pension-related advantages granted to civil servants give rise to indirect discrimination on grounds of sex,” the court decided.
The case goes back to 2005 when a hospital worker, Maurice Leone, filed a pension application to the CNRACL (French state insurance fund for local government workers). It was rejected on the basis that Leone had not taken enough career breaks to take on family duties.
French law states that if a civil servant has raised at least three children, he or she can benefit from early retirement. It also outlines “service credit advantages” to parents working in the civil service, which grants them an extra two trimesters of social security contributions per child.
Maternity leave
However, in order to benefit from these rules, one has to prove they interrupted their professional activities for at least two months for each child. Women automatically get this time off thanks to French maternity leave rules, which grants 16 weeks for the first two children and 26 weeks for the third.
French paternity leave is just 11 consecutive days, far below the two months required to apply for an early retirement.
According to the court’s judgement, “the criterion used in the French rules leads to a situation where many more women than men receive the benefit of the advantage concerned.”
Obligatory maternity leave means all mothers of large families are eligible to an early retirement. “Given the mandatory nature and minimum two-month duration of maternity leave under French law, female civil servants are the ones who are in a position to benefit from the service credit advantage,” said the Court, adding that “other types of leave liable to give rise to entitlement to service credits and therefore available to male civil servants are optional and, in some cases, lead to a loss of pay and accumulation of pension rights.”
Bad French habits
This is not the first time the EU has called France to order regarding inequalities in the civil service retirement system.
In 2001, the EU court warned France when a French magistrate and father of three was granted a pension without service credit advantages. The Luxembourg-based judges forced the French state to grant him the advantages, which until then had only been for women.
France hoped to reduce men’s eligibility to the bonuses by including a clause on a two month break from professional activity.
The French court, based in Lyon, must now resolve the case “in accordance with the Court’s decision, which is similarly binding on other national courts or tribunals before which a similar issue is raised.”
Clamp-down on early retirement
Applications for early retirement are gradually decreasing in the French civil service due to efforts by the French government.
According to the French national institute of economic and statistical information (INSEE), the French civil service represented over 5.5 million workers in 2012. Women represented 61.5% of the workforce.Venezuela is in the throes of a massive popular uprising caused by an economic crisis. Russia's deeply corrupt autocracy is threatening to invade another part of Ukraine. Iran's authoritarian government is keeping the murderous Syrian regime alive, and oil-rich Saudi Arabia is safely funding extremists around the world.
What do all of these countries have in common? They've got a lot of oil. And oil, it turns out, can really screw your country up. Oil is far from the only reason these countries have the problems they do, and some oil-rich countries do okay. But oil-rich countries, far from being happier, are much more likely to be authoritarian, corrupt, and violent.
OIL GIVES DICTATORSHIPS MONEY TO BUY OFF THEIR CITIZENS SO THEY DON'T HAVE TO DEMOCRATIZE
You might find this idea surprising. Oil is one of the most valuable commodities in the world. Shouldn't oil make a country rich, and therefore better off?
But after decades of study, and hundreds of statistical regressions, political scientists and economists have overwhelmingly found the same result. Large amounts of oil wealth correlate with three bad things: autocracy, corruption, and civil war. But there are some revealing, and surprising, details in how that happens. Here's what we know about the "oil curse," as it's called, and how it works.
Oil helps authoritarian governments stay in power — often by buying off their citizens
Study after study has found that, while discovering big oil deposits doesn't turn democratic countries with a lot of oil like Norway and Canada authoritarian, authoritarian countries are more likely to stay that way if they've got a ton of oil. Of all the bad things that oil does for countries, this is probably the worst and most robustly demonstrated. Think about how long the Saudi monarchy has stuck around, or Russia's failed attempt to transition to democracy in the 1990s.
"No country with high levels of oil and gas income has successfully become democratic since 1960," writes Michael Ross, one of the premier scholars of the oil curse. As you can see in his graph on the right, countries that make a lot of money from oil per capita (the bottom-right group of dots) have spent approximately zero time under democratic rule in the past 50 years.
The main reason for the link between oil and authoritarianism, according to Ross and others, is straightforward: oil gives dictatorships money to buy off their citizens, so they don't have to democratize. Authoritarian governments tend to nationalize their oil industries, which gives them exclusive control over a resource the rest of the world desperately needs. This allows them to |
eydoux felt very strongly about Eva Green’s portrayal of Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale.
“I especially identified with [Vesper Lynd]. It impressed me that a French actress was playing a Bond girl. I was taken with the way she could be intense and mysterious, strong and vulnerable, girlish and womanly. I love it when an actress can play with contradictions. But there’s no way I could have imagined myself playing a Bond girl nearly ten years later. For me, that dream was too big.”
Seydoux also elaborated on the story behind the name of her character in SPECTRE.
“She has the power to change Bond’s life. Her name is, of course, a nod to Marcel Proust. In Proust’s ‘Swann’s Way’, the opening book of ‘Remembrance Of Things Past’, the madeleine sponge cake has the potential to evoke powerful memories. The name has been chosen deliberately for this film. Madeleine Swann is a catalyst for change. She helps Bond open the mystery so it is revealed.”
Monica Bellucci also revealed in a separate interview with the Sunday Times that when meeting with Sam Mendes to discuss the possibility of appearing in SPECTRE, she thought she would be replacing Dame Judi Dench. (Source: The Telegraph)
George Lazenby attends the GREAT British Film Reception in LA
George Lazenby was spotted at the GREAT British Film Reception, honouring the (many) British nominees of the 87th annual Academy Awards, on 20 February in West Hollywood. Lazenby was photographed posing with a vehicle befitting the swinging sixties James Bond that he portrayed in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
News.com.au also spoke briefly to their fellow countryman about playing James Bond, and Lazenby’s comments on the matter were in line with much of what he has said before about the role.
“I got more girls before I was Bond. I was a male model working with a different female model every day … the odds were better.”
Pierce Brosnan’s choices for the seventh 007
The Daily Mail reported on 17 February that Brosnan has given a casual endorsement of sorts to Idris Elba and Colin Salmon, in terms of who should follow Daniel Craig in the role. Brosnan recently said the following:
“Yeah, [Idris Elba] would make a good Bond. Colin Salmon also. May the best man get the job and may Daniel bring home the bacon for as long as he wants.”
Most Bond fans know that Colin Salmon appeared in Brosnan’s latter three Bond films as Charles Robinson, MI6’s Deputy Chief of Staff (alongside Chief of Staff Bill Tanner, played in the Brosnan era by Michael Kitchen). Brosnan previously voiced his support of Salmon to adopt the 007 mantle on two occasions: the first occurring in 2005, shortly after the search for the sixth actor to play James Bond had started, when Brosnan endorsed both Salmon and Gerard Butler. The second occurred in 2013, when Brosnan said the following in an interview with the Telegraph while promoting Love Is All You Need:
“I’ve always thrown Colin Salmon’s name in the mix [for the next 007]. He’s somebody I have worked with closely over the years. He would be outstanding and I think it would be absolutely essential.”
And finally, if you’ve ever wanted to hear Roger Moore speak (fairly fluently) in three languages other than English, today is your lucky day. Moore recently starred in a series of television commercials for the Swiss telecommunications giant Swisscom in which he speaks in French, German, and Italian (the official languages of Switzerland, along with Romansh).
Moore owns a chalet in Switzerland and spends a sizeable part of each year there; the actor also mentioned in an interview with British comedian David Walliams in the November 2012 issue of GQ (UK) that Curd Jurgens (Stromberg from The Spy Who Loved Me) once loaned Moore his house in Gstaad.
That’s all for “This Week in James Bond”! As always, don’t forget to tune in to the podcast and join the conversation on social media.
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Pompeo announced Friday evening that he accepted the nomination, saying in a statement that he's "honored" and "humbled" by the president-elect's decision.
"This was a difficult decision. I have genuinely loved representing the people of Kansas in Congress -- working to make our community stronger and more prosperous," he wrote. "But ultimately the opportunity to lead the world's finest intelligence warriors, who labor tirelessly to keep this nation and Kansas safe, is a call to service I cannot ignore."
Pompeo has made his mark during his three terms in the House as a conservative voice on national security issues.
Speaker John Boehner viewed him as a rising star and tapped him to serve on the House Intelligence Committee and the Select Committee on Benghazi, both posts that usually go to more senior members. He also got a coveted seat on the Energy and Commerce panel and has proposed measures regarding energy production.
He staked a tougher line on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton than some other Republicans. Pompeo was one of a handful of conservatives who argued House Benghazi committee chairman Trey Gowdy did not go far enough in his report on Clinton earlier this year.
The Kansas lawmaker was a strong critic of the Iran nuclear deal and introduced several bills focused on security concerns about the Iranian government, including one bill raising concerns about the cooperation between Russia and Iran.
Pompeo backed Sen. Marco Rubio in the primary and criticized Trump from the right, but later developed a relationship with the Trump campaign. The campaign called him every once in a while to get advice on key national security issues, and during the vice presidential debate, Pompeo was a surrogate for Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
After the elections, Pompeo met with Trump, including earlier this week in New York where they talked about the job. Trump seems to have trusted his gut that Pompeo was best suited for the role.
Pompeo met with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Pence, the leader of Trump's transition, at the Capitol Thursday. He declined to comment on their meeting as he left.
The Kansas Republican becomes the first member of the House tapped by Trump, although Republican Reps. Jeb Hensarling and Tom Price both met with the President-elect this week and are being mentioned for other Cabinet positions.
One of Pompeo's close friends and mentors on Capitol Hill was Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, the former chairman of the House Intelligence panel. Rogers, who some considered as a possible pick for the CIA post, left the Trump transition team earlier this week after the President-elect removed those on the committee with ties to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Democrats pounce
Democrats were quick to paint Pompeo as a member who touted the party line, a quality they worried about for a nominee for the top intelligence post.
"The Department of Justice and the CIA need nonpartisan leaders the American people can trust implicitly. Yet Congressman Mike Pompeo, a leading cheerleader of the Benghazi witch hunt, is now being asked to fill one of the most serious and sober national security positions there is," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Friday.
Before joining Congress, Pompeo graduated first in his class from the US Military Academy at West Point. Pompeo was a classmate of Sen. Ted Cruz's at Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review -- although he declined to support Cruz in the Republican primaries.
The selection of Pompeo rounds out a trio of national security picks Trump has made -- including Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for national security advisor that were announced Friday.
Pompeo had considered running against Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran in the Senate Republican primary this year, but the Senate Republicans scrambled to prevent that.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee hired a retired FBI agent to dig up dirt against him. And numerous senators, as well as Speaker Paul Ryan, urged him to stay out. Pompeo ultimately released a scathing statement when he decided not to run.
Democratic groups blasted Pompeo's selection Friday. They cited Pompeo's allegations in 2013 that Muslim Americans do not speak out enough against terror attacks and could therefore be "potentially complicit" in those attacks.
"That mindset is horribly wrong when it comes to views of civil rights and civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Statements like those also further propaganda of radical terrorists, who, right now, are celebrating the election of Donald Trump, because they believe it will bring about a war of religions," said Jon Soltz, chairman of the liberal group VoteVets.org. "This puts us all in extreme danger, but especially our troops, serving overseas."The European Commission has abruptly terminated new trade talks with Ukraine 48 hours after they began.
The news came in two tweets from neighbourhood commissioner Stefan Fuele on Sunday (15 December).
Student, retired or simply can't afford full price? No worries.
He first said: "#Ukraine:Words & deeds of President &government regarding #AssocAgreement further&further apart.Their arguments have no grounds in reality."
He then added: "#Ukraine:told deputy PM #Arbuzov in BXL &after that further discussion is conditioned on clear commitment 2sign.Work on hold,had no answer."
Fuele met with Serhiy Arbuzov in Brussels on Thursday.
At the time, he promised Ukraine more money if it signs an EU trade pact and announced talks on a new "roadmap" for implementing the treaty.
He noted that Ukraine's demands for extra EU funds - which have varied from €10 billion to €160 billion - are "grossly exaggerated," however.
He also urged Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to hold a roundtable with opposition leaders.
The roundtable, on Friday, turned into a farce when the President threatened to prosecute Ukrainian officials who negotiated the original terms of the EU pact.
"His [Fuele's] nerves snapped," an EU diplomat told this website on Monday.
"I think he's realised the Ukrainians are not serious about the treaty and are just buying time," the source noted.
"With Yanukovych threatening a court process against the people who negotiated the text … and with Ukraine's Prime Minister going around talking nonsense, like 'the EU treaty will force Ukraine to legalise gay marriage,' the balance tilted to the other side," the source added.
The Fuele tweets came as a surprise to some EU countries.
EU foreign ministers are to discuss Ukraine at a meeting in Brussels on Monday.
Going into the event, Dutch foreign minister Frans Timmermans said: "There was no reason from the Dutch point of view to suspend talks, so I want to hear from colleagues what is the actual state of play."
He added: "Making policy on the basis of a twitter note by Mr Fuele is perhaps not the best way of approaching this issue."
Meanwhile, Fuele's news came on the morning of another huge rally in Kiev.
Press reports indicate more than 200,000 people attended the protest - the third Sunday in a row of mass-scale pro-EU demonstrations.
They were joined by US senator John McCain, who criticised Russia for its threats to bankrupt Ukraine.
"We... want to make it clear to Russia and [Russian President] Vladimir Putin that interference in the affairs of Ukraine is not acceptable to the United States," he told the crowd.
For his part, Yanukovych has hinted he might reshuffle his cabinet to calm the situation.
But he is due to meet Putin in Moscow on Tuesday for the latest in a series of talks on Ukraine's future.
The protesters fear he is getting ready to join Russia's Customs Union instead of the EU option.
They have threatened several times that the situation on the streets will get worse if he does.
"He might as well stay in Moscow and not come back to Kiev if a Customs Union agreement is signed … We'll give him a really warm welcome if he sells out Ukraine," opposition leader Arseny Yatsenyuk told media on Sunday.We spent the day walking around Kilkenny and discovered a beautiful castle, delicious beer and a gorgeous town. Kilkenny was on my list of places to visit since it was only about 30 minutes from where we were staying in Athy, but I didn’t know if we were going to have the time with everything else on our plate. Luckily, we had a few hours to ourselves and were able to visit this town and I am so glad we did because it was one of my favorite towns in Ireland.
Kilkenny is located in county Kilkenny and is known for the Kilkenny Castle and Kilkenny beer. How many times can I say Kilkenny? A lot…apparently. The beer is brewed by Guinness and is a nitro cream ale that is more blonde/brown in color and is one of my favorite beers to have in Ireland. It’s a nice break from all the Guinness and Smithwicks. We parked in paid parking behind the library and ran into people from San Diego who immediately asked us about Sean’s Stone Brewing Co. shirt and wanted to know if we were from San Diego. I said we were from Orange County which (side note) is somewhere most people have no idea where that is. They ask “is that LA” or “Is that near San Francisco” and I just say it’s in between LA and San Diego but they still look at me like WTF does that mean. It’s kinda refreshing.
We wandered into a bar called “The Field” to get a Kilkenny beer and watch rugby. It was a quaint little bar with a wonderful group of older ladies enjoying their drink on this lovely Monday. At one point they even broke into song and it was magical. We dropped our buddy at the train station and decided to stay longer in Kilkenny because I wanted to see the castle. It was almost closing time but we were able to walk the outside grounds which were massive and very green. The castle was built-in 1195 by William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke to control a fording-point of the River Nore. The property was transferred to the people of Kilkenny in 1967 for £50[1] and the castle and grounds are now managed by the Office of Public Works. The castle was so well maintained we wondered if it had ever seen battle and I learned it was badly damaged in the Irish Civil War in 1922 but has since been heavily restored. It was sprawling and alluring.
After the castle, we went for a drink at the Kilkenny Hibernian Hotel. It was a dark bar with lots of dark wood and segregated seating areas like most bars in Ireland and UK. We sat at the bar and had excellent service and a hard-to-get whisky from an apparently a very good whisky selection (according to my whisky-loving mixologist buddy). It would be a hotel I would love to stay at on my next visit just for the bar!
After that we wandered around town for a few hours. We saw cute antique shops, got ice cream, took photos of the river, saw some awesome graffiti and art installation about witches, and stumbled across the Smithwick’s Brewery. I hadn’t done my research so I had no idea that the brewery was in Kilkenny. Unfortunately, the brewery was closed for renovations so we couldn’t see what the inside looked like. I was nearing the evening so we opted to visit a Whisky bar we saw driving through town on the way in before heading back to Athy for the night. The bar was called Dylan’s Whisky Bar but they weren’t open for another 30 minutes so we stopped at the bar right next door for a drink. I had one of the best old fashions I have ever had and my buddy had a “bartender’s choice” drink which was also very impressive. I believe the bar was called Biddy Early’s? After we had that drink we went next door to Dylan’s and cozy’d up to the bar for a whisky. It was a luxurious bar with leather seating, low lighting, large bar seats, and the longest whisky list I have ever seen. I splurged on a Middleton and Rooney ordered three different variations but I think my favorite was the Writer’s Tears. We met another fellow blogger from San Diego who writes a blog called “One Day In A City” and travels for a living…lucky! We chatted and tasted whisky for a while savoring the moments of being in an exquisite bar, in Ireland, with good company. The day had to come to an end so we could do some laundry and clean before checking-out of the house in Athy and taking the ferry into the UK the next day. I love you Kilkenny! I will be back.Delusional states appear to strengthen memory formation
Delusions—beliefs that can seem bizarre and appear unsupported by evidence—are a hallmark of the most severe mental illnesses.
Yale investigators used brain imaging to probe the persistence of delusions, which often endure in the face of contradicting evidence. The results of their study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, suggest that being in a delusional state can strengthen the formation of both positive and negative memories.
In the current experiment, healthy subjects were shown pictures that predicted either a negative or a positive memory—an unpleasant loud noise or a sip of sweet fruit juice, respectively.
The next day, researchers induced a brief and reversible delusional state among a subset of those individuals. While in this state, individuals were shown the picture again.
The following day, the scientists measured the individual's response to the picture. Compared to memories that were not reactivated and memories that were reminded under a placebo infusion (salty water with no delusional effects), the scientists found that the delusional state made the reactivated memory stronger.
"Our study suggests important and previously unknown features of delusions," said Philip Corlett, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, and the study's lead author. He continued, "The more we can learn about these puzzling symptoms, the more likely we will be able to develop new and novel treatments for a number of psychiatric disorders."
The researchers had previously observed that activity in the brain's right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex predicted delusion severity in patients with psychosis. Having developed this neural marker of the processes underlying delusions, the researchers sought to explore whether that activity related to the memory strengthening effect. They measured the healthy subjects’ brain responses a month before the memory study and found that the brain response predicted the memory strengthening effect of the induced delusional state.
Corlett added, "The brain response we measured is an index of surprise. When we are surprised, we bring memories to mind to explain away the surprise. We hypothesize that patients with delusions are surprised too much which makes them hold odd beliefs. This new work suggests that the surprise signal also makes those beliefs fixed."
This research was supported by the Wellcome Trust, which unites researchers from the Yale Department of Psychiatry and the University of Cambridge Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry.The past year has been a remarkable one for moving the ball forward for gay rights: the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the addition of New York to the list of states where gays can marry legally, and the Obama administration first declining to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, and then going on the record opposing it as unconstitutional.
Subsequently, those on the right who are still willing to strongly oppose gay rights are becoming more shrill in their opposition. The National Organization for Marriage, which already had a gold medal in the "bigotry Olympics," felt the need to respond to these changes by appointing a new leader who had criticized the supporters of Prop. 8 in California for not being bigoted enough, saying that any rights given to gays in relationships was too marriage-like for his tastes.
What gives with all the hatred for gay people coming from conservatives, even as the rest of country is beginning to get over long-held prejudices? Part of it is just straight-up protectiveness of heterosexual privilege. Part of being conservative is relishing things (like rights) other people don’t have, and so of course they object to letting gay people have the things that straight people have always had. But quite a bit of what’s going on is that anti-gay bigotry is just one piece of a larger picture of conservative fear and loathing of all forms of sexuality.
In socially conservative circles, sex is seen as illicit behavior at best, and criminally perverse at worst. The liberal model that imagines sex as a fun, life-affirming way to spend your time simply doesn’t compute. When you think of sex in terms of subversion and criminality, gay sex looms large in your imagination as the filthiest, most sexy-sex there is. Social conservatives simply can’t get past the images in their minds of dudes sticking it to one another, and it completely skews their ability to think logically and fairly about extending basic human rights to gay people.
While right-wing pundits speaking to a national audience have learned to temper their remarks about homosexuality and try to steer the conversation away from opportunities to say ignorant things about gay people’s sex lives, the religious leaders and more underground right-wing media is still singing the same song. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, recently went on the record saying that gay rights will bring in “an outright sexual paganization of society.” Anti-gay activist Scott Lively was on WorldNetDaily again recently suggesting that being gay is a matter of having a philosophy of “sexual anarchy,” as opposed to it simply being a sexual orientation. It’s common for conservatives to suggest that accepting homosexuality means accepting pedophilia, because they see both as outrageous perversions instead of making the distinction between non-consensual and consensual behavior.
The ex-gay movement is further evidence of the religious right’s obsession with gay sex that stems from a larger obsession with sex. The very premise of “ex-gay” therapy is that all it takes to stop being gay is to stop having gay sex. Many “ex-gay” people describe themselves as continuing to lust after members of their own sex, but identify as not-gay because they don’t do anything about it. This reduces being gay to a behavior, when of course most people understand gay as an identity. Just as you don’t stop being straight when you find yourself going through a dry spell, you don’t stop being gay because you’re not having gay sex. But the religious right is so obsessed by sex that they simply can’t get past it to look at people as whole human beings.
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The religious right looks at sex the way most of us look at drugs. In their eyes, straight, married sex is an indulgence like a glass of wine at dinner–oh, you know you probably shouldn’t, but they shrug it off, especially if they view you as a wealthy, privileged sort who can “handle” the responsibility. You can extrapolate from there: premarital sex between engaged couples is like smoking pot, cohabitation is like having a cocaine habit, and hooking up casually is like doing meth. In their worldview, gay sex is like heroin, and they insist it’s actually as dangerous as heroin.
The overt hostility to most sex, and only tacit acceptance of in-the-dark-missionary- position-married-once-a- month-sex is pretty much the defining feature of the religious right. Many religious-right leaders are beginning to clue into the fact that their overt anti-pleasure attitudes aren’t good for PR, so there’s been some attempts to remake their arguments against all sex outside of heterosexual marriage to create something more enticing. Ted Haggard, for instance, tried to sell the line that if you’re Christian and wait for marriage, you’ll have "the best sex life." Even when he was pushing the line initially, it seemed forced, but later revelations that he did not, in fact, think he had the best sex life and instead chose to have meth-fueled gay sex with prostitutes proved exactly how dishonest his claims really were.
Slightly more convincing are various grassroots attempts by religious-right women to actually live the claims that chastity before marriage means nothing but hot sex after marriage. (And of course, you have unmarried fundamentalists like Lila Rose working the “sexy virgin” angle as hard as they can.) It’s understandable that
fundamentalist women feel the need to take this approach.
The hostility toward sex for pleasure hasn’t prevented men in red states from becoming the biggest consumers of porn. Their claims that anti-feminism makes women happier has to butt up with images of sexually liberated feminists doing whatever they want to please themselves sexually. But even a site like Christian Nymphos is shot through with the belief that sexual pleasure is a dangerous force that must be strictly controlled, and that women may only have it if they
sacrifice their autonomy and dignity to a Biblically mandated female-submissive marriage. At their site, single women are not even allowed to leave comments or ask questions. Even knowledge of sex is considered too much for a woman who isn’t under direct control of a man. And for married couples, all sexual thoughts and fantasies are to be directly strictly toward their spouse, erasing their individual sexual natures. In other words, even pro-sex right-wing Christianity is still hostile to the concept that individuals have a right to their sexuality.
The religious right is much more comfortable treating sex like it’s dirty, and then obsessively cataloguing how dirty each act is in comparison with other acts. For an entertaining look at how outrageous this can get, I highly recommend watching this clip from “The Dildo Diaries,” in which the Texas legislature debated whether or not to make anal sex illegal. When challenged about whether or not the law should ban it even for married couples, Rep. Warren Chisum said it should be banned “especially” for married couples, and added, “I can’t believe anyone would do that if they was married.” Much hilarity on the floor of the legislature ensued, but the moment really stands out in history as a crystallization of the social conservative attitudes toward sex: it really shouldn’t exist at all unless it’s within in the confines of marriage and with as little imagination and frequency as possible.(CNN) -- It wasn't a long walk to Lisa Cochran's car in the Costco parking lot, but by the time she got there her infant son was near death.
Cochran and her grandmother had just enjoyed a hot dog at the Salem, Oregon, wholesale outlet.
She had 7-day-old Derrik out of his baby carrier as she ate and people at nearby tables asked about the infant's age and expressed amazement that Cochran was already out and about after the pregnancy.
She put Derrik back in his Infantino "SlingRider" and headed out to the parking lot, but something was amiss when she reached the car, she said.
"He was not the right color. He was yellow. He had purple spots from where the sling rubbed marks on his face," said Cochran, 27.
Cochran called 911. Her fiancé, Jerrid Fowler, administered CPR. An ambulance arrived and paramedics also tried to revive the infant.
"By the time I got to the hospital, they told me they weren't able to save him," she said.
Cochran filed a lawsuit in January, asking for millions of dollars in damages and alleging that Infantino was negligent and liable for her son's May 7, 2009, death.
The death certificate cited compression asphyxia/suffocation as Derrik's cause of death, Cochran said.
Infantino issued a recall Wednesday of two baby slings, the "SlingRider" and the "Wendy Bellissimo," offering customers replacement slings.
The San Diego, California-based company said consumers should stop using the recalled slings immediately but did not take responsibility for any deaths.
"Our company is comprised of moms, dads, sisters, aunts, uncles and grandparents and we care deeply about the quality and safety of our products," President Jack Vresics said in a statement. "All of our products go through rigorous testing and we work closely with governmental agencies as well as other third-party testing organizations continually to ensure the safety of our products."
Earlier this month, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a warning about the use of certain baby slings, saying it had identified 14 deaths with sling-style carriers, most of them in children younger than 4 months. On Tuesday, Health Canada issued a joint statement with the agency, saying three of the deaths appeared to occur in one of Infantino's slings.
About 1 million of the slings were recalled in the United States, and about 15,000 were affected in Canada, according to the joint release. Around 14,000 of the slings have been recalled in Europe.
"In the first few months of life, babies cannot control their heads because of weak neck muscles. The sling's fabric can press against an infant's nose and mouth, blocking the baby's breathing and rapidly suffocating a baby within a minute or two," the joint statement said. "Additionally, where a sling keeps the infant in a curled position bending the chin toward the chest, the airways can be restricted, limiting the oxygen supply. The baby will not be able to cry for help and can slowly suffocate."
Attorneys for Infantino referred requests for comment to a public relations firm that answered questions and sent CNN the statement from the company's president. The company is working with CPSC in its investigation, has alerted retailers and written letters to individual customers, spokeswoman Amy Colton said in an e-mail.
The company has not filed any pleadings in the case except for a notice to remove the case from the Marion County Circuit Court in Oregon to the state's U.S. District Court.
Cochran isn't the only mother blaming Infantino's "SlingRider" for an infant's death. Anthoinette Medley is planning to sue Infantino for the February 20, 2009, death of 3-month-old Nelsir, said her lawyer, Alan Feldman.
Watch Medley discuss losing Nelsir
His twin, Timir, was in an identical sling over Medley's other shoulder as she walked through the Gallery at Market East in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She saw an old friend who hadn't seen her children yet, Feldman said, and Medley was eager to show them off.
"That's when she discovered a tiny bit of blood on the baby's bib and ran to the bathroom," Feldman said.
Nelsir was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and pronounced dead later, Feldman said.
"I will never get to hear him call me Mommy. I will never get to see him take a first step," Anthoinette Medley told CNN affiliate WPVI.
Feldman said he is not satisfied with Infantino's recall.
"If you recognize that your product is not safe, and you realize that babies have died, you should stop babies and moms from using the product," he said.
Infantino's president said the company's announcement of a free replacement program reflects its commitment to safety as its highest priority.
"As a company, Infantino conducts extensive safety testing internally as well as with third-party experts, regardless of whether official safety standards have been established. We will continue to play a leadership role in the industry and to cooperate closely with CPSC as it continues its investigation of all baby slings," Vresics said.
Cochran said the sling came highly recommended, especially for breast-feeding mothers. A neighbor had one, she said, as did a friend's cousin. She even carried Derrik to his first doctor's visit in the sling.
"There were a lot of people who had this sling, and it seemed like a great thing," she said.
Cochran said she broke down after Derrik's death. Simple chores became extremely taxing. She neglected going to the grocery store and bank. She had trouble getting out of bed, showering, even talking on the phone.
"I was kind of hysterical. I was kind of not quite with it for several months, actually. I neglected going to the grocery stores or anywhere I would commonly frequent," she said. "It was just hard to even be in a situation like this because the first thing everyone asks is, 'How's the baby?' "
Cochran, a manager for a housecleaning service in Keizer, lost Derrik's twin in the first trimester of her pregnancy, she said. She is pregnant again with a girl who is due in June.
"I'm doing a lot better, especially now that I have another one on the way," she said.
"Hopefully, there won't be any more babies that die and any more families that have to go through what me and my family have gone through."
CNN's Emanuella Grinberg contributed to this report.HUMAN intelligence is higher, on average, in some places than in others. And researchers at the University of New Mexico have come up with an explanation, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Comparing the average IQ in a particular country with its disease burden (based on the reduction in life expectancy caused by 28 infectious diseases) reveals a striking correlation. At the bottom of the IQ list is Equatorial Guinea, followed by St Lucia, with Cameroon, Mozambique and Gabon tied for third last. These countries also have among the highest burdens of infectious diseases. At the opposite end of the scale, Singapore, South Korea, China and Japan show the highest intelligence scores and relatively low levels of disease. America, Britain and a number of European countries also place in the top left-hand corner of the chart. For more on this, see article.
Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.August 6, 2014 7 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Around the end of 2010, I decided take a bit of a career gamble. After working in investment banking and private equity for five years then going on to get my MBA, I took a job as one of the first 10 hires at a mobile gaming startup called Pocket Gems. In the four years that have followed, I’ve helped it grow to a 175-person company that’s been profitable since launch.
Along the way, I’ve learned more about startups than I could ever hope to fit in a blog post. For example, embracing company failures and discussing what was learned from them will do more to boost company morale than a team-building exercise. I’ve also learned quite a bit about growth and recruiting in a startup.
Startups are living, dynamic organizations. Strategies can change, tactics can shift, and entire company missions are just one pivot away from a complete restructure. As such, a startup’s needs are drastically different throughout its various growth stages.
Related: Hire Better: Recruiting 2.0
The inherent problem with startup scaling is the ‘the perfect candidate’ is a moving target. The ideal employee for a 3-person unfunded incubation may not be the best fit for a 50-person company looking to expand overseas. I’ve found that it helps to manage the growth of a startup team by thinking of it in different phases.
Of course, different startups will probably use different recruiting strategies based on what they’re trying to accomplish. Here are the four phases of growth that Pocket Gems has seen so far.
1. 1-50 employees. Just because your startup has a specific goal (hopefully), doesn’t mean your first few hires should have specified skillsets to accomplish it.
Most early startup employees have a ridiculous story about all the hats they wore in their company’s early days. The person assembling Ikea desks might also be drafting the mission statement. The person sketching the website layout might also be responsible for business development. For this reason, it’s important to hire generalists, talented jacks-and-jills-of-all-trades, at phase one. Early stage companies need dynamic people who can tackle ever-changing startup challenges.
Early employees are also the first vision-holders of the company. Finding a culture fit with the right communication style is most important at phase one.
Phase one recruiting tips:
Don’t be afraid to go all Animal House and recruit heavily out of college campuses. Experience at this stage pales in comparison to ambition and a desire to learn and adapt.
It takes a village. All founders and early team members should take an active role in recruiting- from finding new hires to closing them.
The alma matters. Have your early team reach out directly to their alumni networks.
Hire your first dedicated recruiter when you know you have the projected future headcount to warrant it.
2. 51-150 employees. At the second phase of your startup, you should be seeing traction and need for more people to evolve your company.
At this stage, word-of-mouth recruiting remains critical. As your company carves out a space for itself, it’s crucial your team puts out feelers to their networks for potential hires. At Pocket Gems, the first early hires came from our existing team shaking every tree to get the best people they knew to come and build something with us.
Although generalists will always be important, in phase two you should begin filling more specialized roles. One such role you should consider hiring, if you want to increase headcount, is an in-house recruiter.
Related: 10 Questions to Ask When Recruiting New Employees Online
You probably wouldn’t let your head of marketing try out coding because you are short on devs, so why would you have your CTO handle recruiting alone? Getting a recruiter ensures you have a constant source of new candidates.
Phase two recruiting tips:
Venture out for help. If you have venture funding, tap your VC’s network to help you find the right hires. Sequoia Capital was influential for Pocket Gems in this stage.
Consider using recruiting agencies and understand the difference between contingency and retained firms.
Who recruits the recruiters? Build your recruiting team which could include specialized recruiters and coordinators.
3. 151-200 employees. As your startup continues to mature, so should your recruiting procedures.
By phase three, you should be the A-Team of hiring and your processes should be running like clockwork. Everyone involved in interviewing should have clear understandings of the role and its required skills. Your hiring team should also have a shared standard for the caliber of hires you’re looking for.
Equally important in creating an effective hiring process is being able to accurately forecast your hires. This means you should have a clear understanding of what your hiring funnel looks like. To do this, you’ll need to estimate the average time a hire takes from start to finish. You should also gauge the cost of each new hire. This will help you to effectively predict the time and resources it will take to reach your growth goals.
Phase three may also be the time to start casting a wider net for your candidates. This often means recruiting internationally. If you can forecast a headcount for the year, you can begin to allot for more international hires. Recruiting internationally can be expensive but can pay off exponentially when filling certain roles.
Pocket Gems is always trying to hire more engineers, a position for which the Bay Area has a lot of demand. We’ve found that looking overseas has been a great way |
72 67 6 7 7 7 8 8 3 3 3 3 4 4 2 2 3 2 3 3 Mute 91.5 81.5 76.5 81.5 71.5 66.5 6 7 7 7 8 9 3 3 3 3 4 4 2 2 3 2 3 3 Hidden Gun, Poison, Tripwire Bomb 90 80 75 80 70 65 6 7 8 7 8 9 3 3 4 3 4 4 2 3 3 3 3 3 Templar Vision 78 73 63 68 63 53 7 8 9 8 9 11 3 4 4 4 4 5 3 3 3 3 3 4 Disguise, Firecrackers 75 70 60 65 60 50 8 8 10 9 10 12 4 4 5 4 5 6 3 3 4 3 4 4 Morph, Smoke Bomb 60 55 45 50 45 35 10 10 13 12 13 17 5 5 6 6 6 8 4 4 5 4 5 6 Bodyguard 58 53 48 48 43 38 10 11 12 12 13 15 5 5 6 6 6 7 4 4 5 5 5 6 Closure, Decoy 55 50 45 45 40 35 10 12 13 13 15 17 5 6 6 6 7 8 4 4 5 5 6 6 Throwing Knives 50 45 40 40 35 30 12 13 15 15 17 20 6 6 7 7 8 10 4 5 6 6 6 8
Notes
For some abilities, the cooldown period begins as soon as you press the button, but for others, it begins only after the effect ends. In this table, the effect duration is included as part of the cooldown period when appropriate. In the interest of simplicity, we assume that no points have been spent on adjusting the duration.
This table shows the maximum number of times you could possibly use an ability during a game/round. Given the reality of having to find an appropriate time to use it, the likelihood is that in most games you will use your abilities less often than this table suggests.
number of times you could possibly use an ability during a game/round. Given the reality of having to find an time to use it, the likelihood is that in most games you will use your abilities less often than this table suggests. Games of Wanted, Deathmatch, Assassinate, Steal the Artifact, and Artifact Assault all last ten minutes and aren't divided into rounds.
Games of Manhunt, Chest Capture, and Escort all have two rounds lasting five minutes each; each team plays offense in one round and defense in the other. Your cooldowns are reset at the start of the second round.
Corruption has three rounds that each last no more than four minutes (but can be much shorter, if all of the Uncorrupted are killed quickly). Your cooldowns are reset at the start of each round, but not when you become corrupted during a round.
"Overall Cooldowns" is a perk that reduces the length of all your cooldowns by ten seconds.
This table does not take the "Boost Cooldowns" loss streak into account. How many extra uses you get out of that depends too much on how soon and how often you die in any given game, which is too variable to calculate. But, for reference: starting with your fifth death, Boost Cooldowns resets your cooldowns each time you die, and halves their duration. Note that the effect is not cumulative with Overall Cooldowns: when both could apply, only Boost Cooldowns does.
cumulative with Overall Cooldowns: when both could apply, only Boost Cooldowns does. This table also does not account for the possibility that you'll switch to a different ability profile during a round, again because there are too many variables to consider.
The corresponding table for Assassin's Creed III is now available.
ThoughtsMLG struck the deal without a stockholders' meeting and the sale has upset some investors, according to eSports Observer.
DiGiovanni and Mike Sepso founded MLG in 2002, and throughout the years it's regularly hosted professional gaming tournaments, broken into the streaming business, and helped bring eSports to television and the mainstream. In 2014, MLG opened the United States' first professional gaming arena in Ohio. It planned to open another eSports arena in China by 2017.
MLG's relevance has waned in recent years and in October, it lost the hosting rights to the Call of Duty World League's Pro Division to the ESL. Sepso himself joined Activision that same month as Senior Vice President of its new eSports division, overseeing pro franchises including StarCraft, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone.
[Image credit: Flickr/Colin Taber]The following is a guest post by Galen Benshoof, a Master in Public Affairs candidate at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, where he focuses on health policy. Find him on Twitter: @benshoof.
Some critics ascribe almost anything that happens in the health care sector to the ACA. (Sam Baker wrote about this phenomenon in December.) False accusations of a government takeover of the health system lead opponents to impute a much more sweeping influence to the law than it actually has.
Last week, in a review of Zeke Emanuel’s new book, the author David Goldhill made a surprising claim: “The rapid spread of high-deductible insurance among employers and on the exchanges” was “one of the immediate unanticipated consequences of the ACA.”
In fact, high-deductible plans, sometimes known as HDHPs, have been on the rise for some time now. This isn’t to say that the ACA won’t be responsible for increasing the size of some deductibles. But attributing a “rapid spread” of high-deductible plans to the ACA misses two points: one, that rising health care costs fostered a market trend of shifting responsibility onto employees, and two, that HDHP plans actually owe their initial diffusion to legislation passed by a GOP-controlled Congress.
1. Trends in health care costs
For roughly a decade, rising costs have led employers to trim away at the benefits offered to their workers. Writing in 2004, Paul Starr explained the pressure thusly: “employers and insurers are facing the current surge in costs without much hope that they can contain it with measures aimed at doctors and hospitals.” So they turned to the consumer instead.
As you can see in the below graph from KFF, the average deductible grew rapidly since 2006, a pattern clearly predating the ACA. In fact the biggest proportional increase seen here occurred between 2007 and 2009.
Not only has the average deductible grown over the past eight years, more and more firms are imposing them on workers in the first place, as we can see in the second graph below. Notably, the biggest year-to-year increases happened before 2010.
2. Policy changes
In the 1990s, some conservatives gravitated to a health insurance scheme that shifted costs and responsibility onto workers. They called this consumer-directed health care (CDHC), although the real beneficiaries were employers.
Two watershed events, occurring under Republican congressional control, made high deductibles a mainstay. In 1996, according to John Tozzi of Bloomberg, “the GOP-controlled Congress passed legislation allowing some people to pair high-deductible plans—which barely existed—with tax-free health savings accounts.”
Seven years later, he wrote, “Congress, still under GOP control, passed legislation making health accounts more widely available. Many companies have since latched on to high-deductible plans as a way to keep premiums under control.”
The following year, Gail Shearer of the non-profit Consumers Union delivered prescient testimony: “The year 2003 may well go down in health care history as the year that the health care system began to rapidly evolve toward a system characterized by health insurance deductibles in the range of $1,500 to $2,000 for individuals.”
HDHPs began to grow in popularity, appealing especially to the healthy and the wealthy. Each year the IRS sets standards for HDHPs, with the 2014 threshold at $1250 for individual deductibles. Beginning in 2007, the National Center for Health Statistics began tracking enrollment in this kind of plan. Taken from the most recent report, the below graph shows trends over time among all privately-insured individuals (including employer-sponsored insurance but also extending beyond it).
In 2007, not shown on the graph, 17.5 percent of all privately-insured people under age 65 had a HDHP. The 2010 survey ran through March, the same month that the president signed ACA into law. Thus everything on the graph before 2011 represents pre-ACA data. From 2007 to 2010, the number increased by 7.8 percentage points. Since that time, it has increased by only 7.2 percentage points.
Not only was the trend not caused by the ACA, the pace has apparently slowed slightly since the law came into existence.
The ACA alters incentives and business models in many areas of health insurance and health care. Sometimes it is deserving of credit or criticism. But in order to have a fair debate about either, we need to keep history in mind.
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Aug. 18, 2016, 1:56 AM GMT / Updated Aug. 18, 2016, 2:33 PM GMT By Phil Helsel
Two U.S. Olympic swimmers who say they were with Ryan Lochte when they were robbed in Rio de Janeiro were removed from a plane by Brazilian authorities late Wednesday.
Jeff Ostrow, a lawyer representing Lochte, and a spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee confirmed swimmers Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger were taken off the aircraft.
Detective Alexandre Braga, the chief of the city's tourist police, said the pair had their passports "temporarily confiscated by a court order" through the Brazilian Sporting Events Court.
Bentz and Conger were released by authorities "with the understanding that they would continue their discussions about the incident on Thursday," said USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky.
The two were seen leaving the airport police station early Thursday, when they were surrounded by media before getting into a black vehicle.
On Wednesday, a Brazilian judge ordered Lochte and Olympian Jimmy Feigen to remain in Brazil as authorities investigated their account of being robbed at gunpoint in Rio early Sunday by assailants dressed as police officers.
Sandusky said in a statement Thursday that Bentz, Conger and Feigen were "cooperating with authorities" and determining a time and place to speak further with police.
"All are represented by counsel and being appropriately supported by the USOC and the U.S. Consulate in Rio," he added.
Lochte's lawyer said Conger and Bentz had not been specifically named by the judge who had wanted Lochte's and Feigen's passports seized.
However, Lochte had already left Brazil and is in the United States. Feigen is still in Brazil and is cooperating with local authorities and "intends to make further statements" on Thursday, the USOC spokesman said.
Sources at Rio's airport told NBC News that Feigen checked in for a flight online, but never showed up.
"We’re victims in this and we’re happy that we’re safe"
Brazilian judge Keyla Blanc de Cnop said Lochte and Feigen gave contradictory accounts of the robbery, according to the court's statement. The men also said the robbery took place on the way home from a club, which they left at 4 a.m. But security video showed them leaving at a different time, the judge said.
De Cnop added that Lochte told police there was one robber, while Feigen said there were more, one of whom had a gun.
Lochte told TODAY’s Matt Lauer in a telephone interview Wednesday night that he returned from Rio earlier that day, and no one told him he should stay in Brazil. Lochte said he told authorities he would cooperate.
Lauer said he asked Lochte about skepticism that his story may have been fabricated but the swimmer balked at that suggestion.
"He strongly denied that, said it’s absolutely not the case," Lauer said.
"I wouldn’t make up a story like this nor would the others — as a matter of fact we all feel it makes us look bad," Lauer said, quoting Lochte. "We’re victims in this and we’re happy that we’re safe."
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. government was aware of the situation. "We have seen media reports that two U.S. citizen athletes were detained. We stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance," Kirby said in a statement.
The swimmers are subject to questioning and potential charges if police believe they gave false or misleading statements to authorities, which can carry up to six months in jail.
But under Brazil’s constitution ratified in 1988, they have the right to remain silent.
Related: Lochte's Gunpoint Robbery Doesn't Rattle These Tourists
Lochte repeated his story of what happened in large part, but a few details changed, Lauer said during NBC Sports coverage of the Olympics Wednesday night.
In an interview with TODAY's Billy Bush on Sunday, just hours after the alleged robbery, Lochte had said the gun was put against his forehead — but said in Wednesday's telephone conversation that the gun was pointed in his general direction but the weapon was cocked, Lauer reported.
Lochte did not repeat part of his story that their taxi was pulled over by the robbers, Lauer said.
Lochte said Wednesday they were at a gas station and got back in the taxi, the taxi driver did not move, and it was then that two robbers with guns and badges approached the car and ordered the swimmers out of the vehicle and onto the ground, Lauer said.
Ostrow, the lawyer, said Lochte gave police a statement as representatives from the U.S. State Department, United States Olympic Committee and the FBI observed. Lochte signed the statement to attest to its truthfulness, Ostrow added.
Police did not ask Lochte for more information, and they did not ask him to remain in Brazil, Ostrow said.
"They never said, 'Stay around,'" Ostrow said. "Otherwise, I would have advised Ryan to stay."
He accused Brazilian authorities of trying to "save face" after allowing the incident to become "a circus."
Lochte said in the telephone interview that he initially didn’t want to tell the story of the armed robbery because they were worried they’d broken swim team rules, Lauer said.
Once he realized he hadn’t broken any rules by being out drinking because he was over 21, Lochte said he felt it was OK to tell the story, Lauer added.This hapless robber was out of luck when the very machine he was robbing took his photo Credit: Batavia Police Department
A hapless robber has left police a key clue to help them find him - a series of photographs of his face.
According to police the man, who pried open the cash draw of an Illinois photo booth to steal $75, unwittingly left them three clear mugshots after the machine started snapping away as he committed his crime.
The pictures, taken on November 25, have now been developed and the Batavia Police Department are sharing the candid shots in a bid to catch the culprit.
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In the pictures the man, dressed in a grey hoodie, black jumper and beanie, stares directly into the lens inside the Funway Amusements photo booth, seemingly unaware that the machine is recording his every move.The nutters at the Westboro Baptist Church, best known for their protests of military funerals and “god hates fags” signs have a new target in their sites: Twitter.
From 4:30-5:00pm local time Thursday (January 28,) Westboro members will be picketing outside the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco.
Just what their gripe with Twitter is though isn’t immediately clear from their page on the picket, although naturally it has something to do with God.
“They have a duty to God just like every other person to serve God and to use ALL their resources in their service to him” reads the explanation for the picket. But along with using Twitter themselves (they’ll actually be tweeting from the picket line,) the Church may actually be in part defending Twitter, well, if you can define the sentence “Obama’s about to take away any/all resources like Twitter to serve him and his Antichristic agenda, so enjoy this freedom while it lasts a little longer” a defense of free speech.
If you’re in San Francisco Thursday afternoon and want to taunt the nutters, Twitter HQ is as 795 Folsom St.
(in part via Carnalnation)A tool to easily manage and use your SMS/Email templates. Now you need not type the same thing again and again. Just type it once and use it forever. For example, often you may have to send your bank account details to someone. Instead of typing the details every time, just type it once and create it as a template. Use the template whenever you want. Simple :) This app also provides several variants which you can set at the time of sending an Email or SMS. For example, you need to inform your wife/husband that you will be reaching home at ""sometime"". You can add a TIME variant to the template. Say ""Honey, I'll be reaching home at →Time←"". So you can use this template anytime and set the →Time← you want. You need not type the whole message again. Just set the time and send it :) Supports 21 languages: English 中文 Češka dansk Nederlands eesti suomi français Deutsch ελληνικά magyar Indonesia italiano 日本の 한국의 polski português român русский español Svenskt Update (V 1.0.4): * Live tile color and app icon color now uses phone theme color * General bug fixesShane van Gisbergen’s move to Mercedes machinery for next year’s Bathurst 12 Hour will come amid a major change of direction for the Supercars star’s GT career.
The Kiwi has spent the past two seasons as a McLaren factory driver, competing in four out of five Blancpain Endurance Series events with the manufacturer each year.
With two clashes between the Blancpain and Supercars schedules for 2017, Van Gisbergen has agreed to end his McLaren ties and search for a new challenge.
He will focus his attention on America and IMSA team WeatherTech Racing, for which he has raced a Porsche in each of the last three Daytona 24 Hours.
WeatherTech is making the move to Mercedes for 2017, recently receiving its car from the Germany factory.
Although his full schedule is yet-to-be-confirmed by WeatherTech and his Red Bull Supercars team, Van Gisbergen is expecting to make multiple IMSA appearances.
Three of IMSA’s four long-distance events, Daytona (January 26-29), Sebring (March 15-18) and Watkins Glen (June 30-July 2) are free of direct Supercars clashes.
Daytona will give Van Gisbergen extensive experience of the Mercedes GT3 before joining Scott Taylor Motorsport for the Bathurst 12 Hour on February 3-5.
CLICK HERE for Speedcafe.com’s earlier story on Van Gisbergen’s Bathurst deal.
“With the calendar for next year it’s made a few things change,” Van Gisbergen confirmed to Speedcafe.com.
“I can’t go back to Europe so I’ve gone down a different avenue for 2017.
“I’ll race with WeatherTech next year and hopefully do three or four IMSA races.
“After Daytona, hopefully we’ll get to Sebring and Watkins Glen and a couple of others which would be awesome.
“We’ll work out what they need me for and get over there.”
As previously reported, Van Gisbergen will have one last run with McLaren at the Sepang 12 Hours a week after aiming to seal a maiden Supercars title in Sydney on December 2-4.
He will fly straight from Sepang to Daytona for his first test in the WeatherTech Mercedes, making it a hectic finish to the Kiwi’s stellar season.
Van Gisbergen stressed that the split with McLaren has been amicable and a return to Europe with the manufacturer remains possible for 2018.
The prospect of racing the Daytona 24 Hour, Bathurst 12 Hour, Clipsal 500 Adelaide and Sebring 12 Hour in the space of less than two months next year suggests that the versatile driver will be busier than ever.
“It’s a lot of racing and a lot of time in the car,” he said, stressing the benefit that racing GT cars has on his Supercars efforts.
“As a driver you feel that after three or four weeks out of the car over the off-season you’re a bit rusty.
“Getting that in early in the season is invaluable and would be awesome to do.
“It’ll be good to try out a different style of racing and different culture in America too because you learn so much more.
“I go GT racing in the first place to try and learn different things and improve my V8s.” Follow along as Bret Bielema breaks down Arkansas' 2017 recruiting class on National Signing Day.
Bret Bielema
— Very exciting day. "I'd never had 9 guys come in at mid-term." Normally spends the night before checking with recruits, but this was a smaller group and they didn't have any significant surprises today.
— Have an extra scholarship they're still working on with a few options, including some that have popped up today.
— Right now, Ben Herbert is working with the team, including the early enrollees.
— Heavy emphasis on defense in the second half of the class.
— "Chevin (Calloway) joining us today was icing on the cake." Felt like they neglected the secondary, not on purpose, the last few years. Addressed that in this class.
— Not expecting any academic issues.
— Probably would have signed 12-15 guys if there had been an early signing period in December. That'll be a change next year if it comes through.
— On WRs: "We knew we were going to go after junior college guys." Brandon Martin was the No. 1 JUCO WR on their list. Took him out to the house and Jen thought he was a DE. Jonathan Nance will help. He and Michael Smith are studying film right now.
— "Koilan is probably one of the more underrated recruits in our class." Big body, great skills.
— Jarrod Barnes held Malik Monk to around 14 points in the state championship game. "You see what (Malik) is doing now." He can play multiple positions. Maleek Barkley and Devion Warren are versatile.
— On OL: "Kurt really went after a certain kind of guy." Didn't go after stars. Had done that the last few years and it hadn't really panned out. "We went after meat and potatoes. Guys that could get it done."
— Dalton Wagner is huge.
— Kirby Adcock can play inside or out.
— Shane Clenin could play any position on the line. Reminds him of Frank Ragnow.
— To get Ty Clary into this class, too, is big. He'll probably redshirt in 2017, but in 2018 it'll be like bringing in a freshman ready to play.
— Blue shirts are guys they think they would sign next year with the development. Smaller in-state class in 2018 and Hogs will have a smaller class.
— Think they'll have TE Jeremy Patton last week in May.
— Hopefully the blue shirts don't get closed by the NCAA. Likes the ability to add them.
— Interviewed a couple coordinators who were 3-4 guys last time he had to hire a DC. "Everybody in this league plays a 3-4, even teams who were traditionally 4-3 teams." After the first month of the season, he knew he was going to change to a 3-4. He and E.K. Franks took the whole roster and divided it up into a 3-4 and set up their recruiting numbers from that.
— Thinks early enrollees are "an evolution." It isn't like a coach can walk in late and ask them to do it, because high school students would need to make the decision by their sophomore year. They'll bring it up to some young, good recruits. "The recruiting abuses I worry about have nothing to do with that."
— Like Daulton Hyatt's arm strength and demeanor. Has a leadership personality. An X's and O's guy who was raised well.
— David Porter is a very gifted football player. Was never a concern with his athletic ability, more about his classroom. Had a turnaround in the fall and has given up soccer in the spring to concentrate on school. "I didn't want to make an offer until I was confident it was going to happen."
— "We captured the commitment of every player we offered in the state of Arkansas." Other players went to Power 5's, but didn't have an offer.
— Hayden Henry is kind of a tweener safety-linebacker. Knew him, but started hearing about him more through 5 weeks of his season. Watched his film again, sent someone to evaluate and made the decision 4 weeks ago to pursue him.
— On DBs playing early: "It's like every position. If they're skilled enough, but they have to be able to handle the pressures."
— Chase Hayden is definitely a RB. "Have no intention of playing him anywhere other than RB." "Probably one of the more enjoyable athletes I've ever recruited." Likes to have complete opposites when he signs 2 RBs in the same class. He and Maleek Williams are different.
— "Maleek will get mad if I don't say he's fast. He's fast, but not as fast as Chase." Williams weighs close to 238, Hayden 188. Williams is comparable to Rawleigh Williams. Hayden is a jitterbug.
— Taking commitments from more recruits who hadn't yet visited is just them evolving.
— Daulton Wagner weighs 369.
— Would like Williams in the 220 range. Was 238 in the their first weigh-in and he's down to 228 now.
— First started recruiting Chevin Calloway as a freshman. Known a lot of these guys for two, three, four years. Kyrei Fisher was a rare late addition. "Really grew a lot between his junior and senior year, in a good way."
— "I don't know where we're ranked.... But I know this is the best class for Arkansas since I've been here."
— Been trying to get Eastern Oklahoma recruited more since he got here. Proximity wise, it's so great. "We've got good players from Oklahoma from good programs."
— "The very first moment, I knew Robb was gone, I called every defensive recruit and let them know what was happening." Never any indecision. Wasn't any backlash. Lost a kid a few days ago because they were running a 3-4, "but he went to a program that runs a 3-4. I had a hard time explaining that to him."
— This class is his best here because it addresses needs. To get the skill players on offense was huge. To get the secondary class was big. Good size on the defensive line at the ends for the 3-4.
— End of the first 20 games, they were tied with Kentucky for last in wins in the SEC. The last 20 games, they're tied for fourth. If they'd have won the last two games, they'd have been tied for second. "Sometimes good ole math works well.
— Calloway has great demeanor. "His maturity is beyond his years." Arkansas blood led him hear early on and then kind of pushed him away. He was going to play in an all-star game in December. He and Paul Rhoads had a one-on-one session about what he liked to do in the secondary. Gave him a take-home assignment he expected to be done in two weeks. Calloway called Rhoads the next day with the answers. Said the tips helped him in the Under Armour game.
—Kyrei Fisher is like a different player "and he made himself into that." Honed in on the last few spots left after the bowl game.
— On coaching: "We've snuck some guys in" to Fayetteville and on the road. Being on the road lets you do things under-the-radar. Was in contact with an NFL guy who got beat on championship weekend. In contact with someone coaching in the Super Bowl. "On Feb. 20, we'll be back in the office getting ready for spring ball" and they'll have everyone by then.
— Thought the 10th coach was going to happen for sure. Now operating with the assumption they'll only have 9 going into the fall.
— Early enrollees are on the rise because you get them in spring ball, so it's added time for growth. Takes some groundwork to get it done, because the athletes have to focus on it early.
— "We've got a great jump on 18." Talked to more than 30 juniors and a few sophomores they've offered. From about 10:30-12:30 today, did nothing but call those recruits. "We're starting to have a brand out there offensively and now with the 3-4 that people can gravitate to."
— Brings up Trey Flowers to his team a lot. Have a few connections on the Patriots. Flowers is as humble as ever.
— Had a pretty good idea Calloway was going to come to Arkansas. Gave him a little heart-stopper last week, but didn't say what he was going to do. Tried to get his last visit. People were messing around with Montaric Brown until the end and Jarques McClellion had another SEC school come after him today. Says a lot about the kids they recruited that they stuck with it.Antibullying Law Gets More Support, Inches Closer to Passage
This year was a banner year for marriage equality, but there was also progress in the effort to protect LGBT students and others from bullying in schools.
The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network reports that the Safe Schools Improvement Act, federal legislation that would require schools to have antibullying policies in place, has gained support in Congress, putting it closer to passage. Advocates for the bill say they managed to attract the support of six more members of the House and two additional senators.
There are now 176 bipartisan cosponsors in the House and 43 bipartisan cosponsors in the Senate. This total includes 10 Republican cosponsors in the House and Republcans Mark Kirk of Illinois and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in the Senate.
“We are extremely encouraged by the increased support for the Safe Schools Improvement Act, particularly among our Republican friends who recognize that all students deserve to be safe in school regardless of who they are,” said GLSEN executive director Eliza Byard. “When children do not feel safe, they cannot learn. The Safe Schools Improvement Act is a common-sense solution to address the bullying problem in this country. Congress has the power to make a difference, and we look forward to working with our partners on the Hill and in the National Safe Schools Partnership to build even more bipartisan support for this critical legislation.”
According to GLSEN, which leads the National Safe Schools Partnership, consisting more than 100 national organizations, the Safe Schools Improvement Act also has more Republican cosponsors than any other LGBT-inclusive bill.
The act, introduced in the Senate by Democrat Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and in the House by Democrat Linda Sanchez of California, addresses bullying and harassment for all students, including those who are bullied on the basis of their actual or perceived race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, if they are from a military family, or any other distinguishing characteristic.
No federal law or policy exists that requires schools to adopt policies to address bullying and harassment. Existing state laws vary greatly in their reach and effectiveness.
GLSEN and the National Safe Schools Partnership also note that the bill has the support of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. Traditionally, House leaders rarely cosponsor legislation, and Pelosi’s support serves to highlight the importance and urgency of the bill.
“No student should feel unsafe in the classroom—not because of who they are, not because of anything,” said Pelosi. “Congress should pass the Safe Schools Improvement Act and ensure that our schools are safe places for everyone to learn.”
LGBT students experience a high rate of bullying and harassment, according to GLSEN. In GLSEN’s 2011 National School Climate Survey, eight out of 10 LGBT students (81.9 percent) said they've been harassed in the previous year because of their sexual orientation and 63.9 percent because of their gender expression,
Contact reporter Alex Davidson on Twitter at twitter.com/adwildcatA Dutch beer truck apparently side-swiped a tree around 5.30 Monday morning in western Germany, spilled some amber liquid but kept on going.
Why the driver continued on is unknown but as he drove his truck lost more bottles and cases of precious cargo. The trail of broken glass and golden rivulets made it easy for police to track down their suspect.
Police in the small town of Sonsbeck, about 30 km (18 miles) from the Dutch border say truck lost 30-40 cases of beer when it nicked the tree.
Read: How important is it to have breaks from alcohol?
When police finally caught up with the beer spiller they took him to an alcohol abuse center, though it was not immediately clear that the man was drunk at the time. Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
A main thoroughfare in Sonseck was closed for several hours while the spilled brews and broken glass were cleaned up.
Read: Beer culture - this is how Germany drinksOur favorite competitive urban spellcasting title gets its first Arcane Update, now available for Rift on the Oculus Store. Beyond the standard polish and behind-the-scenes improvements, today’s update for The Unspoken includes a ton of new content, including an arena, artifact, Guardian, and more—let’s take a look!
(Un)Level Playing Field
Riffing on the game’s Chicago setting, the Lockport Bridge Arena features shifting topography and dense particle effects for an ice storm sure to keep even the most powerful mage on their toes.
As the action heats up, huge columns of ice transform the battleground, leaving those clever enough to navigate the changing terrain with the upper hand.
From beneath the river’s surface, you’ll summon the Bridge Wraith—an interdimensional Guardian that freezes your opponent to their pedestal with a targeted blizzard. Of course, timing’s everything to prevent your rival from teleporting to safety.
Visibility (and Lack Thereof)
Misdirection may be a mainstay of stage magic, but focus is the name of the game in an action-packed magician’s duel. With the new Dark Tag artifact, you can set a trap to obscure your opponent’s vision and potentially shift the match’s momentum in your favor. Pair it with an offensive gesture spell for a brutal combo move, or use it to buy time as you summon a Guardian.
The update also introduces a Spectator Overlay, providing desktop health and artifact displays for both players. The goal is to make matches easy to follow and as fun to watch as they are to play.
Ever-Evolving
Studio Director Chad Dezern promises many more updates to follow in 2017, including new classes, arenas, artifacts, and modes. “It’s an honor to expand the game this year with the support of a growing install base of VR enthusiasts and archmages,” he says. “We can’t wait for you to get your hands on the results of our cryptic experiments!”
Check out the update on Rift today, and let Insomniac know your thoughts. Comment here, hit the team up on The Unspoken’s Discord channel, or reach out via Facebook and Twitter.
— The Oculus TeamPoor kids should not be saving pocket money for personal hygiene products. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
It wasn’t much — just five bucks apiece — but both boys’ eyes sparkled when Carol Moore told them they could spend it on anything they wanted. “Meet me back here in 10 minutes,” Moore told the boys, whom she’d met a few months ago when they came to her church’s homeless shelter. As the boys set out into the aisles of Walmart, she called after them: “Just get something you really want, okay?”
Ten minutes later, they came back and held out their treasure.
It was deodorant.
“You can’t buy deodorant with food stamps, so when these two boys — they were maybe 13, 14 years old — finally had a little money of their own to spend on something they really wanted, that’s what they bought,” Moore told me, tearing up at the memory. “It broke my heart.”
On paper, being unable to buy non-food items with food stamps sounds logical; after all, they’re called food stamps (and the “N” in SNAP, the new acronym, stands for “nutritional”). In practice, though, the restriction means that two middle-school boys spent their only pocket money in months on deodorant, and food pantries across the country find themselves distributing toothpaste and toilet paper to families who struggle to afford them any other way. But SNAP’s guidelines could easily be reformed to allow low-income families to use their SNAP money for personal hygiene items and common household goods. After all, federal authorities are always tweaking SNAP’s internal workings.
[Laziness isn’t why people are poor. And iPhones aren’t why they lack health care.]
When we talk about fighting poverty, we often talk in terms of vast challenges and sweeping solutions (and indeed, such comprehensive ideas and initiatives are needed). But the lives of financially strapped families are made unnecessarily difficult by small obstacles as well as big ones, and in some cases, fixing the small obstacle is both fairly easy and hugely effective. From loosening restrictions on SNAP purchases to include personal hygiene and other household goods to allowing organizations to take food to poor, rural children, to adding small workarounds for 911 calls in troubled areas, little tweaks |
It would be nice to see those numbers alone. And the second question, do you keep track of the ligament tears on the various types of turf, whether it's grass or what type of artificial turf to see if there's any change in that direction.
JEFF MILLER: Thank you for the question. And I'm going to send this over to Dr. Mack who can give you the details, but let me give a quick statement on this.
Hopefully, I mentioned at the outset of the call, this is top‑line data that we're comfortable sharing because we're comfortable that it's accurate. There is a lot more investigation and analytics that need to go into the depth of what these numbers mean and answering some of the questions that you posed.
Knee ligaments on turf are things we take a look at, but we don't have that information in front of us today. This is a busy time for QuintilesIMS and Doctors Mack and Dreyer as they go through this data as we run up to our combine, when the many medical committees and Physicians' Society meet at the end of February and beginning of March. So we will have that sort of data.
We will be able to take a closer look at self‑reporting, which is the other one that you mentioned, and try to quantify it. We are working hard at those things right now, but we don't have numbers, I don't think. Christina, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we have numbers in either of those categories right now that are sufficiently well‑analyzed and scrubbed. But we will. It's just going to take a little longer in regards to those details than others.
Dr. Mack, is that a correct statement?
DR. CHRISTINA MACK: Sure, I would add the progression of a player from the hit through the evaluation, diagnosis, and the concussion protocol is very complex, there are a lot of points of contact. So that is extra hard to quantify over some of the injury data, so we don't have that at hand at this point so close to the end of the season.
QUESTION: From previous seasons?
DR. CHRISTINA MACK: We don't have that from previous seasons, and the reason is, again, the complexity of quantifying that as the player goes from hits through the game, through their evaluation of multiple medical staff and into the next week, whether or not they have self‑reported can happen at any of those points.
So the reporting, where we'd be able to generate quality data and understand the numbers around that has changed a lot. And this is one of the strongest years of that reporting, so we need to take some time to look at that.
REPORTER'S QUESTION: What are the working theories that explain why the numbers for '13 and '14 were so different than especially last year, but then the past couple years? And I'll ask my follow‑up after.
JEFF MILLER: I think we discussed last year to some degree, and I think to the extent we had data on this point that was supported, at least based on the reactions of the team physicians, so Rob is probably a good person to speak to this.
We saw in 2015 significant more numbers of players self‑reporting, and we saw the athletic trainers in the media box, and we saw the medical timeout being used for the first time, and we saw a greater integration of the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant with the team physician. And on that last point, we saw nearly, I think, it was double the number of screenings by unaffiliated doctors on the sideline of players.
So if they were acting more conservatively around screening players, that would be a good thing, and as a result of screen screening more players they identified things from our perspective. Similarly, if players are self‑reporting more. And it's harder to get the arms around the numbers, we'll do a better job this year than we have in the past. But those would also lead to that increase.
I think the numbers support that to the extent those numbers are analyzable, and I think that the experiences of people like Dr. Berger as an unaffiliated doctor, and Dr. Heyer as a team physician would support those notions.
Rob, do you have anything to add to that?
DR. ROBERT HEYER: Yes, I think the term self‑reporting needs to be clarified a little bit. It's a broad term, and it occurs in many different manners. Number one, another player may notice that a teammate not acting right or took a significant hit to the head, and has been a little slow in the huddle or maybe making mistakes. We would consider that self‑reporting. Someone other than the team physician or the athletic trainers or the spotters are reporting a potential injury.
The other area that I've seen is players coming in after the game, either the day of the game or even the next day saying, "I don't feel well. I'm not sure what's going on. I was hit in the head in the fourth quarter. I didn't think anything about it." And that's the type of self‑reporting that we used to rarely see in players during previous years.
REPORTER'S QUESTION: Thank you. My second question maybe doesn't speak directly to the report, but we saw the release yesterday about Matt Moore. For Jeff or Dr. York, are we satisfied that in most of these cases that protocol is being followed?
JEFF MILLER: I can't put a specific number on it, Christina can probably do a little better or Dr. Mack can probably do better than I can in that regard. But there are hundreds of unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant reports identifying players that they've evaluated during the course of the game. I'm not comfortable knowing exactly what that number is, so I won't try to guess at it. But in the hundreds, I think, is accurate. And the UNCs and the team doctors do a terrific job in working together in analyzing these issues.
It's important we get it right a hundred percent of the time, so that's why you see enforcement mechanisms like this where we work jointly with the Players Association to identify those issues.
It's important to us that everybody understands and follows the protocol, and we continue to enforce its importance and I don't think that will ever change. Dr. Berger and his colleagues at the Head, Neck and Spine Committee spend endless hours working on the protocol with the Physicians Society and the Players Association to improve it on an annual basis to get it right. And we'll spend more time educating team doctors, unaffiliated doctors, athletic trainers and others on whatever changes are made and improvements to make sure that they are working as well together for the betterment of the players.
But it's important to say, too, that we are quite pleased with how these programs are working, and this enforcement protocol is important to make sure that everybody stays aligned with the work that's being done, and the education level remains high around these issues. But overall, this is a terrific program and one that we're very pleased with.
REPORTER'S QUESTION: I wondered on the kickoff returns, the numbers for concussion did not really change a lot. Does that indicate that this will change or hasn't had a big difference or is it just too early to judge?
JEFF MILLER: I'll toss that over to Christina because I think she'd be better to answer it. My initial reaction to it is that we'll share this information with the competition committee and analyze this closely. It is, as you mentioned, one year of data. We saw the number of kickoff returns decrease, and we saw the number of concussions decrease. But how much emphasis you put on one year versus a number of years is something that we would defer to the experts on.
DR. CHRISTINA MACK: We have seen the concussion numbers on kickoff returns stay within some kind of stable range. They've jumped around. That's an expected amount of variability over four years. So certainly this is something that we'll talk about and we'll look a lot more closely at these data, what's happening on these plays at the Combine. But for now, the top line numbers, they fluctuate what we would call a natural fluctuation.
REPORTER'S QUESTION: My paper this year tried to track and set up a database to track concussions, and we saw a fairly wide variance in kind of team by team reporting of concussions. The team I cover, the Panthers, and the one Dr. Heyer's involved with was among the most reported. But I'm wondering, is that something that's being tracked by you guys, and what steps are in place and are there any concerns about kind of underreporting of these by certain teams?
JEFF MILLER: I don't know if Dr. York is still on the line. I know he had other obligations. But he mentioned the preseason concussion numbers as an example, where we had identified that in practices as an issue where there were a disproportionate number of concussions compared to the regular season, and spent time with each individual club to talk about what their particular practices were and what their concussion numbers were, and we saw an improvement. Probably based largely on the fact that we raised it to their attention.
So we take a look at that for purposes of being able to change the culture. As far as what's done on a team‑by‑team basis or how this is tracked, I'm sure Dr. Mack can offer a little insight as far as that goes.
DR. CHRISTINA MACK: Sure, thank you. The most critical answer to this is around the culture on the teams and how they play, as Jeff described. From a reporting perspective, particularly within games, we feel confident we are getting all of the concussions. And overall, because QuintilesIMS works very closely with each of the teams throughout the full season to make sure that all of the concussions are reported and they're reported accurately. We feel confident that we're getting the concussions in equal number from the teams.
We comb the media as well, and when we see something in the media if it's not in the database, we call the club and ask about that, and find out if the media ‑‑ if it hadn't been reported, or in a lot of cases it's reported through the media, but was, in fact, not actually diagnosed as a concussion.
We also work with the clubs monthly, sending them reports with all of their injuries with focus on concussion, but with focus on all of the injuries, to emphasize complete reporting, quality reporting, and make sure all the records are in there in the way we can include them in the analyses.
The athletic trainer community, within the NFL, is very engaged in the reporting of the injuries, so we do feel confident that we're getting the concussions reported.
REPORTER'S QUESTION: Dr. Heyer referenced the players who self‑report later, either day of game or the following day. This is just a procedural thing perhaps for Dr. Mack. Where do the players who report symptoms later fall as far as classification? Does that come under game ultimately or where do those go?
DR. CHRISTINA MACK: Yeah, that’s a good question. If a player is injured in a game, that falls under a game concussion. So if the symptoms start the day after the game and that's when the diagnosis happens, that's still categorized as an in‑game concussion if the impact was from a game.
REPORTER'S QUESTION: Have there been documented cases, and if so, I'm curious as to the number of players who go through the protocol, are cleared appropriately to return‑to‑play, but later report symptoms and are subsequently diagnosed with a concussion?
JEFF MILLER: So a player who has been identified as potentially having a concussion going through the protocol on the sideline?
REPORTER'S QUESTION: Right, even the locker room evaluation. We know that there have been players who have gone to the locker room, been evaluated, cleared to return‑to‑play, have returned to play. Are there any instances of those players later developing symptoms that were subsequently led to a concussion diagnosis?
JEFF MILLER: In the days following the game or later in the game?
REPORTER: Correct, after the game or in the days following.
JEFF MILLER: I don't know the answer to that question. Dr. Heyer, have you had any experiences with that?
DR. ROBERT HEYER: I think there have been a few. I speak without exact knowledge, but that's an excellent question. Looking at the UNC data and the concussion data should be able to find out that number. It would not surprise me if there was a case here and there, because concussions sometimes, their symptoms do develop over a period of time sometimes.
JEFF MILLER: I think we'd have to do a little further digging to answer your question. So let me do that and get back to you.
REPORTER'S QUESTION: You mentioned the athletic trainers in the booth who stop the clock for player evaluation when there is suspected injury. Do you have a report on the times the referees may have stopped to the clock to have a player evaluated?
JEFF MILLER: Where an official escorted a player off the field? You can think of the Tyrod Taylor hit in the Buffalo game where I think Ed Hochuli took him off the field.
QUESTION: Right.
JEFF MILLER: That was a point of emphasis with the officials as well and has been for a couple of years around identifying players they perceive need some assistance. Again, that's not asking the official to diagnose anything, that's not his or her job. But to identify a player that they think needs some medical attention.
So through the Competition Committee specifically, we'll go back and look at those instances. We would deem officials looking at players and identify them as needing medical attention as a positive thing. But I don't have any numbers to offer you at this point.
###END###NeuroSky Inc. and Emotiv Systems Inc. are among the companies vying to emerge in the brain-wave market using electroencephalograph, or EEG, technology.
Uses include concentrating and relaxing, improving mental health, and games:
London-based MyndPlay Ltd. is using NeuroSky chips inside its own headset to enable viewers to control the outcome of movie scenes by concentrating and relaxing. Two prisons in England show inmates a gangster-themed film from MyndPlay that teaches them to stay calm during threatening situations.
Some doctors believe mind-controlled games can provide more than fun and relaxation, by improving mental health. SuperBetterLabs Inc. is attempting to introduce cognitive therapy into games optimized for NeuroSky and Emotive headsets.
NecoMiMi headset, a fashion accessory that has taken fans of Japanese animé by storm, is a set of catlike ears that perk up when the wearer’s concentration intensifies, and flatten out when relaxed.Back to Gallery Gallery Folders
Search Gallery Disney Wallpapers A collection of (older) digital paintings based on my favorite iconic Disney scenes, created for use as desktop wallpapers. All personal usage of these works is allowed.
Some works based on Studio Ghibli films and other animation studios are put in here too, for convenience's sake! I'll chase the wind. alicexz 7,092 A Kiss for Corona alicexz 19,291 Someday alicexz 20,780 All This Time alicexz 19,330 The Lights alicexz 45,586 Rapunzel alicexz 30,348 Everything is Right alicexz 9,561 Happily ever after alicexz 6,248 Down, boy. alicexz 5,935 Tale as Old as Time alicexz 11,685 A Wondrous Place alicexz 9,514 This Provincial Life alicexz 17,241 The Mermaid alicexz 17,934 My most grievous fault alicexz 6,221 The Wolf Girl alicexz 8,190 And at last... alicexz 11,342 The Fire... alicexz 7,308 Bleed alicexz 31,586 The Wind... alicexz 34,601 Daughter of Triton alicexz 15,091 The Dragon Boy alicexz 19,758 Strength and Discipline alicexz 14,600 The Heart of Atlantis alicexz 13,921 Live Bait alicexz 5,094Ray Manzarek, the founding member and keyboard player for the Doors whose haunting and sweetly melodic organ riffs loomed large in the psychedelic rock era, died Monday at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, Germany. He was 74.
The cause was bile duct cancer, said a spokeswoman for the band, Heidi Robinson-Fitzgerald. She said the musician had struggled with complications related to the disease for several months and that his wife, Dorothy, and his brothers, Rick and James, were at his bedside when he died.
The Doors were one of rock music’s most renowned and controversial acts. Formed in 1965, when Mr. Manzarek had a chance encounter with aspiring poet and film student Jim Morrison at Venice Beach, the band went on to sell more than 100 million albums worldwide, with hits like “Light My Fire,” “Hello, I Love You,” “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” “L.A. Woman” and “Roadhouse Blues.”
The Doors first came to San Francisco in January 1967 to open for the Young Rascals and Sopwith Camel at the Fillmore Auditorium. They also frequented local venues such as the Avalon Ballroom and Matrix Club, with bootleg recordings from the shows long circulating among fans.
When they performed a series of dates at the Winterland Ballroom in December 1967, the band stopped one of their shows midsong so could watch themselves perform on TV on “The Jonathan Winters Show.”
After Morrison’s death in Paris in 1971, the Doors – which also included drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger – tried to carry on with Mr. Manzarek on vocals.
When they eventually split up, Mr. Manzarek became a best-selling author and solo artist. He also produced music for Echo and the Bunnymen and the Los Angeles band X, and performed with San Francisco poet Michael McClure, British actor Darryl Read and electronic composer Bal.
His memoir, “Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors,” was published in 1998.
Raymond Daniel Manzarek Jr. was born on Feb. 12, 1939, in Chicago. He initially wanted to play basketball but refused to play guard, despite his coach’s insistence, so he quit the sport. He graduated from DePaul University with a degree in economics. In 1962, he began studying cinematography at UCLA, along with Morrison. He also met his future wife, Dorothy Fujikawa, there.
The Doors staged several hugely successful comebacks over the years, fueled by the Jim Morrison biography “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” co-written by the band’s manager, Danny Sugerman, and Oliver Stone’s sensationalized 1991 biopic, “The Doors.”
The Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
In 2000, the band was the subject of the tribute album “Stoned Immaculate” and a live VH1 special – both of which featured lead singers from contemporary bands such as Stone Temple Pilots, Creed and Smash Mouth filling in for Morrison.
Mr. Manzarek shared his thoughts on the enduring appeal of the Doors in an article in The San Francisco Chronicle about 40 years after the band first broke. “I love how the young people of today can understand and get excited by the Doors’ music,” he said. “I love that. I think it’s a tribute to their intellect.”
He added, “People always ask me, ‘But don’t you get tired of playing “Light My Fire”?’ I always say back, ‘Do you get tired of having sex?’ ”
In 2002, Mr. Manzarek revitalized his touring career with Doors’ guitarist and longtime collaborator Krieger as Manzarek-Krieger.
“I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today,” Krieger said in a prepared statement. “I’m just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life, and I will always miss him.”
In 2008, Mr. Manzarek moved to Napa, often sitting in with local acts.
In another interview with The Chronicle, he recalled his last dream about Morrison.
“He was back, and nobody asked him where he had been,” Mr. Manzarek recalled. “He comes in, and we’re in a rehearsal studio, sort of like the Doors workshop. It’s like what he said to me on the beach before we put the band together. I said to him, ‘What have you been up to?’ And he said, ‘I’ve been writing songs.’ And that’s the point at which the dream ends. I never hear the songs. It’s so frustrating. I wake up just before Jim begins to sing, and I never get to hear the songs.”
Mr. Manzarek is survived by his wife and brothers, as well as a son, Pablo, and three grandchildren, Noah, Apollo and Camille. Funeral arrangements are pending.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks fans to please make a memoriam donation in Ray Manzarek’s name at www.standup2cancer.org
Here is an interview we conducted with Mr. Manzarek in 2000.Let's be blunt. Leaders of the Republican Party -- including their presidential candidate Mitt Romney -- have moved from "rooting against" our economy to actively attempting to sabotage the economy of the United States.
They believe that their chances of defeating President Obama, taking control of the Senate and maintaining control of the House of Representatives materially improve if the economic recovery stalls. And they aren't just standing around hoping that a European financial collapse or higher oil prices will send the economy into a second recession -- they are actively trying to make it happen.
It is astonishing, but today the surest way to make certain that a piece of legislation is deep-sixed by the Republicans in Congress is to demonstrate that it will help create jobs in the American economy.
The first concrete example involves actual concrete -- the reauthorization of the Transportation Bill that provides funding for roads, bridges and mass transit projects across the country.
No one questions the critical necessity of these projects. They are extraordinarily popular with the voters. Transportation bills have been routinely reauthorized with bipartisan support for as long as anyone can remember.
The current bill expires June 30 -- after which there will be no funding for transportation projects during the construction season this summer. But Republicans in the House are refusing to act -- holding up action -- unless Democrats agree to fast-track the Keystone Pipeline and limit the EPA's ability to regulate coal ash.
If the bill is not reauthorized, 1.9 million construction workers would -- temporarily at least -- lose their jobs. That would be just fine with the Republicans. They'd love to use their leverage to win ideological points, but they would be even happier if almost two million Americans were added to the unemployment rolls this summer before the election.
Of course, Republicans in Congress would never dream of passing President Obama's American Jobs Act that independent economists claim would create 1.3 million new jobs. It would put people to work building needed infrastructure and provide funds to pay to rehire hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public service workers that have been laid off in droves by cash-starved states.
And there's more. Yesterday's Washington Post reports that Republicans have made it clear that the Federal Reserve would face fierce Republican criticism if it takes further actions to stimulate the economy before the election. The Post writes that,
Republicans... have expressed deep concern about measures taken by the Fed to support the economy -- and could be doubly upset if new efforts goose the stock market and are perceived to work in favor of President Obama's re-election.
And there is great concern that the Fed would respond to Republican pressure. Vincent Reinhart, a longtime Fed economist, now chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley, noted that "the headline they most worry about is 'The Fed acts to help the incumbent.'"
Finally, the Republicans will stand like a great united wall to block President Obama's bill to discourage the outsourcing of American jobs, which is due to come to the Senate floor around the fourth of July.
Mitt Romney's new slogan is "Put Jobs First." Nothing could be more hypocritical -- or wrong.
The last time the Republicans had control of the White House, they gave us 25 months of massive job losses. Over George Bush's terms as President there was actually zero private sector job growth.
In contrast, President Obama's policies have given us 27 consecutive months of private sector job growth. And it would have produce millions more jobs if the Republican Congress had passed his Jobs Bill.
But, with a straight face, Romney is now trying to convince American voters to return to policies that failed to create any jobs at all. He wants to give more tax breaks to the rich, let Wall Street run wild, and hand over all income growth to the top 1%. What does he take us for?
These policies resulted in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression just three years ago, all the while generating gigantic Wall Street bonuses and sinking middle class wages. We've been there and done that -- recently.
Romney adds to his narrative the thesis that he knows how to "create" jobs because of his years at Bain Capital -- a buyout firm that bought and sold companies for a profit. Romney was very good at making money for himself and his investors, but jobs were entirely incidental. He was perfectly happy to buy companies, load them with debt and then bleed them dry and let them go out of business -- so long as he still made lots of money. In fact, he threw thousands of people out of work while he himself always walked away a winner.
Romney made all of the same promises about job creation that he's making now back in 2002 when he ran for governor of Massachusetts. But then, when he was governor, the state dropped to 47th in the nation in job creation and manufacturing tanked.
Mitt's policies didn't work then, and they won't work now.
Let's face it, turning the keys to the economy over to a Republican that completely shares the economic policies of the Bush Administration is like handing over the keys of a tanker to the captain of the Exxon Valdez.
What was it George Bush tried to say? Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
So, with no record of creating jobs in the public sector at all -- and supporting policies that demonstrably failed to create jobs just three short years ago -- Mitt Romney has brazenly joined with his fellow Republicans to actively sabotage American job growth in order to win the election.
If he can't demonstrate that he has a record of creating jobs, I guess Romney figures the next best thing is to destroy the jobs that have been created by his opponent.
Romney's is betting that he voters won't notice that they guy who claims he's racing in with the fire hose is the same one that set the fire. We can't let that happen.In the end, it might be geography that gets us. Reading accounts of New Orleans after Katrina, or Atlantic City after Sandy, calls to mind the postapocalyptic narratives that readers with an early inclination towards science fiction grew up with. It’s not for nothing that John Hillcoat drew inspiration from the wreckage after Katrina in his adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, after all. Gretel Ehrlich’s Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami follows her journeys in Japan after the 2011 tsunami hit; change certain details and send it back in time forty years, and you could convince readers that you had a future New Wave science fiction classic on their hands. Earlier this summer, Vox ran a story and image that suggested another moment of seismic geographic change: a contemporary map “if the supercontinent Pangaea spontaneously reunited.” Reading it, I was surprised that a writer hadn’t taken that idea and run with that, whether in film, fiction, or comics. Hundreds or thousands of years ago, natural disasters inspired stories of divine intervention and battles in the cosmos. We live in a world that we now have a far greater ability to understand – but when events occur that exceed our ability to comprehend, anxieties creep in to our minds. And, in the past year, three memorable stories have tapped into these very anxieties.
The three novels that make up Jeff VanderMeer’s recently-concluded Southern Reach trilogy take place in the aftermath of an event that has altered part of a landscape, dubbed “Area X,” in a fundamental way. Just how fundamental, and in just what ways, are revealed piece by piece over the course of the trilogy. Central to VanderMeer’s story is the government agency tasked with understanding and exploring Area X — both the agency itself and its limitations, internal politics, and long-running conspiracies. Trees, a comic by writer Warren Ellis and artist Jason Howard, follows a number of perspectives throughout human society a decade after large alien objects — the “Trees” of the title — landed on different points throughout the planet. Their purpose is fundamentally unknown, but their relationship to society is one of terrifying indifference. As one character notes, “The most important things in history landed and we mean nothing to them.” And while Edan Lepucki’s novel California is more concerned with the details of daily life after a societal collapse, the details of that collapse that slowly emerge over the course of the novel are scarily plausible, and rooted in disasters that have befallen the country before, from polar vortices to earthquakes.
Annihilation, the first of VanderMeer’s trilogy, is the story of the twelfth expedition to explore Area X. It’s narrated by one of that expedition’s four members, a biologist, whose now-deceased husband had been a part of an earlier expedition. Adding to the disorientation, a number of the trilogy’s characters are referred to by their titles: “the biologist,” “the psychologist;” even John Rodriguez, the man at the center of Authority, who is referred to as “Control.” Depending on the viewpoint of a particular scene, a character might be referred to by their given name, their title, or something else entirely. It’s a subtly disorienting aspect of the book, but it’s one that mirrors the geographic and temporal disorientation experienced by some of the characters. (And that’s not even factoring in the way that Area X seems to alter those who have returned from expeditions there.)
From the first sentence of Annihilation, it is apparent that there’s an essential wrongness to the landscape:
The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats.
Throughout the book–throughout the trilogy–characters will encounter things that were not supposed to be in the places that they are. A lighthouse contains a trove of impossible documents; the headquarters of the Southern Reach houses secret rooms; and Rodriguez spends much of Authority attempting to comprehend the nature of the border separating Area X from the outside world. Late in the novel, he reads a document relating to Area X and finds it increasingly unsettling:
He stopped reading at a certain point. It was at a section where Whitby described the border as “invisible skin,” and those who tried to pass through it without using the door trapped forever in a vast stretch of otherwhere hundreds of miles wide. Even though the steps by which Whitby had gotten to this point had seemed, for a time, sobering and deliberate.
This ambiguity extends to the Southern Reach itself. The biologist who narrates Annihilation sets out the basic history: prior to the Event that changed it, what became the Southern Reach was “part of a wilderness that lay adjacent to a military base.” In Authority and Acceptance, further glimpses of the outside world are given, including Rodriguez’s house, the Southern Reach headquarters, and, in flashbacks, glimpses of what life was like in what would become Area X before the Event took hold. What the reader doesn’t get is an indication of where this is all taking place. At times, the use of the phrase “Southern Reach” suggests the American South–something given some credence by VanderMeer discussing the inspiration for his writing that he gets from long walks through northern Florida. But in another interview, he also spoke of walking through the Pacific Coast, and there are elements of the novel that could just as easily be on the Oregon coast, or inside a New England fishing village. That implies a kind of assurance, however, and any kind of certainty slowly ebbs away over the course of these three novels. There’s only the sense of loss: of space, of identity, of uniqueness, of form, of consciousness. The Southern Reach trilogy contains many familiar elements, from body horror to political conspiracies to psychological thrills. But at its center are primal anxieties, the kind that wake you, screaming and sweating, from dreams of impossible spaces.
Reading Warren Ellis and Jason Howard’s comic Trees offers a similarly ominous sensibility, albeit with more familiar locations. Set ten years after giant alien structures landed on Earth–sometimes in the middle of cities, sometimes in the middle of nowhere–the series follows a group of seemingly-disconnected figures, from scientists to journalists to politicians, whose lives have been altered by the Trees in some way. And in the ways that the narrative has emerged so far, the question at hand seems to be how the trees will continue to change society. In Sicily, a professor, in offering to teach a young woman certain survival skills, notes that “[o]f all the people who might survive the world to come...perhaps you should be one of them,” suggesting that long-term change brought by the Trees’ presence will lead to more unrest rather than utopia.
A different perspective is shown in a cultural enclave in China where a young artist moves to pursue his studies. There, the presence of the Trees seems to be ushering in a more beneficial societal order: there’s a thriving creative community, and there’s a progressive attitude towards questions of of gender identity. Here, at least, the Trees seem to be a harbinger of a better future, rather than one characterized by uncertainty and fear. (Comparisons could also be made between this and China Miéville’s short story 'Polynia,' in which giant icebergs appear floating over London–here, too, is that sense of displaced geography laced with the impossible.) That question of the future is mirrored in other plotlines in the series: political maneuverings over Trees in Somalia and Puntland that might lead to war; mysterious activity observed by scientists working near Trees in the Arctic Circle.
At this early stage in the series, the Trees are agents of change, though the nature of that change remains unclear. It’s in the grandest science fictional tradition, then: the introduction of something new, with its role in the plot still unclear. Where the Trees fit in with our anxieties is made clear from the outset: their utter indifference makes living in their presence an exercise in being constantly unsettled. In the first issue’s opening scene, something mysterious happens to the Trees in Rio de Janeiro; later, two characters discuss the effect that the Trees had on New York City years before. The scale of Trees varies: there are quiet character moments, and there are scenes of cities being devastated. But even though it accesses numerous anxieties, there does exist the potential for the change imparted in the narrative to benefit the bulk of humanity.
The notion of hope runs through Edan Lepucki’s California, sometimes faintly, sometimes deafeningly. It’s set somewhere in the state that gives the novel its title, and follows a couple, Cal and Frida, as they make their way through the world after American society has collapsed. Lepucki slowly reveals bits and pieces of the world around them: the abandoned spaces they’ve found in which to live, the people they encounter on occasion, and the memories of how they ended up there.
California is set a few decades from now; in flashbacks, we learn about Cal’s education at Plank, a unique, agrarian-focused institution, and how the actions of a radicalized subset of society have seemingly accelerated societal upheaval. The current state of natural disasters has been amplified, including earthquakes and devastating outbreaks of the flu. Cal’s parents in the Midwest are killed by a horrific winter storm, which seems to be a regular occurrence in the future as it exists in California.
The storm that killed his parents in Ohio had been followed by bigger and worse ones, and before the Internet went dead entirely, Cal read that only a third of the population in the Midwest and South remained.
That instability, that sense that the natural world has become something that can no longer be trusted, is an underlying aspect of California’s early pages. That Frida is expecting a child prompts the two to venture further into the changed world; the story that emerges is one of rebuilding, of old institutions and old behaviors and classifications doing battle with the new. At one point, characters encounter the Spikes, a kind of manmade geographic warning feature. Here is humanity, reeling from society’s decline; here, too, is humanity, again imposing its will on the earth. Those questions of familiarity–in space, in society–after all that we’ve come to know has been upended are what draw this book through to its conclusion.
There are chilling moments in all of these works, some arising from the environmental devastation innate to the stories that they tell, and some arising from the fear and paranoia that can stem from them. Lepucki’s novel contains the most significant musings on society as a whole, and what it might mean after conventional notions of it have been swept away. In Trees, the process of change is still ongoing, but the indifference of the natural world (even with unnatural elements) is paramount. In Vandermeer’s novels, the changing landscape can offer primal horror, transcendence, or transfiguration. But then, his books slip between genres more easily. Elements of Authority, for one, are effective regardless of the trilogy’s more surreal elements. What that anxiety reveals, however, is that it can prompt terrifying actions regardless of the context, on both a personal and societal level. That fear can come for us all, whether or not the landscape will devour us.
Discussed in this essay:
The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer
Trees (issues 1-4) by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jason Howard (art)
California by Edan Lepucki◊ Order Processing Time ◊
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95]
19th and 20th centuries
The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, stationed in California, in the late 19th century.[17] One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum.[96] Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.[91]
France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara[97] in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed.[98] The Free French Camel Corps fought during World War II, and camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.[99]
In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.[100]
In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.[101][102][103]
The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.[104]
Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.[105]
The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.[106]
The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.[107][108]
Food uses
Dairy
Camels at the Khan and old bridge, Lajjun Palestine (now in Israel ) - 1870s drawing
Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month.[17][38][109][110] Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins;[111] compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose,[112] and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C.[11] Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants.[17][113] Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.[17][112]
Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added.[17] Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds.[114] Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet.[112] The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant.[115][116] The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets.[112] Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.[117]
Additionally, camel milk can be made into ice cream.[118][119]
Meat
Somali camel meat and rice dish
Camel meat pulao, from Pakistan
They provide food in the form of meat and milk (Tariq et al.,2010).[120] A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg (661–882 lb), while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg (1,433 lb). The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg (550 and 770 lb).[16] The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy.[121] The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel.[122] On the other hand, camel milk and meat are rich in protein, vitamins, glycogen, and other nutrients making them essential in the diet of many people. From chemical composition to meat quality, the dromedary camel is the preferred breed for meat production. It does well even in arid areas due to its unusual physiological behaviors and characteristics, which include tolerance to extreme temperatures, radiation from the sun, water paucity, rugged landscape and low vegetation.[123] Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough,[11][16] although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked.[124] The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste.[125] In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat.[126] Specialist camel butchers provide expert cuts, with the hump considered the most popular.[127]
Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole.[128] The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[38] Camel meat is mainly eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history.[16][38][121] Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals.[16][121][129] Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.[128][129]
A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.[130]
Religion
Islam
Camel meat is halal (Arabic: حَـلَال, 'allowed') for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.[131] Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haram (Arabic: حَـرَام, 'forbidden') for a Muslim to perform Salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of the Shaytan (Arabic: شَـيْـطَـان, 'Devil').[131] According to Abu Yusuf, the urine of camel may be used for medical treatment if necessary, but according to Abū Ḥanīfah, the drinking of camel urine is discouraged.[132]
The Islamic texts contain several stories featuring camels. In the story of the people of Thamud, the Prophet Salih miraculously brings forth a naqat (Arabic: نَـاقَـة,'she-camel') out of a rock. After the Prophet Muhammad migrated from Mecca to Medina, he allowed his she-camel to roam there; the location where the camel stopped to rest determined the location where he would build his house in Medina.[133]
Judaism
According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher.[134] Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves: "But these you shall not eat among those that bring up the cud and those that have a cloven hoof: the camel, because it brings up its cud, but does not have a [completely] cloven hoof; it is unclean for you."[135]
Depictions in culture
Distribution and numbers
There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries.[136] Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world,[22] where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia[16] and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.[110][137][138][139]
Commercial camel market headcount in 2003
Around 700,000 dromedary camels are now feral in Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries.[129][136][140] This population is growing about 8% per year.[141] Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.[142]
A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwestern United States after having been imported in the 19th century as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.[91]
The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated.[41][136][143] The Wild Bactrian camel is a separate species and is the only truly wild (as opposed to feral) camel in the world. The wild camels are critically endangered and number approximately 1400, inhabiting the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in China and Mongolia.[10][144]
See also
Notes
References
Further readingArguing that their efforts are being thwarted by new technologies revolutionizing Internet communication, the FBI is calling for a push to expand its capabilities in intercepting online evidence. But some groups are saying that such actions have the potential to threaten online privacy, security and innovation.
Naming advances in "webmail, social networking sites or peer-to-peer services" FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni appeared before Congress to discuss the increasing difficulties the agency has had in corralling electronic communications for ongoing cases.
"In the ever-changing world of modern communications technologies, however, the FBI and other government agencies are facing a potentially widening gap between our legal authority to intercept electronic communications pursuant to court order and our practical ability to actually intercept those communications," she said. "We confront, with increasing frequency,
service providers who do not fully comply with court orders in a timely and efficient manner."
The challenges faced by authorities are both technical, and legal, according to Caproni, who named the issue "Going Dark," referring to the increasing space of Internet activity that cannot be monitored in the efficient manner the FBI seeks.
The technical landscape involved contains a myriad set of problems for law enforcement officials trying to get ahold of information. While some electronic communications providers already have in place ways to intercept messages, others must develop the technology once they receive the court order, slowing the process down.
"As the gap between authority and capability widens, the government is increasingly unable to collect valuable evidence in cases ranging from child exploitation and pornography to organized crime and drug trafficking to terrorism and espionage," Caproni said. "This gap poses a growing threat to public safety."
To illustrate, Caproni brought up a case in which the DEA was able to dismantle the drug trafficking arm of an organization, but was stymied by the lack of the provider's ability to intercept communication involving the arms trafficking wing of the group. "As a result, elements of this organization continue to traffic weapons today," she said.
The legal problem, Caproni says, is not so much about inadequate legal authority as it is about the practical issues law enforcement faces once it has received the right to collect data. Focusing on "the interception of electronic communications and related data in real or near-real time" presents new difficulties, Caproni noted.
While the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) of 1994 mandates that communications providers have the capacity to intercept data, it does not cover webmail, social networking and P2P services.
"Since 1994, there has been a dramatic increase in the volume of communications, the types of services that are offered, and the number of service providers," Caproni said. "It is no longer the case that the technology involved in communications services is largely standard."
She also pointed out that the penalty for noncompliance is contempt, an action both difficult to pursue by legal means and carrying a low rate of success.
Reports late in 2010 that the FBI wanted to ensure that all services would be technologically capable of complying with a wiretap order were widely considered to be a move that could change the fundamental structures of the technologies involved. But Caproni emphasized that this new initiative would not focus on the technology itself, but to aid in the ease of legal process involved with obtaining electronic communications.
"Addressing the Going Dark problem does not require fundamental changes in encryption
technology," she said, allaying the fears of security experts who believed any requirement to build back-doors into encrypted softwares would not only pose a huge hassle for services required to remake their structures, but also present a risk that such back-doors would only make it easier for hackers to exploit the sites.
Though Caproni's remarks did not lay out a specific series of requests, the nature of her statement has already raised concerns in the web security community. As it stands, the call to improve the technological capability of the FBI to intercept communications does not entail what exactly might be required of communications providers.
Speaking of "the corresponding impact on trust in the confidentiality of Internet communications, security, innovation, competitiveness, availability of encryption, and privacy," Tech Freedom issued a statement expressing their worries about possible CALEA expansion.
CALEA, which originally held only over telecommunications services and not information services, specifically traditional telephone services. In 2004, they added the reach of CALEA to broadband Internet access services and "managed" Voice over Internet Protocol services (which applies to numbers already on the telephone network, as opposed to a service like Skype). This sort of push, Tech Freedom argues, is a different beast altogether:
In a sense, CALEA compliance built upon, rather than transformed or undermined, the technological model on which the carriers' networks were designed. This is very different, as I understand it, from the challenge CALEA compliance will present to peer-to-peer service providers that do not set up, take down or provide signaling for their customers' communications on signaling, routing and transmission networks controlled by the service providers. The extension of CALEA to these "edge" technologies might transform them fundamentally, reducing drastically their value to users and the openness and innovation they represent. Before they run that risk, Congress and the Administration should make sure they have exhausted all of the less restrictive alternatives.
The ACLU had an even stronger take.
"Though the administration claims this is just a technical fix, its request will actually change the structure of the Internet, providing the government with a master key to our online communications," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The proposed changes will not only make it easier and cheaper for the government to invade our privacy, but also make the Internet more vulnerable to penetration from other sources."
The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), which has closely monitored the government's actions regarding web surveillance, was able to obtain documents showing that the "Going Dark" initiative is a top priority for the FBI.
But EFF has also filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit as the government has stalled on the release of further documents regarding the plan--a hearing occurred today for the suit. Currently, the government will not release the documents to EFF until August 2012, two years after they filed their second FOIA request.What do women want? That’s the age-old question.
But in the context of what women’s groups hope for — and expect — in President Obama’s second term, the answers aren’t all that mysterious.
The National Organization for Women is pressing for a full half of the Cabinet to be made up of women — just like the U.S. population generally. NOW President Terry O’Neill says there’s no reason it can’t be done. “Gone are the days when you really had to search high and low for qualified candidates,” she says.
There’s a chance, though, that the number of women in Cabinet-level jobs could dip. Of the five top appointees likely to depart soon — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson — two are women. Of course, others appear to be staying put, at least for now, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and Small Business Administration chief Karen Mills.
O’Neill says candidates such as U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for secretary of state (whose potential nomination is running into resistance from Senate Republicans) and former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairman Sheila Bair for Treasury would fit the bill. And there are women among the candidates being talked about for other jobs.
Obama’s record on hiring women has generally won praise, though reports from the early days of his first term had some female White House staffers feeling frozen out of his inner circle.
Emily’s List President Stephanie Schriock says she expects Obama to “keep building on” his track record, citing the women in his first-term Cabinet and among his senior campaign staff (she pointed to campaign officials Jen O’Malley Dillon, Stephanie Cutter and Juliana Smoot as evidence of his continued willingness to staff up with women). And she thinks there’s a call for even more such hires.
“Last election was a clear mandate for women’s leadership,” she says. “Voters want to see women in the highest levels of government.”
Like O’Neill, she says the problem isn’t a lack of capable, confirmable candidates. “There are so many qualified women who are ready to serve — and the great news is that the guy who doesn’t need a binder to find them won the election.”
USDA choice
Update on the Obama second-term Cabinet watch:
Right after the election, we had put Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on the “stay” list in terms of Cabinet members’ future status in the second Obama term.
The chatter then was that, while he’s in very good standing with the White House, he might leave if his wife, Christie Vilsack, lost her bid for a House seat back home in Iowa. Christie Vilsack, running in a distinctly conservative-leaning district, did indeed lose to incumbent Rep. Steve King (R), 53 percent to 45 percent.
But the latest chatter is that Tom Vilsack, rather than heading west, might be staying on, and Christie Vilsack might instead be moving east to join him here.
The value of a dollar
Financial disclosures can be such pesky things for folks in the political limelight.
What a relief, then, not to have a salary high enough to require them, such as the one Burson Taylor Snyder, deputy chief of staff to Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), is making. Her husband, Pete Snyder, just announced that he is running for lieutenant governor of Virginia.
Like any candidate, he might prefer to keep personal details close to the vest as long as he can — though he’ll eventually have to fill out a candidate’s disclosure form — particularly since, as one of the founders of the GOP firm New Media Strategies, he’s probably worth millions (according to a 2007 form his wife filed as a House staffer, his stake in the company was worth between $5 million and $25 million).
Under Senate ethics rules, Snyder would have been required to file another financial disclosure form — which also would list her husband’s assets and income, possibly including those associated with his investment firm, Disruptor Capital — if she made more than $119,554.
But with a salary under the minimum — just barely — she doesn’t quite meet the reporting requirement. According to salary-tracking service LegiStorm, she pulled down $119,552.88 from April 1, 2011, through March 31, 2012, and appears on track to make that same amount in calendar year 2012, though the pay records aren’t yet available.
That’s exactly $1.12 (you can barely buy a pack of gum for less than that!) under the bar for disclosure. Coincidence?
Snyder wouldn’t comment.
But it seems that figure might make her underpaid, at least according to some measures. Her counterpart in the office of Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), for example, makes $133,000 annually, and her predecessor in Blunt’s office made even more, about $160,000 a year.
Snyder would hardly be pioneering new territory here. “We’ve seen this process before,” says Jock Friedly, LegiStorm’s president and founder. “A lot of people would rather not disclose if they don’t have to.”
Such disclosures have proved politically embarrassing, as when House records on Callista Gingrich’s finances revealed that she and hubby Newt Gingrich had a line of credit at Tiffany’s.
So when it comes to revealing information that could be used by political foes, it seems less really is more.
With Emily Heil
The blog: washingtonpost.com/
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Episode 1: "Mother's Day"
Taystee and Poussey: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Scholastic Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
Poussey: The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Andrews McMeel Publishing The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
Flaca and Maritza: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and Taking the Heat by Brenda Novak Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix
Back Bay Books The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold Harlequin Taking the Heat by Brenda Novak
Caputo: Total Feng Shui by Lillian Too Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Chronicle Books Total Feng Shui by Lillian Too
Big Boo: Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix William Morrow Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt
Episode 2: "Bed Bugs and Beyond"
Red: Sophomore Year Is Greek to Me by Meredith Zeitlin Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix http://G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers Sophomore Year Is Greek to Me by Meredith Zeitlin
Piper: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Little, Brown and Company The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Poussey: Racso and the Rats of NIMH by Jane Leslie Conly Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix HarperCollins Racso and the Rats of NIMH by Jane Leslie Conly
Exterminator: Fighting for Air — the Unknown Adventures of Young Doc Holliday by Jack Kincade Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix amazon.com Fighting for Air - the Unknown Adventures of Young Doc Holliday by Jack Kincade
Episode 3: "Empathy Is a Boner Killer"
Poussey: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and The BFG by Roald Dahl Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix
Penguin Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Puffin The BFG by Roald Dahl
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, and books by Sister Souljah Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix
NYRB Classics A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes Pocket Star The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah Atria/Emily Bestler Books A Deeper Love Inside by Sister Souljah
All of David Sedaris' books Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix
Back Bay Books Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris Back Bay Books Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris Little, Brown and Company When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix
Hill & Wang The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven Frederick Warne & Co The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, and books by Jonathan Swift, Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Tropper, Jonathan Franzen, and Jonathan Kellerman Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix
Scribner Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach Dover Thrift Editions A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift Vintage Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Plume This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper Picador Freedom by Jonathan Franzen Ballantine Books Killer by Jonathan Kellerman
Nicky: a signed first edition of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Charles Scribner's Sons The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Episode 4: "Finger in the Dyke"
Big Boo: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Signet Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Episode 5: "Fake It Till You Fake It Some More"
Poussey: Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Dover Thrift Editions Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw
Taystee: Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Puffin Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
Alex: A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Mariner Books A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
Episode 7: "Tongue-Tied"
Taystee: Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Vintage Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James
Episode 9: "Where My Dreidel At"
Caputo: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Signet Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Maureen and Suzanne: books by Fran Lebowitz and Gena Showalter Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix
Dutton Adult Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz Harlequin Teen Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter
Gloria: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Knopf Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan
Alex: An English Interpretation of the Holy Qur'an by Abdullah Yusuf Ali Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Lushena Books An English Interpretation of the Holy Qur'an by Abdullah Yusuf Ali
Episode 10: "A Tittin' and a Hairin'"
Mendez (Pornstache): Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix
Simon & Schuster Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare Vintage Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Blanca: Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little by E. B. White Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix
HarperCollins Charlotte's Web by E. B. White HarperCollins Stuart Little by E. B. White
Episode 11: "We Can Be Heroes"
Red: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Plume We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Poussey: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Scholastic Press The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Episode 12: "Don't Make Me Come Back There"
Big Boo: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix Knopf The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
O'Neill: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix HarperCollins The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
Yoga Jones: The Essential Rumi by Rumi Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Netflix HarperOne The Essential Rumi by Rumi
Did you spot a book in the show that we missed? Let us know in the comments below!It takes a lot to make waves in Pauper. Despite being comprised of commons, the format has had a relatively stable metagame over the course of its history. Usually it takes a seismic event to upend the apple cart. More often than not this is the result of a ban or will result in a card being removed from the format. Treasure Cruise was one such card, as it basically forced everyone to run Blue or be buried under card advantage. The most recent example comes from 2016: Peregrine Drake.
Peregrine Drake was released in Eternal Masters and Drake Combo became the best thing you could do in Pauper. Using the Mnemonic Wall-Ghostly Flicker loop, it became absurdly easy to win the game by turn five – at the very least establish a supremely advantageous position – and the deck slowly ate up a third of the metagame. In November of 2016 Peregrine Drake was banned and the Pauper metagame settled back to where it had been.
That is where 2017 opened. Mono-Blue Delver was a top deck while Stompy, Affinity, and various builds of Tron kept pace. Mono-Black Control had experienced a small resurgence directly after Peregrine Drake was banned but had settled back down to being merely okay. The status quo was about to change and Delver was going to be knocked down a peg.
Despite the ups and downs, Delver has always been one of the best decks in Pauper. Access to one of the single best offensive threats in the format, as well as disruptive spells like Spellstutter Sprite and Counterspell, meant that the deck was able to help dictate the pace of the early game. Before Cloud of Faeries was banned, it also had access to one of the best lockdown openings in Pauper by blind flipping Delver of Secrets and following it up with Cloud of Faeries, turning Spellstutter Sprite into the world’s best Spell Snare. Even without Cloud of Faeries, Delver acted as the baseline for the format. While not ubiquitous it was a deck you had to have a gameplan against if you wanted to reasonably succeed in a Pauper League.
Two decks made their name on the back of having a good Delver matchup. Stompy, the Rancor based aggressive Green deck, could often deploy more threats in a turn than Delver could contain. Resolving a Rancor was important but hardly a lock to victory. Instead Stompy could go wide and deploy Groundswell and Vines of Vastwood to deal the final points. On the other end of the spectrum was Kuldotha Boros. The deck used Prophetic Prism and Ichor Wellspring in concert with Kor Skyfisher and Glint Hawk to keep cards flowing. Access to premium Red removal aided in clearing a path and closing out games. After Eternal Masters and the banning of Peregrine Drake the deck also adopted Rally the Peasants to pair with Battle Screech as a way to end the game in an eye blink.
The release of Modern Masters 2017 changed everything. Stompy found a new toy in Burning-Tree Emissary and it helped to propel the deck into rarified air — it became the format’s new baseline. Stompy already had a great Delver matchup but now it had the tools available to win games by virtue of its early turns. Burning-Tree Emissary made it easier to commit multiple bodies to the battlefield and in some cases led to there being 7 power on the board turn two, spread across four creatures. Reminiscent of the old Cloud of Faeries opening due to the presence of free mana, Stompy had a major difference in that it was fundamentally an active deck. In turn the Stompy opening represented a new break point that the format had to deal with. In doing so the Green deck managed to push Delver from its pedestal.
Boros also benefited from a release around the same time. Certain cards from Conspiracy: Take the Crown made their way into Treasure Chests. Two of them brought the Monarch mechanic to Pauper. Thorn of the Black Rose soon found her way into multiple Pauper decks but few took flight. It wasn’t until people caught on to the combination of Palace Sentinels and Prismatic Strands that the Monarch truly took hold in Pauper. Using Prismatic Strands to prevent combat damage and then sticking a Palace Sentinels meant that the next attack would also likely be for naught and as such the crown would stay put. The Monarch represented something brand new to Pauper: a persistent way to draw extra cards. The same Kor Skyfisher Boros deck was not the first to try and make Monarch work but it was the best suited. A strong Delver matchup was good but the ability to run a maindeck way to blunt Stompy’s assault may have been better.
Modern Masters 2017 brought a few other key cards to the table. Dinrova Horror quickly caught on as a spout for Tron decks sporting Ghostly Flicker and Mnemonic Wall. Dinrova Tron became the Tron deck best suited to assemble the mana engine quickly and leverage it in the mid-game. It also was high on preventative measures as it would run three copies of Moment's Peace to buy time. Despite a bevy of new cards Pauper still lacked a good sweeper and as such the best way to reach an endgame remains preventing combat damage.
While Dinrova Tron is still a solid option today it has not caught on like some of the other big winners in 2017. The deck relies heavily on the graveyard, between Mnemonic Wall, Pulse of Murasa, and Forbidden Alchemy. While the discard pile continues to be one of the best targets for tutors in Pauper it is also one of the easiest to target. Relic of Progenitus is a common sideboard inclusion while multiple decks, even those that aren’t running Black, pack Bojuka Bog.
The other big gain from March’s reprint set was Augur of Bolas. The ability helped Blue decks find their powerful spells with greater consistency and opened up a bevy of opportunities. While some Delver decks adopted the card early, it was not until Pauper grinder Kungfutrees put in the hours with a version of Delver, using Snow-Covered Mountains to go with Snow-Covered Islands to support Skred and Lightning Bolt, that a new metagame deck was born. Izzet Delver leveraged Augur of Bolas finding Gush and Brainstorm, and the two strong spells’ synergy with Ash Barrens, to push a new deck to the top of the standings.
Gush had long been legal in Pauper, but it wasn’t until Augur of Bolas came along that I saw the upper limit for its potential. Packing a deck full of copies of Gush is a risk since Pauper lacks true dual lands. Instead, Augur of Bolas allowed a base Blue deck to run more virtual copies of the card and leverage its strength. Using Gush to then cast Brainstorm and put back two lands, then shuffling them away with Ash Barrens, helped Izzet Delver dominate the early challenges.
Speaking of Challenges, these helped to give us a better image of the Pauper metagame. While League data has been nice, it only shows off the decks that went 5-0 and more recently, only decks that are sufficiently different from one another. While over a long enough time period the League data could provide a general texture of the metagame, the Challenges provided lists down to 32nd place. Now we not only saw what did very well but also what did reasonably well (and sometimes what performed decidedly meh). The challenges also gave us two of the more innovative decks of the past year and both of them played in combo space.
Rally Gond took the shell of a Battle Scree |
him since Pavement, right?
Yeah, from the beginning of Pavement. And then he grew up from a soundman and a tour guy… He settled down, had kids, and built a little studio life in Amsterdam. I’m really proud of him. He did that.
Did you ever have any thought, while you were out there, of just going the Face The Truth route and recording anything that you came up with by yourself?
Yeah, but I just decided to wait with the band, because I was really just enjoying doing nothing in Berlin. Just taking the kids to school and watching pirated movies on the computer and stuff. I don’t know; I was being a little lazy, but I earned it.
Did you feel like that allowed you to do that, since you were over there? Were you like, “This is okay, I’m allowed to relax.” That kind of took the pressure off?
Absolutely. And then, also, my wife Jessica [Jackson Hutchins], she was working super hard there. She was killing it. She was working really hard, so it was good for me, in a way, to just kind of zone out and… I don’t know. I hadn’t done that really; it’s been a long time.
Did you write “Cinnamon and Lesbians” when you returned to Portland?
The lyrics I wrote here. I mean, I just had that title. We were actually playing that even with [former drummer] Janet Weiss. I remember we played it at this Irish festival where I saw the Sex Pistols. And they were really good. My Bloody Valentine played too. The Gossip, also — they were really popular— they played. And Conor Oberst band. And the Black Lips. * laughs * I just remember the show, but uh… I remember we played it that one day. But it changed — we changed the arrangement. And I made the second solo that’s kind of a “St Stephen” Dead-style solo I doubled over it, that people are talking about a lot. That was never really — there’s just the kind of simple harmony of the song. Without that, no-one would think it was “St Stephen.” I mean, I can see during the parts where it goes like “dunna-duh-dun duh-dunna-dunna dunna-dun.” I always do sort of a hacky sack 80s kinda jiggle. You know, that sort of annoying Dead fan jiggle dance.
I’ve thought certain things sounded a little Dead-like, even on like, “Water and a Seat” (from 2003’s Pig Lib).
Absolutely. That’s been there. In that moment. I mean, I like that version of the band. I like the seventies version. In the eighties, I really didn’t like ‘em, ‘cause I was sort of a punk guy. There were punks that liked the Dead, but I wasn’t that advanced to see that, you know. I was not mature enough — * laughs * — to understand that you could like hardcore and the Grateful Dead. But there were some punks in my town — in Stockton — that were, that did like them that way. And they weren’t like Greg Ginn, or The Meat Puppets; those kind of bands — they were sort of Dead and punk. But this is even before that. They were, sort of, like, “I like the Dead Kennedys and I also go to Dead shows.”
It’s interesting, though, because, besides the St Stephen in there, you have the reference in “Lariat.” I mean, it’s back-to-back Dead references in these [first 2 videos].
The “Lariat” thing is really related to Charlottesville, where I went to school. Fratboys liked the Dead then. Liking the Grateful Dead, for them, was like me being into Can, or Faust or something. It was like, “I’m really cool.” * laughs * You know? “I’m cutting edge.”
That’s kind of funny, because that song has this type of rose-colored nostalgia, where it’s referencing the “best music” of the 80s, and then you throw in a band [that’s really] from the sixties in there, and how people view that kind of…
Well, that’s true. At that time, in the eighties, the Dead were like the best music ever to so many people at that school. The Dave Matthews Band wasn’t there yet. They wouldn’t have liked any current music. They were kind of into, for some reason, Traffic – Spark, Low Heeled — High-Heeled Spark Boys (The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys)… that album. And a little bit of Little Feat. There was some eighties time where that was [the thing]. And there were lots of fraternities, even, at the school, that were Dead fraternities. Besides the preppy ones, I’m talking about. The preppy guys — these were like the cutting-edge rich guys — they liked it, but there were also these deep Deadhead fraternities that were like real Deadheads. That were like, you know, hairy, kind of, organic chemistry majors, or something. And there were like girls with bells on their feet …
Even in the “Cinnamon and Lesbians” video, people could read into that hardcore, because there’s even a spot where [Jicks guitarist/keyboardist] Mike [Clark] gets hit in the head with an ice cream cone, Europe ’72 style.
Yeah. * laughs * That song’s supposed to be like 1980s Portland. Kind of like when there was the Green Tortoise and people would take that bus up there. And sort of, when there was hummus, and alfalfa sprouts were avant garde, or something. Like, “I’m into sprouts. And crepes. And I’ve got my carrot juicer; I’m really into that.”
Your album comes out in a week and, the same day, the Momofuku Milk Bar is doing the “Cinnamon and Lesbians” soft-serve.
I know, that’s awesome.
But do you know about the Mudhoney cinnamon-honey ice cream that Full-Tilt put out in Seattle and had Mudhoney play at the store?
No. That sounds good though.
Because I know [Mudhoney guitarist,] Steve Turner was in the “Gardenia” video and I was wondering if you guys were having a cinnamon ice cream feud.
* laughs * I really like cinnamon ice cream. Well it’s called “zimt” in German, “Z-I-M-T”. They have it quite often in the gelato places. So, it could have been, subconsciously, I was channeling that, because I always get zimt, whenever I can.
Your wife’s a visual artist and I read that your grandmother was a sculptor. In the way that you approach crafting songs, do you see yourself, kind of, building off of armatures, in the way you build things, or do you see yourself more as someone that’s, kind of, chiseling down material, in the way you sculpt your own work?
Ehhh… I don’t know about that. I’m more in the music world. I don’t really see myself as an artist; I’m kinda… like an entertainer. * laughs * I mean, music is more like entertainment; it’s not so statement-y. It’s not. It’s more communal, for whatever reason. Because, you do it with people and artists are kind of lonely. Plus, the art world is really sick. The music world’s not sick. Sometimes it’s extravagant and it can be unfair, but the art world is nauseating. You know, the money and the con game. It can really get you down. * laughs again *
When you’re making an album, you make sure to break it up. You make sure to have like a pop gem in there to offset the jamming and everything. Is it more important to you to just have a balance than to have a [specific] arc in an album, as long as it’s just, kind of, balanced out?
Well, you don’t really know what the arc is, until it’s done, and then you try to, sort of, create a narrative out of what [you have]. I mean, I try to keep a conscious idea, when we’re doing the songs, of different timbres and colors, but until it’s kind of all mixed and stuff, you don’t really know what the arc is. Lately, I’ve been ceding the sequencing and stuff to the band — Joanna [Bolme]. I would make a strong statement, if I didn’t like where it was going, but I’m usually a little bit burned out on it, by that point too, because I’ll listen to it so many times. Or then, I’ll put so much work into it that I’m not a good judge, by the time you’re mastering it, or picking the song order. Because I do more of the overdubs, I think I get burned out quicker. That’s why it’s good to have a band.
I remember the last time I saw you was at The Neptune in Seattle and you had made some joke about Joanna being on one shoulder — your positive [encouraging] voice, telling you that you could do it. And then you made a joke about Billy Corgan being on the other shoulder trying to deter you.
* laughs * Yeah. I tease her.
But, she seems like she kind of does hold that spot in the band. And I was wondering if you see people — their roles and their personalities — kind of, reflecting their instruments, because she does kind of seem like a bass.
That’s true. Yeah, she does; she’s sort of earthy. She knows how to be in a band. She’s married to a musician (Gary Jarman from The Cribs), she’s dated dudes in bands before that, and she’s worked in studios. She’s kind of made for it. So, I don’t know; she’s good. She gave me more respect for bass playing, that’s for sure. Because I played bass on, like, Pavement albums and I just do it without thinking. You know, it’s fine, it works with me playing for myself; but you know, I’m whatever — ahead, behind, all around the beat. I don’t even know about that. She gets more into the science of the groove and stuff, which, I never really had a groove, so… You know, playing skinny white boy music.
I like that you have songs on this album, besides “Lariat,” like “Rumble at the Rainbo,” about clinging on, white-knuckled, to the past, and “Chartjunk.” And it seems like there’s a lot of stuff that’s not even so much like nostalgia, but kind of, more about the idea of people’s perspectives on different time periods, or the past. Are you thinking about that a lot?
Yeah, that’s true. Even the references — there’s like, crammed references. There’s like gnarly musical references in there too. Like, in “Chartjunk,” you know, it’s got Billy Joel even in there. I mean, that’s gonna make people hurt, sometimes. I don’t know if they can handle that. Chicago and Billy Joel?
* laughs * There’s a Sun City Girls reference and I noticed there’s a Bongwater reference in there.
* laughs * Yeah, Bongwater’s in there. In “The Janitor Revealed,” I mean, it’s got like a Chili Peppers bounce to it. It can be nauseating; I hope not. It’s different. I mean, I’m just a little tired of trying to sound like The Velvet Underground, or the last great psychedelic band, or something. You know, at a certain point, you want to try some different shit and just throw it at the wall.
What do you think about the idea of “staying relevant,” because I went and saw a Dinosaur [Jr] show and there were like 13-year-old kids… mostly.
I know. Same here, I’ve seen them like that too. I feel sorry for them, too. Their poor ears.
I wonder if those are the kids that are gonna… If it skips a generation almost, like with those kids. Because, there’s this middle (somewhat of a gap) between. You know, there’s these people that feel they’ve, kind of, gone through [life] and they know whatever they fucking think they know about music, or whatever, through their experience, and then there’s [also these young kids at the same shows].
Well, it could, you know. Some of the references and the way that we do things are set up … Understanding the language is harder than Dinosaur, you know. [With] Dinosaur, there’s a certain sweet ham and eggs about them. Like, it’s just raw, big dumb melodies, and the singer’s kind of fragile sounding. You know, this has got more layers of shit on it that you have to… **laughs** I mean, I hope people will like it, but maybe we can be like Dinosaur. I hope so, in a way. In our own way.
I gotta go now — it sucks. Because we’re driving to the airport. Really nice to talk to you and good questions.
Can I just tell you one thing, actually, because I had a friend do this.
Yeah.
Since, I know you have a song called “Scattegories” and you’re into Scrabble, I have a friend (Cory Calhoun) who is an anagram wizard, and he did an anagram for you.
* laughs * Oh, he did?!
Yeah. He took the phrase “Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks’s brand-new album Wig Out At Jag Bags” and he anagrammed it into “I just jam, make new leg-shaking songs and whup mad butt at Scrabble.”
Oh my gosh. That’s awesome. I wish — Mike is also really into that; he would love that. Um… I wish I could remem– Umm… I’ll try to remember it.
I’ll text it to this phone.
Yeah.
All right. Well, thanks a lot.
* laughs * Take it easy.ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Dubai’s Majid Al Futtaim Holding (MAF), the sole franchisee of hypermarket chain Carrefour (CARR.PA) in the Middle East, will not pursue investments in Egypt and Syria until stability returns to the two countries, a senior company official said on Saturday.
MAF, also the only Carrefour franchisee in North Africa and Central Asia, had been in advanced talks to buy Egypt’s largest supermarket chain Metro from the family-owned Mansour Group, sources told Reuters in April.
“Egypt is still unstable, we are waiting for it to settle down but we are still in negotiations. As for Syria, any investor will hold back. It’s not good to move forward now with the revolution going on,” Younus al Mulla, MAF’s senior vice president for retail international development, told reporters at the opening of a new Carrefour hypermarket near Abu Dhabi.
MAF had also been eyeing a major investment in Syria before the 2011 uprising, and one Carrefour store in Aleppo was shut down as a result of the violence.
The new Carrefour hypermarket in oil-rich Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is MAF’s fifth there. MAF operates 19 hypermarkets and 24 regular outlets across the UAE.
MAF, franchisee for Carrefour hypermarkets in 38 countries, currently operates in 15 of them and plans to enter the others gradually.
“We are looking at entering those markets within the next three to five years, it will also include Russia, East Africa and some others,” he said.
Unlisted MAF also runs nearly a dozen shopping malls across the Middle East and North Africa."Since the agreement between China and Pakistan in 2015, hundreds of thousands of Baloch people has been forcefully displaced from the home town along their CPEC route. 12,000 army personnel deployed on the security are basically paving the way for CPEC by massacring the the local populous," said the BRP representative to UNHRC Abdul Nawaz Bugti.
Interrupting the Balochi representatives, the Pakistani delegations at the UNHRC said that it is an internal issue of the country and shouldn't be discussed at the council.
Sidelining the Pakistani delegation’s request to refrain the BRP representatives from speaking on CPEC issue, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Netherland allowed Bugti to complete his statement.
After being allowed to speak, Bugti said that human right violation is taking place in the Dera Bugti region where Chinese and Pakistani companies are busy deep dwelling forest reserves. He added that the area is being exploited and the local people are being deprived of all the basic facilities
"The Baloch people have genuine concern of being deprived of their resources and being converted into minority into their own homeland through CPEC. But the state has responded with violence instead of addressing these issues," Bugti said.One Side of Toilet Paper is Softer Than the Other
December 11, 2009 at 1:23 am Chad Upton
This is important, because most people are pretty adamant about the proper orientation of toilet paper. There are two ways you can put toilet paper on a roll. According to the following video, there is a right way and a wrong way.
They believe the over method is the right way, because it’s easier to find the end of the roll. I agree, it is easier to find the end of the roll using the over method.
Based on a poll at families.com, the over method is most popular. However, from reading the comments it looks fairly even, perhaps even more people are in favor of the under method.
For most of my life, I thought over was the correct method. But one day, someone on the under side revealed a secret: one side is softer than the other, and if you use the over method you’re probably not using the soft side.
I was in disbelief. There was no way I could be wrong on this issue. Why would anyone intentionally hang toilet paper in any way other than the way that is easiest to find the end of the roll?
I checked my toilet paper immediately. I rubbed each side on the back of my hand and it was clear, one side was much softer than the other. Then I roll played.
I acted out how I normally unroll toilet paper. It was true, I was not using the soft side!
I instantly changed my preference from over to under. It wasn’t until later that I started to think about how long I had been using the rough side.
The really cheap and thin commercial toilet paper is torture on both sides, but if you have anything but that stuff then it’s most likely softer on one side. Check it out for yourself.
People with cats often prefer the under method because it’s much more difficult for cats to get it off the roll. It’s a good thing we’re smarter and more dexterous than cats.
BrokenSecrets.com
Photos (creative commons): Aaron Landry | s e l v i n
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Entry filed under: Around The House, Despite Popular Belief. Tags: back, broken, brokensecrets, front, hang, over, paper, proper, secrets, to, toilet, toiletpaper, tp, under, way.Federal court decision over extinguishment of title in Timber Creek in Northern Territory could leave Australian governments liable for future claims
A federal court has ordered the payment of more than $3m in compensation to traditional owners over damage to sacred sites in one of the most significant rulings about native title since the Mabo decision 24 years ago.
The compensation case, brought on behalf of the Ngaliwurru and Nungali people in the township of Timber Creek, sought damages for the extinguishment of native title in the area through acts attributable to the Northern Territory and commonwealth governments in the 1980s and 1990s.
Their victory in Darwin on Wednesday was expected to set a significant precedent in such compensation cases, leaving state, territory and federal governments exposed to future compensation and drawing comparisons with the historic Mabo ruling in 1992 which recognised native title for the first time.
The Ngaliwurru and Nungali groups won native title for the land, near the West Australian border of the Northern Territory, in 2006 after a seven-year battle, but not for every area of land they claimed.
The groups sought compensation for a number of acts, including the construction of public works, on their land which extinguished native title and impacted their ability to conduct spiritual and ceremonial activity.
Federal court judge John Mansfield ordered compensation of $3,300,261, including $512,000 for the economic value of the extinguished rights, more than $1.48m in interest, and another $1.3m for pain and suffering.
Wednesday’s judgment sets an extraordinary precedent and methodology for measuring the value of extinguished native title, and is predicted to leave state and territory governments liable for huge payouts in forthcoming and future compensation claims. More than 2.3m square kilometres of land is currently designated native title.
Mansfield preferenced the higher valuations made by the commonwealth’s expert valuer, Copland, rather than the expert relied on by the Timber Creek applicants.
In February the federal court convened at Timber Creek so Mansfield and lawyers could hear from the traditional owners about how they valued native title.
Among his findings, Mansfield said the loss to the Ngaliwurru and Nungali peoples was “evident” but it was clear they had not wholly lost their connection to country, and that some developments in Timber Creek had been acceptable under Indigenous law.
Each government encroachment had “to some degree diminished the geographical area” that the Ngaliwurru and Nungali could exercise native title rights over, he said, and “in an imprecise way” had adversely affected their spiritual connection with the particular areas and their country generally.
Mansfield noted the construction of water tanks on the path of the Indigenous people’s dingo Dreaming “has caused clearly identified distress and concern”, and had impacted their capacity to conduct ceremonial and spiritual activities.
Speaking outside the court, the chief executive of the Northern Land Council, Joe Morrison, said they were “buoyed” by the court’s decision. Allowing the case to proceed had been an “immense opportunity for traditional owners right around the country who wanted to seek compensation for extinguishment of native title”.
Native title review finds process slow, resource intensive and inflexible Read more
Morrison said the amount of compensation after “the conquest of the British” could always be argued but “for now the court has made a relevant and important decision to calculate the amount of comp, particularly in non-exclusive native title, and to award that cost”.
Distribution of the compensation payments will be made in accordance with the decision-making processes of the native title holders.
Also in the federal court on Wednesday, another long-running dispute, brought by a powerful northeast Arnhem Land clan against the Northern Land Council, was dismissed.
The case was centred the distribution of mining royalties by the NLC in north-east Arnhem Land, and the unsuccessful party said the decision left Indigenous landowners as “wards of the state” without equal rights of appeal.
The complicated case, brought by the Rirratjingu Aboriginal corporation (RAC) and others against the NLC, began in 2014 after attempts to settle a dispute between RAC and the rival Gumatj clan over royalties from the Gove bauxite mine and refinery failed.
The NLC had determined a split of 74% to 26% in favour of the Gumatj, while the RAC claimed they were entitled to 50%.
Mansfield dismissed the RAC’s case, and awarded some costs to the NLC. His decision essentially repeated an earlier judgment in the same proceeding.
Mansfield said the RAC was free to reformulate a new case, but it could not appeal with the same arguments.
The RAC has interpreted Mansfield’s decision as finding Indigenous groups to be “wards of the state” and said the decision enforced a two-tier system which allowed greater rights of dispute resolution to non-Indigenous people.
The RAC director, Witiyana Marika, told Guardian Australia his group would continue to fight for greater control and benefit from their land.
“In the territory the land council is always denying our position. It is the traditional owners that should make the decision,” Marika told Guardian Australia.
He said the Rirratjingu were rightful landholders and entitled to the royalties, and dismissed the NLC as bureaucracts.
“In this case, most Australians can appeal to the courts, where traditional owners must appeal to commonwealth bureaucracies – and our view is that this is not right,” said RAC chairman, Bakamumu Marika.
He said it allowed the NLC to do what it liked, including blocking development.
“The judgment will say if you don’t agree with land council decisions, you’re pretty well stuck with them, which is problematic if you’re in legal conflict with the land council, as we are.”
Djawa Yunupingu, senior elder of the Gumatj clan, said they had always been certain of their position as landowners on the Gove peninsula, and confident of the case’s outcome.
Thousands commemorate Wave Hill walk-off, birth of Indigenous land rights battle Read more
“This court case has been very expensive and has distracted us from our work at the community level where we are building businesses, creating jobs, and educating children,” he said.
“We hope that from here common sense will prevail.”
Morrison said the case reaffirmed the NLC’s role in “determining who traditional owners are and in determining how much money should be flowing from those agreements and activities on Aboriginal land”.
“I think that’s a win for the land council, but also for traditional owners, all Rirratjingu and the clan members in north east Arnhem, and we’re looking forward to working with all of those to ensure a prosperous future for Yolngu people”.Op-ed: Remembering LGBT History Didn't Begin With Stonewall
Maybe you’ve heard of the pioneering trans* activists Fanny and Stella, who were charged for indecency in Victorian Britain 25 years before Oscar Wilde. Maybe you haven’t? Up until the announcement of a new play based on their lives by writer Glenn Chandler — appropriately named Fanny & Stella — I certainly had not. Yet, reading about them, it has become clear how important they were, and how tragic it is that most of us probably don’t know who they are.
Chandler’s play is now being performed in London. It follows the story of cross-dressing gays Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton, a.k.a. Fanny and Stella, who were arrested in 1870 for wearing women's clothes to a play and charged with “conspiring to incite others to commit unnatural offences.” After a trial that attracted huge publicity, the two were acquitted — partly because doctors who inspected the men couldn’t prove they had anal sex. Both Fanny and Stella, who performed throughout London in men’s and women’s clothing, hoped their success in court would be a catalyst for change in the antigay laws of the time (sadly, it wasn’t).
The play is exciting. The retelling of queer history is important. Yet at the same time I cannot help but be disappointed at my lack of knowledge of these two pioneers as well as many others of their time. I suspect I am not the only one. When it comes to remembering queer history we’re pretty bad at it.
I’m not talking here about our modern history. The stories of the past 40 years, from the Stonewall Riots to Harvey Milk to the AIDS crisis to the growth of the marriage equality movement, are largely imprinted on our collective memory. Yet that seems to be the limit of it. Queer history is often written as if it started June 28, 1969, the date of Stonewall.
Yet, our story goes much deeper than that. A quick look and you can find some amazing things. What about Oscar Wilde, who was not as lucky as Fanny and Stella, and was sentenced to hard labor for “gross indecency”? Or how about Magnus Hirschfeld, a gay, Jewish, left-wing occasional transvestite, who developed the Berlin Institute of Sexual Research in 1919? Hirschfeld had to flee Germany in the 1930s, watching as his entire library was set alight.
These sorts of stories run throughout our history. Stories of pioneers and campaigners, and of movements that changed our society for the better. Our history is far deeper and more varied than just what’s happened in the last 40 years.
This is really important. Through pointing to the heroes and heroines of our past we can draw greater connections to our modern struggle. Just as Joan of Arc and the women of the suffragist movement have become important modern feminist icons, so should Fanny and Stella, Wilde and Hirschfeld (among many others!) become icons of the queer movement.
More than that, understanding this history is essential to ensuring the continued progression of LGBTIQ rights. In recent years we have begun to talk as though the march of queer liberation is “inevitable.” But what if it wasn’t as simple as that?
It is a little-known story that the Soviet Union — now one of the most homophobic nations on earth — was at the forefront of gay rights in the early 20th century. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, all offenses related to homosexuality were removed from the criminal code (well before this happened in much of the Western world). In fact, if you look even further into Russian history you will see a very tolerant approach to homosexuality. This is a very different picture from the one we see in Russia now. After a decade of sweeping changes for LGBT rights in developed nations, Russia turned quickly against queer people. Suddenly all the progress was lost.
Here is the true importance of understanding our history. If we see history only through the lens of the past 40 years in the U.S., it is easy to paint a picture of constant progress. It is why so many are bewildered by the actions of Russia — how could a country turn on gays like this in the 21st century?
But if you take a longer view you realize our story is more complex. It is one of constant struggle — a story of progress being followed by setbacks, only to be met with resistance once again. This is not to make us depressed about the gains we’ve made but to ensure we collectively protect ourselves from returning to this fate. If we understand our history better, we don’t let ourselves lose the progress we’ve made.
Speaking about Fanny and Stella, playwright Glenn Chandler stated, “The sad thing is that they really thought their case would change things, they thought a change in the law was coming, but then in two decades we have the Oscar Wilde trial and it takes another two centuries for change to come.”
Chandler points out that Victorian society actually became more conservative in the years following their trial. If Fanny and Stella's case was held in the era of Oscar Wilde, there is every chance they could have ended up behind bars. The progress they hoped for vanished before their eyes. We are making great progress, but the past shows us this can be reversed in a hearbeat. Knowing our history can help us stop that from happening.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
HENRICO COUNTY, Va. -- Henrico County residents who received phone calls and flyers encouraging people to oppose the construction of a new Wegmans grocery store are questioning the motive behind the calls.
Tuesday morning, days ahead of a vote, homes from Willow Lawn to Short Pump started getting phone calls.
"It was just odd, the whole thing was odd," said Maria Greco, who received three phone calls about Wegmans.
CBS 6 looked into the calls and found they are not coming from people who actually live in the area.
"They said that they were a group called 'concerned citizens of Short Pump' and they wanted to know if I was concerned about the Wegmans, nothing else, specifically the Wegmans coming in," said resident Kathy McCann.
Cabela's Incorporated, an outfitter for hunting, fishing and outdoor gear, has announced plans to open in 2016, near the Wegmans.
Those who got the calls say the caller on the other end had an agenda. One resident said he received more than 60 calls from the number.
"She basically started talking about how the Wegmans was going to, she said to me, increase crime," said April Sullivan.
Other callers said they were told about crime, traffic and air pollution. But no other new businesses were mentioned.
Many residents said they were not left with concerns over the grocery store, but rather concerns about the caller.
"I question whether there's a concerned citizens of Short Pump or if it's just concerned executives of area grocery stores,"McCann.
When the number is called, a concerned citizen of Short Pump doesn't answer -- instead it's a recording by a telemarketing company.
If the Wegmans plan is approved, the Henrico store will be built on West Broad Street near North Gayton Road, near Short Pump Town Center. There will be nearby competition from six other grocery stores just within blocks of the site; Walmart, Kroger, Martins, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and Tom Leonards.
Between Wegmans and Cabelas, it is estimated more than 1,000 jobs will be created. The Henrico County Planning Commission will vote on the plan Thursday, July 10 at 7 p.m.
Developers are also planning to build a Wegmans in the Stonehenge Village Shopping Center on Midlothian Turnpike, west of Chesterfield Town Center.August 16, 2016 - TF2 Team
Just a quick update while we keep working on the Meet Your Match fixes we posted a few weeks ago. We wanted to call out a few noteworthy things shipping with today's update, as well as keep you up to date on some more substantial fixes that are on the way.
We're currently working on a more comprehensive Elo rating system to improve how Competitive Mode ranks are determined that we'll be shipping in the near future. This update will make the rank system more self-correcting and better distribute players based on performance.
In the meantime, though, we've shipped some rank balancing improvements in today's update that will help distribute ranks more evenly in the short-term. Players with high win-loss ratios will now be "fast-tracked" to higher ranks that better reflect performance (without having to grind through unchallenging matches). Additionally, players in the first tier of ranks (1-6) will now be penalized less for match losses, making it easier to gain low ranks at the outset without getting stuck.
Additionally, with today's update, we are rolling out our first matchmaking bans on problem players you've reported. Problem players will receive a six-month ban from Casual and Competitive matchmaking. We've also made it easier for you to report problem players by adding a new feature that lets you report directly from the scoreboard. (See today's update notes for more information.)
We also wanted to touch on upcoming improvements to the Casual Mode experience. A high priority is providing better flow for continuing play at the end of a match. To that end, we're currently putting the finishing touches on two features that many of you have requested: The option to rematch with the same players on the same map at the end of a match, and the ability to re-queue into a new match from the win screens for both Casual Mode and Competitive Mode.
Finally, we are working on issues with the region system that have been causing poor connections for players in certain areas. The next few updates will be integrating TF more tightly with the global server network already used by games like CS:GO and Dota 2 to provide much more reliable connections and the best-possible latency.A letter to Atlanta reads: "You know what it's like being a southern city. People assume things about you. But I want you to know the real me."
A letter to Boston states: "I can't change. Just like you can't change the way you say 'park'."
And one addressed to Washington, D.C. says: "We've always been close. Like 109 miles on I-95 close. There's something I need to tell you... so here it is, I'm gay."
All three letters are signed "Love, Richmond, Virginia." They are a meaningful way to reach the LGBT community, according to Katherine O'Donnell with Richmond Region Tourism. She explains a letter is a personal way some people come out.
"It's pretty unique depending on where you are in the country," she said. "In Virginia we're the only destination that we know of that does this type of outreach."Epistemic status: very speculative. This is mythmaking: you’ve been warned.
Ra is the Sun God
The Egyptian god Ra was a symbol of divine kingship, all-powerful and all-seeing. He’s a good metaphor for a certain kind of psychological phenomenon that involves thought distortions around authority and legitimacy. A new demon, if you will, in the grimoire that includes Moloch and Azathoth.
The idea of a malign Establishment is somewhat convergent:
The Establishment (attributed to Henry Fairlie in 1950’s Britain, talking about an informal social network of power among prominent, well-connected people)
The Man (e.g. Yippies, Burning Man)
The Combine (Ken Kesey)
Moloch (Allen Ginsberg)
The Beige Dictatorship (Charles Stross)
The Cathedral (Mencius Moldbug)
The Mandarins (Megan McArdle)
Not all of these ideas are coterminous with Ra, or identical to each other.
What they have in common is that the Establishment is primarily an upper-class phenomenon, that it is more about social and moral legitimacy than mere wealth or raw power, and that it is boringly evil — it produces respectable, normal, right-thinking, mild-mannered people who do things with very bad consequences.
What Ra is not
The usual pitfall when using poetic language to define egregores is making them too broad. There is not one root of all evil that causes all the ills of the world.
Ra is not simply conformity, simply authoritarianism, or simply power-seeking. Ra is not the same as “bureaucracy” or “capitalism” or “fallen human nature” or all the myriad reasons why your idealistic goal might fail. Ra is not “everything that is wrong with people who disagree with me.”
As a social phenomenon, Ra is responsible for some dysfunctions in the democratic modern West; it is not, for instance, |
start with. For starters, do your practice once a week. When you've done that for a little while, go to twice or three times a week. Fill in the spaces as you feel ready for them. Pay attention to how you feel after magical work. If you're feeling spacy, dizzy, disconnected from the ordinary world, cut back on the pace a bit, make sure you're getting enough B vitamins, and get some massage; that will help you reconnect to your body.
A word of warning for any of you who choose a vegetarian diet, by the way. Many people find that a meat-free diet doesn't work well with ritual magic. Eating meat helps bring your awareness back into contact with your physical body, which after all is made of meat. It doesn't happen with everyone, but fairly often people who try to learn magic while eating a vegetarian diet have trouble with their nerves. If you're learning magic and avoiding meat, and you find that you're becoming hypersensitive, jittery, and easily stressed out, you may have to choose between your diet and your magic. Just remember that there are other spiritual paths, and there are also other healthy diets.
Of course you'll want to add other magical workings to the schedule of basic practices. There's a lot of value in systematic practice of basic magical exercises, and some traditions have beginners work on those, and nothing but those, until they've made some serious progress. I understand the point of that, but I'm not at all sure it's necessary. There's much to be gained by actually performing magical workings intended to cause change in the world around you, and seeing what happens. When they fail, you get a very good glimpse of the distance between where you are and where you want to be, which is an excellent cure for the sort of beginner's grandiosity we too often see in the magical community, where people with six months' practice beneath their belt become convinced that they're Ipsissimi and can do anything. When your workings succeed, on the other hand, you start to learn just what you can do. Of course you're likely to make some mistakes, but that's how you learn. As a magical novice you don't yet have the ability to make mistakes you won't recover from, and if you burn your fingers a few times, you'll know better by the time you get within range of serious trouble.
You may also want to add other types of training. Most mages I know practice at least one system of divination. Golden Dawn initiates of the old school were expected to prove their competence in three Tarot, geomancy, and horary astrology and while the Golden Dawn did tend to go over the top a little bit, or more than a little bit, getting a working mastery of at least one method of divination is a good thing. Divination is to magic what the eye is to the hand. They work together very well, and nearly all magical traditions have at least one system of divination that's closely allied to their magical working methods.
There are also plenty of what I've called auxiliary arts in the magical tradition, though most people in the occult community these days don't know much about them. What are auxiliary arts? Well, think of Kwai-Chang Caine, the hero of the old TV series Kung Fu. He was primarily a Buddhist monk; that means his primary training was in meditation and ritual, though of course that wasn't what you saw most of through the blurry flashback scenes of Master Po and the Shaolin Temple. His ability to cure diseases, heal wounds, and kick the stuffing out of a dozen cowboy-hatted heavies without working up a sweat those were sidelines, things Buddhist monks in the Shaolin tradition did when they weren't busy with the core work of meditation and ritual.
Those are auxiliary arts. The occult traditions of the West used to have dozens of them, and there are still quite a few hanging around in old books if you know where to look. There was at least one Hermetic magical martial art a system of swordsmanship based on sacred geometry and magical proportion, drawn from Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy no less, which was a going concern during the seventeenth century but dropped out of use thereafter. There are 19th-century Western systems of exercise and internal energy work that you'd need a microscope to tell from Qigong. There's the Art of Memory, which is a system of training that allows you to chuck your palm pilot and get instant recording and recall out of your own brain. There are healing systems, dozens of them. There are traditions of art, music, and so on. Do you need to get into these to be a capable and well-educated mage? No, but if you have an interest in one or more of these, you might as well and there again, that means practice.
So you're doing all these practices, and if you remember the third secret of magical training I mentioned earlier, you know you need to learn from them, use them to figure out what works for you and what parts of your magical skills need more work. There are plenty of ways to do this, starting with sheer brute repetition, but most Western magical traditions have a special tool to help you learn from your experiences. It's called the magical journal.
What's a magical journal? A blank book that you fill with details of your own magical practices. February 19th, 2005, 6:30 AM, morning meditation, 30 minutes. Theme was thus and such. Mental focus was shaky at first but I managed to get it under control after a few minutes. I understood X, Y, and Z; still not sure what W means, have to work on that. 3:50 PM, Pentagram ritual and Middle Pillar exercise. Somewhat improved, but the visualizations of the archangels still need work. Energy was moderate. 11:44 PM, daily review. Got about halfway back before I fell asleep. February 20th, and so on.
Now some magical lodges and traditions require you to keep a magical journal as part of their training program. We do that in the AODA, for example. It's one way to encourage people to do the course work, and if you require students to pass an examination before they go on to the next degree, as we do in AODA, you can have them go back into their journal and pull out stuff for the exam. But too often this is seen as the be-all and end-all of keeping a magical journal, and the real value of the exercise gets lost.
The real value of the exercise is that when you keep a magical journal, you can check your memory against something a little more stable, and that's crucial in magical training. Most people don't realize just how much memory bends and sways with each little breeze of aware-ness. There's a thing called state-dependent memory; when you're in a given mental state, you have a very easy time remembering things you took in when you were in the same state in the past, and a much harder time remembering things you took in when you were in a different state. I knew people in college who found that out the hard way. They'd guzzle coffee all night studying for a test, then go take the test the next afternoon with no coffee at all, and they couldn't remember a thing: too much blood in their caffeine stream, or something like that.
Emotion is the same way. When you're angry, you click into state-dependent memory, so you remember all sorts of things that made you angry in the past. When you're depressed, you click into state-dependent memory, and remember all sorts of miserable, depressing things. You can learn to break out of it, there are skills and techniques for accessing memory from different states, but those have to be learned and they're not easy at first.
And finally, magical states of consciousness are the same way. You can have amazing magical experiences, and three weeks later you'll have lost most of the details. That's annoying, and it can also be a practical problem, because one of the things that happens in magical states of consciousness is that you get symbolism, teachings, techniques that you can put to use in your magical practice. That's where the really innovative and powerful stuff comes into your magical work, by the way realizations that come out of your own practice and your own experience. Your magical journal is where you copy down those realizations while they're still fresh, before the details have slipped away, and you copy down everything, not just the stuff that seemed important at the time, because a week or a month or a year from now the detail that didn't seem important at the time may turn out to be the key to whole new realms of magic. That's happened to me more than once, and it's happened to most of the mages I know.
There's another fringe benefit to the magical journal if you think you might want to write books about magic someday. I already mentioned one of my deep dark secrets for writing magical nonfiction; here's another. During the late 1980s I spent something like five years using meditation, scrying, and ritual to work my way through the whole structure of the Cabalistic Tree of Life. It was a lot of work, and I forget how many blank books I filled up keeping up my magical journal during those years. When I was finished, I had a good basic understanding of the Tree of Life and I stress the word "basic;" gaining a mastery of the whole tree is a lifetime's work but I also had about 90% of the material for my first two books.
So there you have it. Study, of magic, including the magical traditions of other places and times; of mythology and folklore; a natural science; philosophy; and a foreign language. Practice, including a daily magical working, but also including practical workings of various kinds, divination, and any auxiliary arts that might interest you. Keeping a magical journal. A lot of work? Yes, but no more than you'd expect to put into becoming a good musician, or a martial artist, or a schoolteacher, or a dentist, or anything else. Magic is work; it has to be learned, studied, practiced, for years like anything else worth doing. The payoffs, for those willing to do the work, are literally beyond imagining. Are you willing to take up that challenge? That, my friends, depends on you.* He also addressed the refugee crisis — which he's been sharply criticized for in his travel ban — saying uncontrolled migration is “deeply unfair” to both the countries refugees are fleeing and the ones that take them in.
* His address also delivered nationalist overtones: "As President of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like you as the leaders of your countries will always and should always put your countries first." He added, "As long as I hold this office, I will defend America's interests above all else."
* He specifically blasted North Korea — which he said the US would "totally destroy" if forced to over its threats and nuclear program — and called the Iran nuclear deal struck by President Obama an "embarrassment" that the world will be hearing more about soon.
* Trump's speech was dark, and focused heavily on terrorism and the nuclear capabilities of nations hostile to the US. "Our military will soon be the strongest it has ever been," he added.
* President Donald Trump delivered his first address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, saying at the top, "we meet at a time of immense promise and great peril."
President Donald Trump gave his first speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, giving an address that presented a nationalistic, "America First" vision to the world.
"Rogue regimes represented in this body not only support terrorists, but threaten other nations and their own people with the most destructive weapons known to humanity," Trump said at the start, referring to Iran and North Korea.
"Authority and authoritarian powers seek to collapse the values, the systems, and alliances that prevented conflict and tilted the world toward freedom since World War II. International criminal networks traffic drugs, weapons, people, force dislocation and mass migration, threaten our borders and new forms of aggression exploit technology to menace our citizens."
UN members must all "respect the interests of their own people and their rights of every other sovereign nation,” he said.
"From the beaches of Europe to the deserts of the Middle East to the jungles of Asia, it is an eternal credit to the American character that even after we and our allies emerged victorious from the bloodiest war in history, we did not seek territorial expansion or attempt to oppose and impose our way of life on others. Instead we helped build institutions like this one to defend the sovereignty, security, and prosperity for all," he said.
His statement about having "strong and independent, sovereign nations," was interrupted by applause, according to the president's press pool.
“In America the people govern, the people rule, and the people are sovereign,” he said. "As President of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like you as the leaders of your countries will always and should always put your countries first."
“As long as I hold this office I will defend America’s interests above all else,” he added.
North Korea
"The scourge of our planet today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate every principle on which the united nations is based. They respect neither their own citizens nor the sovereign rights of their countries. If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph," he said.
Trump directly attacked the "depraved regime in North Korea" and went on to note the American who died after being held by the regime and the assassination of Kim Jong Un's brother.
"Now their reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles threatens the entire world with unthinkable loss of human life. It is an outrage that some nations would not only trade with such a regime, but would arm, supply and financially support a country that imperils the world with nuclear conflict," he said.
"We will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man" — his name for Kim Jong Un — "is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime."
This was the most bombastic line of Trump's speech. The remarks raised eyebrows and prompted charges of reckless saber rattling, but White House speech writers clearly intended to send a provocative message.
In advance of the speech, a senior administration official, in a briefing with reporters, said "the president will speak in extremely tough terms about the North Korean menace."
Iran
Trump then focused on Iran, saying, "We will stop radical Islamic terrorism because we cannot allow it to tear up our nation and indeed to tear up the entire world," he said, referring to the "loser terrorists."
Trump went on to say that the Iran deal “an embarrassment” for the United States, suggesting that the US may abandon the 2015 deal negotiated by the Obama administration.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli delegation applauded when Trump said the world could not abide by the Iran agreement "if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program, according to the president's press pool.
“It is time for the entire world to join us in demanding that Iran’s government end its pursuit of death and destruction,” Trump said.
The president said that Iran's future comes down its people who can "continue down the path of poverty, bloodshed, and terror" or "return to its roots as a center of civilization, culture, and wealth."
Refugee Crisis
Trump also turned his attention to refugees — a topic he's been widely criticized for, since he sought to ban refugees from six Muslim-majority nations in his travel ban.
“The United States is a compassionate nation,” Trump said addressing the Syrian refugee crisis. We seek an approach to refugee resettlement that is designed to help these horribly treated people, and which enables their eventual return to their home countries to be part of the rebuilding process.”
The president said that uncontrolled migration is “deeply unfair” to both the countries refugees are fleeing and the ones that take them in.
For the sending countries, it reduces pressure and drains human capital needed to pursue reforms, Trump said. For the receiving countries the costs of uncontrolled migration are “born overwhelmingly by low-income citizens whose concerns are often ignored by both media and government.”
He called on nations to treat refugees with "simple decency and human compassion."
While Trump thanked Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon for hosting Syrian refugees, the president did not mention or call out Myanmar's treatment of Rohingya Muslims.
Trump also criticized Venezuela saying the country's socialist regime has "brought a once thriving nation to the brink of total collapse."
"The socialist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro has inflicted terrible pain and suffering on the good people of that country," Trump said. "This corrupt regime destroyed a prosperous nation by imposing a failed ideology that has produced poverty and misery everywhere it has been tried."
Here's some of those quotes and reaction:Welcome to Pattaya Private Investigations (PI)
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Has tattoos or smokes cigarettes
Not answering your calls or messages for extended periods
Hearing another man's voice in the background when you call
Hides her phone screen when you are together
Signs in and out of Facebook (has multiple accounts)
Involved with any type of illegal activity
Is your husband visiting Thailand? What is he doing there?
Warning signs to look for in your husband or boyfriend
Involved with nightlife in Thailand
Loud disco music when he calls
Not in his hotel room late at night
Stays in guest friendly hotels
Conceals his internet use
Communicates with you sporadically while in Thailand
Seems distant after returning from Thailand
Business investigations
Other services
Our commitment to you
PattayaPI works on a fixed fee basis with no hidden costs or charges. Fill in our contact form to get in touch with us for a free quote, or call us during working hours on +66 082 542 7064 (native English speaker). All contact with PattayaPI is private and confidential. Get a free quote from us today; we respond to most messages in minutes or hours.We have access to state of the art tools and technology to help us during our investigations. We are able to utilize cutting edge equipment, such as GPS tracking and hidden cameras. We work with a wide range of Thai people from all classes and walks of life. Foreigners in Thailand cannot blend into the crowd or into Thai society; and in order to provide a totally discreet service we must use a wide range of trained Thai investigators.We are experts in stealth intelligence gathering and employ techniques used by law enforcement agencies across the world. All of our Thai operatives are fully trained and practiced in these techniques. We already have feet on the ground in Pattaya and are ready to take your instructions now. Your investigation will be carried out with the help of our extensive contacts in Thailand which we have established over a number of years and with the upmost skill and dedication. Much of the work undertaken by PattayaPI is outsourced to us from rival companies. We prefer that our customers contact us directly, rather than use middlemen who are based elsewhere in the country, or even abroad.Much of the work we do is resolving Thai lady issues for foreigners. We are well experienced in all types of Thai lady problems; and the latest scams used against foreign men. We understand the issues foreigners have with Thai ladies, such as bar girls, and can help confirm your suspicions or rid them. It isn't nice to suspect your girlfriend or wife of cheating; we can remove your suspicions and help you sleep easier. The sooner you instruct us to work for you, the sooner we can resolve problems for you. If you suspect your Thai spouse of lying or cheating, it’s important to act on those suspicions as soon as possible.Not all ladies in Thailand are dishonest; many are genuine and loyal to their foreign boyfriends or husbands. However it can often be impossible to discover the truth, especially when you are out of the country. Using the experience and resources of an investigator in Pattaya can be the quickest and easiest way to discover the truth. We can answer your questions acting discreetly and with total confidence, saving you costly mistakes. Ladies in Pattaya have a reputation of being promiscuous; it's important to protect yourself and your assets by making sure you aren't being lied to. If you do have any suspicions about your Thai girlfriend, get in contact with us now for free, friendly advice on your situation.Pattaya has often been described as the sex tourism capital of the world with over 27,000 active prostitutes. You may think that your husband is not appealing to Thai women if he’s over 50, balding, or overweight. This could not be further from the truth. Often men will visit Thailand for business, or other reasons, and are blown away by the nature of the sex industry. There are so many prostitutes in Pattaya that they are forced to be competitive and will literally fight for their customers. They show faux affection for men that is very convincing and can be overwhelming, especially if visiting Thailand for the first time. This temptation can prove too much for many men, even if they had first visited Thailand with other intentions.We will track the activities of your boyfriend or husband in Thailand and keep you up to date through every step of the process. Our surveillance is totally covert and he will never know he is the target of an investigation. If you are having suspicions about your spouse’s activities in Thailand, get in touch with us today and start your investigation.Thailand has a reputation of attracting unscrupulous characters from around the world. Often these people will setup businesses with the intent of defrauding others. If you’re doing business in the kingdom, it’s important to undertake the proper checks in order to protect yourself from unsavory characters and to avoid being stung by them. We have the experience and knowledge to help conduct corporate due diligence for our clients.If you need assistance with something that isn't listed on our website, get in touch with us and see if we can help. We are passionate about assisting people in Thailand; and if we can help you then we probably will. For more information about the services we offer, check out our what we do pages.We always work in the best interest of our clients and pride ourselves on going the extra mile. We are not judgmental and can help you no matter how small or large your query. We endeavor to help anyone that contacts us to the absolute best of our abilities. All contact with us is strictly private and confidential; we take data security seriously and automatically encrypt all messages that are sent to us. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for a free, no pressure consultation.Not My Job: Actor Daniel Radcliffe Gets Quizzed On Chia Pets
... Ever wonder how he filled his time between those projects? We have one theory: We've invited Radcliffe to play a game called "Sure, you're Harry Potter, but what do you know about hairy pottery?" Three questions about Chia Pets — those strange little planters that grow chia leaves, looking amusingly like hair.
Daniel Radcliffe made his film debut at the age of 10 in a BBC version of David Copperfield. At 11 he was cast as Harry Potter, and he spent the next decade starring as the boy wizard in eight film adaptions of J.K. Rowling's novels. His latest movie is a horror thriller called Horns.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
And now the game where the very famous answer questions about the very obscure. Daniel Radcliffe made his film debut at the age of 10 in a BBC version of "David Copperfield" by Dickens. He's got a new movie out - a horror thriller called "Horns." We wonder how he filled his time between those two projects. Daniel Radcliffe, welcome to WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME.
DANIEL RADCLIFFE: Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Not to beat around the bush any further. Dan, you of course starred as Harry Potter in all the movies and...
RADCLIFFE: Yes.
SAGAL:...We watched so many of them with my children, it felt like you were also a member of the family.
RADCLIFFE: Yeah.
SAGAL: Albeit a more obedient and cheerful one.
LUKE BURBANK: And magical.
SAGAL: But I sat down this week and I watched your new movie "Horns." And I didn't have a timer, but it seemed in the first 5 minutes, you smoked, drank, swore like a sailor, I believe you urinated on a religious shrine, and generally behaved very badly. And I want to ask you, how good did that feel?
(LAUGHTER)
RADCLIFFE: It was pretty great. I mean, not necessarily urinating on a religious shrine.
SAGAL: No, of course, not.
RADCLIFFE: That's not something that I've like longed to do for ages. But it's nice to play a part that is so different. And I get like - he's kind of a bad ass in himself.
SAGAL: You do in fact grow horns...
RADCLIFFE: Yes.
SAGAL:...Which is a look.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: I'm sure a lot of the people out there who always thought Harry Potter was satanic are going, a-ha, I told you.
RADCLIFFE: Yeah I know. But I sort of enjoy annoying those people. I mean...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: I - there are so many things to ask you about as the star of the most profitable and probably most widely seen film series of all time. But let's just start with the action figures and toys. If I were to go to your house, would I see any "Harry Potter" memorabilia? Any little Daniel Radcliffes and friends?
RADCLIFFE: No. You'd see - what have I got? You know, what you're more likely to find is like sort of homemade "Harry Potter" dolls that I get sort of given -not by me. I hated dolls.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That would be hilarious if you sat around all day.
RADCLIFFE: Yeah, that's what I've been spending my time with. I just make dolls. There's a few of those, but not too many action figures.
SAGAL: I did want to ask you - I mean, again, a lot of questions. But as I explained earlier, my daughters grew up with you as so many people did. And it must be odd - I mean, it's one thing to be well known as an actor, which obviously you are. It's another thing to be a part of so many people's childhood. Does that ever get like oppressive or strange?
RADCLIFFE: No, not really. I mean, it's actually rather lovely. I'm very lucky to be associated with something that, for the most part, is really well loved. I mean some people are famous for being part of stuff that people hate. I remember I was standing behind like a British reality TV star few years ago at a concert, and like the gyp he was getting from the crowd around him was incredible. I just remember thinking jeez I'm lucky everyone really likes the thing I got famous for. You know, and it's still incredibly lovely to have people come up to you and say, you know, you're a huge part of my childhood 'cause I had a great time too. That's the thing, like if I'd had a horrible time, I'm sure I wouldn't want to be reminded of it. But because I had a really good time, it's always really nice.
SAGAL: It did seem like a lot of fun. And I've heard stories over the years about you being on the set of the "Harry Potter" films. I remember hearing a story once that the original Dumbledore, Richard Harris, couldn't quite remember his lines. And that you said that you actually went in there and asked him to help you run his - run yours, rather - so that he could practice his without you asking him.
RADCLIFFE: Yeah. I was an incredibly politic little child, it turns out.
(LAUGHTER)
RADCLIFFE: Yeah. I remember - I do remember that. I also - one of my other like amazing memories of Richard - in the second film that faux phoenix is there and it was animatronically operated from guys who were outside the set. And they had a camera like in the head of the phoenix so they could like see what people were doing right in front so they could interact with it. And Richard 100 percent thought it was real.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So wait a minute. So this is the magical golden phoenix that Dumbledore has as a pet. And he actually thought that they had found a phoenix of some kind?
(LAUGHTER)
RADCLIFFE: He was like going up to it - and because as soon as he started like interacting with it and the guys outside like realized this was happening, they started like pandering to it in playing with him more and more. And it was lovely. It was really like - it was really - it's just one of those great moments. But no, he was a lovely, lovely man.
SAGAL: One of the things I've always wondered - again, I've seen all of those films many, many times with my family - they made the first film, I guess, going back they cast it back in like 2000, I guess it was or maybe even earlier. And they cast you and the other, then, children in the lead roles and many of the supporting roles. And pretty much all of you made it to the final film. And you all did a wonderful job. But none of you went nuts, flamed out, started behaving badly in public places. As far as I know, none of you were seen getting out of a limousine without underwear during the entire filming. How was - I mean, just probability would indicate that that's extremely unlikely.
RADCLIFFE: Well, I mean, you think that but there are also loads of kind of successful cases of people who start young becoming, you know, like Elijah Wood and Tobey Maguire and Jodie Foster and, you know, I can't think of more but there are...
SAGAL: That's it. That's it. It's you guys - those four. Everybody else is like...
RADCLIFFE: But I think for all of us, I mean, I can only speak for myself, but like there was never a moment when I didn't want to be there. And I'm just lucky that I really, really liked my job.
SAGAL: Apparently. We have to ask about this because you blew up the Internet with your rendition of "Alphabet Aerobics," the rap thing by Blackalicious.
(APPLAUSE)
RADCLIFFE: Yeah.
SAGAL: You did it on "The Tonight Show" this week. And people were amazed. Is this like - I mean, are you going to do like the Bruce Willis thing and go from acting into music now?
RADCLIFFE: Did Bruce Willis do that?
SAGAL: Oh, you are young.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: He did. He tried - I think it was called like "The Return Of Bruno," I think his album was called.
RADCLIFFE: Wow, that's a great album. I'm going to get that immediately.
SAGAL: Oh, I think you should.
(LAUGHTER)
BURBANK: I think the website's available.
RADCLIFFE: But no, I can officially like shut down any idea that I'm - this is not me sort of auditioning for my changing career. It was just a weird thing that I can do.
SAGAL: I'm telling you. This could work out for you if this acting thing in the end. While Daniel Radcliffe, what a pleasure to talk to you in person. But we have invited you here today to play a game we're calling...
BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: Sure, you're Harry Potter, but what do you know about Harry pottery?
RADCLIFFE: Oh, dear.
SAGAL: Hairy pottery. In other words, Chia Pets.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Those strange little planters that grow Chia leaves looking amazingly like hair. We're going to ask you three questions about Chia Pets, and if you get two right, you'll win a prize for one of our listeners - Carl Kasell's voice on their voicemail. Bill, who is Daniel Radcliffe playing for?
KURTIS: Abhijeet Lakhia of Panjim, India.
SAGAL: That's interesting. She'll be far enough away so that if you screw this up, you probably won't run into her.
(LAUGHTER)
RADCLIFFE: Well, that's good.
SAGAL: Here we go. Here's your first question. Now you know what these Chia Pets are. These are these little terracotta colored pottery that you get and you sort of smear...
RADCLIFFE: Sure, with the green things sprouting out.
SAGAL: Exactly. That's all you need to know.
BURBANK: It's like a Bruce Willis with more hair.
SAGAL: It is very much like that. All right, so that's all you need to know as we proceed to the first question. Chia Pets come in many shapes and models including special holiday additions. You could, if you wanted, buy which of these - A, a Chia Zombie for Halloween; B, at Chia John Hancock for the Fourth of July; or C, a Chia Dead Firstborn Son for Passover?
(LAUGHTER)
RADCLIFFE: (Laughter) I mean, they'd all be good.
SAGAL: Wouldn't they?
RADCLIFFE: I mean, I'm going to have - I'm going to go with A 'cause that seems the most likely.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: The Chia Zombie. The audience agrees and you are right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: It is in fact. What it is is like a little zombie arm emerging from a Chia lawn. You can pick that up for your shelf.
RADCLIFFE: That's pretty nice. I'm going to go and find Chia Pets.
SAGAL: Probably. So we're making a shopping list.
RADCLIFFE: I'm going to have an evening of Bruce Willis music and Chia Pets.
SAGAL: There you are.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And that's the life we always imagined you living, I have to say. All right, you have two more chances, let's go. Sometimes Chia fans create their own Chia Pets to honor certain people they may admire including which of these?A, Liberace; B, billionaire investor Warren Buffett; or C, Saddam Hussein?
RADCLIFFE: I - this is tricky. But - I'm sorry, I don't know how that noise sounded by the way. I will go - like the idea of a Warren Buffet Chia Pet. Please tell me that's true.
SAGAL: I can't do that, Daniel. As much as I admire you, it's Saddam Hussein. The Saddam Hussein Chia was allegedly marketed under the name Chia Thug. When the plants grew in, it looked like Saddam Hussein's hair and beard. Nobody has been able to find one outside of a photograph of the box, so it may not be real, but we can hope so.
All right. Daniel, this is exciting. You have one more chance to get this right and win our prize for our listener. Joseph Enterprises is the company that makes Chia Pets - always has. It's also responsible for other As Seen On TV products you can purchase for your home including which of these? A, Mandles - which are candles for men. They come in scents like fresh fish, kegger, and auto shop; or B, the Literal Insanity Workout DVDs - an exercise series led by the inmates at the Danvers State Hospital; or C, the Shamu-Wow, a super absorbent towel to clean your marine mammals?
RADCLIFFE: One of them is real?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Yes. Mandles...
(LAUGHTER)
RADCLIFFE: OK, I'm going to go with - I'm going to go with the candles one. The ridiculous candles one.
SAGAL: You're going to go with Mandles? You're right, Daniel.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Very good. You can buy Mandles, some other flavors or scents that Mandles come in - swimsuit model - what does that smell like? Space cake and stripper's mouth - that's minty fresh breath, because as I'm sure you know, strippers are minty fresh breath. Bill Kurtis, how did Daniel Radcliffe do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Enough to win two out of three.
SAGAL: That's great. Nobody expected anything less from you, Daniel.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Daniel Radcliffe is a star of stage and screen. His new movie "Horns" is in theaters and at video demand now. Daniel Radcliffe thank you so much for joining us on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME.
RADCLIFFE: Thank you very much.
SAGAL: What a pleasure to talk to you.
RADCLIFFE: Thank you again very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF "HARRY POTTER" THEME MUSIC)
Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.A SERIOUS split has opened up between Washington and London over Syria after Theresa May refused to back any new air strikes on tyrant Bashar Assad.
The US government has threatened to launch a fresh round of missile strikes on the regime if it uses nerve gas again.
Reuters 4 Theresa May refused to back US threat of further airstrikes
Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser HR McMaster and his ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley have both warned the US is “prepared to do |
on breeding and foraging seasons, be unable to catch enough food, or even end up becoming someone else's meal."
The study, published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, also includes a universal formula that allows scientists to calculate drag for a wide range of marine species including turtles, mammals, fish, and diving birds to inform study design.
"In addition to the animal welfare and conservation implications, excessive drag may also impede the collection of research data in the wild," says Jones, whose previous research on leatherback sea turtle physiology has improved conservation practices.
"The guidelines we've developed can help ensure that the data collected accurately reflect the animals' natural behaviours in the wild, so we can devise conservation strategies accordingly."Philosophers have often ruminated on the aesthetics of photography. Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida begins with a poignant memorialization of his mother, as remembered through her photograph. Pierre Bourdieu’s Photography: A Middle-Brow Art wondered why and how the medium became so widespread that “there are few households, at least in towns, which do not possess a camera.” And Jacques Derrida’s posthumous Athens, Still Remains, a travel memoir accompanied by the photographs of Jean-Francois Bonhomme, begins with the mystical phrase “We owe ourselves to death.”
For Barthes and Derrida, photography was a medium of suspended mortality—every photograph a memento mori. For another philosopher, the cryptic, polymath, and notoriously surly Ludwig Wittgenstein, photography was a concrete expression of his preferred means of perception. As he famously wrote in the Philosophical Investigations, “Don’t think, look!” For the unsentimentally cerebral Wittgenstein, a photograph is not a memorial, but a “probability.” The philosopher’s archive at the University of Cambridge includes the photograph above, a true “probability” in that it does not represent any one person but is a composite image of his face and the faces of his three sisters, made in collaboration with the “founding father of eugenics,” Francis Galton. The four separate photographs that Wittgenstein and Galton blended together are below.
Of the composite image, keeper of the Wittgenstein archives Michael Nedo writes that “Wittgenstein was aiming for different clarity expressed by the photography of fuzziness.”:
Galton wanted to work out one probability, whereas Wittgenstein saw this as a summary in which all manner of possibilities are revealed in the fuzziness.
Fuzziness is a word rarely applied to Wittgenstein’s thought—at least his early work in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus where his only goal is a clarity of thought that supposedly dissolves all the “fuzzy” problems of philosophy in a series of elliptical aphorisms. The philosopher also called himself a “disciple of Freud,” in that he sought to “think in pictures,” and reach beyond language to the images produced by dreams and the unconscious, “to enable us to see things differently.” Wittgenstein’s photographs are as strangely detached and mysterious as the man himself. Salon has a gallery of the philosopher’s photographs, which includes the portrait of him (below), taken at his instruction in Swansea, Wales in 1947. It’s an iconic image; Wittgenstein half-sneers disdainfully at the camera, his steady gaze a challenge, while the blackboard behind him shows a riot of scratches and scrawls. In the upper right-hand corner, the word RAW hangs ominously above the philosopher’s head.
Wittgenstein’s grim portrait presents a contrast to the warmer recent photographic portraits of philosophers like those in Steve Pyke’s new book of philosopher portraits Philosophers. We’ve previously featured Pyke’s portraits of philosophers like Richard Rorty, David Chalmers, and Arthur Danto. For much a much less formal series of portraits of contemporary philosophers as everyday people, swing by the Tumblr Looks Philosophical.
Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.Atheist Ricky Gervais gets to play God
World famous comedian and atheist
Ricky Gervais to play God
in his upcoming TV show “Afterlife”
Comedian, writer and atheist, Ricky Gervais has revealed details about his new television series Afterlife, in which he will appear as an “arrogant, wisecracking” God. Gervais talks about the new show on his blog.
Ricky Gervais insists “Afterlife” is fiction
The new show is about an atheist who dies and finds himself in heaven. God “loves welcoming atheists to heaven with a smug grin on his face”. God has a soft-spot for atheists because he finds them good people, even if they didn’t believe in Him. The fact that he goes to heaven proves it is a work of fiction. In fiction heaven exists, then so does God.
Before anyone has seen it criticisms are rolling in.
Ricky says:
We’ve come up with this show because we think it will be fun, different and entertaining. Not to undermine the moral fabric of America. Here’s what I suggest you do; wait till ‘Afterlife’ is finished then watch it. Or not. But if you watch it then you’re allowed to have an opinion. You can gladly slag it off. You can start a campaign to get it banned. You can hate it. And trust me, it’s so much more fun saying you hate something once you’ve actually seen it. So, please wait, watch and find out if it’s controversial or inflammatory first, yeh? Anyway, I play God…
In the 2010 movie The Invention of Lying Ricky Gervais lives in a world where everyone tells the truth. Therefore it was impossible for there to be any religion. Until Ricky invents the lie. Like all liars, he manipulates situations to give himself an advantage over his fellow human beings, and he loves it. His friends and co-workers begin to worship him and follow him like a prophet. I won’t spoil it if you haven’t seen it, well worth a look. Another work of fiction from Ricky Gervais, a world without lying.
Holte Ender thinks Ricky Gervais is one of the funniest people on the planet and that’s no lie.!!! WARNING!!! Things not to do using my home-cooked gear: Never join online games with people in it that don't have the packages, you can join them but as long as the items are safely secured in your backpack, as soon as you equip them, they'll fall apart.
Never host a online game for people who don't have the packages, as stated above, as soon as you take them out, they'll disappear.
Never try to mod or glitch with my weapons as they are not part of the original game and could cause irreversible damage to your system!!!! IMPORTANT NOTICE!!! Don't forget to DOWNLOAD DrZed's Patch here: [1], or else you won't be able to run this stuff.
Some weapons are more demanding to your CPU/GPU then normal items, take precaution when you start using these to not crash your game via FPS drop and the like. Discontinue use if they DO crash your game and proceed to contact me immediately!
Contents show]
Welcome to Mr. Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez's 3PDLC/Home-cooked Gear page:
On this page you'll find Mr. Grimmjow's Home-cooked gear. Make yourself comfortable and enjoy the beautiful weapons and gear.
Weapon Package 1 (version 3.2 "10-09-2015"):
You'd definitely won't...
The new meaning behind, "Mowing your lawn".
HEY! I'm already there.
WATCH IT! FRIENDLY FIRE IS ON!
Free lead for everyone!
One shot, one kill.
Imma flyyyyyyy~~ing.
I've got the upper-hand.
INCOMING!
Doink the clown wins! SHOCKING!
I, JUST, CAN'T, STOP, FIRING!
Who needs a damn scope nowadays?
I got the ammo!
Who needs a Wildcat?
They'll have to reckon with me.
AAAAAWWWWW Shieawd!
Vladof = Fire Rate.
Roadside bombs are for real pussies. 1 of 18 Add photo
Weapon Package 2 (version 3.2 "10-09-2015"):
TIME WARPIN'
You ain't gettin' way from this one, boy!
WILD!
YES!
And then there was naught!
OMFG? WTF? SERIOUSLY?!
HA- HA! SPLAT!
Ekaterina Kurae would be proud.
Your own pocket world shaker!
FAAMIIINEEE~~~~!!!
No it's a constellation, not a assassin...
Duuuuhhhhhhhh.........
Keep'm checked, keep'm covered, keep'm dead.
Capitan Quark did it again!
Can't stop the Cole Train baby! WOO!
Being bad is good!
RAT- KETAT- KETAT!
The Rambo of the guns. 1 of 18 Add photo
Weapon Package 3 (version 3.2 "10-09-2015"):
Burn, baby burn... BUUUUURRRRNNNN!
That's a real leap for "gun" kind.
Dahl living up to it's name.
There ain't no antidote for this.
They'll come to hate this one.
I'm, BAAA~~ACK!
Not to be used during Metalband concerts.
Giddy-up cowboy!
You'd best get out of the way for this one...
HOLY F**KING S**T!!!
More bullets for ya' buck!
That's totally ill-legit.
Yup! Reassuring.
Marcus doesn't like this gun...
Bringing a new meaning to "quickdraw."
Om nom nom nom!
WWII in a gun?!
Rockets sir, thousands of'm! 1 of 18 Add photo
Weapon Package 4 (version 3.2 "10-09-2015"):
Quick like a bunny!
Silent as the wind / None shall come to realise / Death is naught voidable
Mess with the shark. You get the HAMMER!!!
No clown will be spared this time.
640509-040147
Someone better call clean-up...
Dat feed tho'.
MAKE IT RAAAIIIN!
Better put that out son!
oh... my... GGGOOODDD!!! HOLY SSSIIIEEEAAATTT!!!
So, much, lead!
Lombax?! Nah...
Gimme, gimme, gimme!
BFF's!
Your personal instant brain surgeon.
DRILL THAT ONE DOWN!
For the motherland!
Big shoutout! 1 of 18 Add photo
Gear Package 1 (version 3.2 "10-09-2015"):
God is with me.
Accuracy to the bone!
HOT HOT!
No elements, no shields, just sheer power.
Who needs Borderlands 2 and it's reactive shields?
CASH IN POCKET!
Tediore... AMMO FTW!
Don't think it's a Blaze rip, IT'S TORGUE!
FOR MOTHER RUSSIA!
So healthy.
UNLIMITED POWERRRRR!
I ain't dead yet!
I still ain't, dead yet.
This is what you'll need to get the goods. 1 of 14 Add photo
Gear Package 1 HARDCORE (version 3.2 "10-09-2015"):
This is what you'll need to get the goods, HARDCORE STYLE! 1 of 1 Add photo
Installation code for the HARDCORE variant:
The_Dust_Wastes_3PDLC.Custom_Items.Gearbox_GrimmjowHARDCORE gd_shields.A_Item.Item_Shield The_Dust_Wastes_3PDLC.Body.body1_Gearbox_GrimmjowHARDCORE gd_shields.LeftSide.leftside4 gd_shields.RightSide.rightside4 The_Dust_Wastes_3PDLC.ManufacturerMaterials.Material3_Gearbox_GrimmjowHARDCORE gd_manufacturers.Manufacturers.Gearbox gd_shields.Prefix.Prefix_Quality4_Harmonious The_Dust_Wastes_3PDLC.Title.TitleP_Gearbox1_GrimmjowHARDCORE 1 5 0 71
Gear Package 2 (version 2.2 "10-09-2015"):
Yooouuuuuuu~~ love me, right?
Come and get it!!!
Oooh, that's just nasty...
Oh my god, OOOHHH!!! OOOHHHH MY F***ING GOD!!! RAAAHHH!!!
HandsomeJackBoy is proud of this one!
HIT IT!
*cough* *wheeze* *gurgle*
Your reinforcements have arrived!
This one's WAAAYYY cooler.
KOPI REKT M8!
Grenades 4 everyone!
BADOOOM!!!
A grenade in it's finest form. 1 of 13 Add photo
Gear Package 3 (version 1.2 "10-09-2015"):
Special "Bloodless" Rarity Weapons (version 1.0 "10-09-2015"):
Installation, Q&A
Question: Where do I download these AWESOME! Files from?
Answer: Right here: HERE!
Question: Where do I place these ALMIGHTY files when I have a retail (disk) version of the game?
Answer: C:\D:\E:\F:\(or whatever drive you installed it on)\Program Files (x86)\2K Games\Gearbox Software\Borderlands\Willowgame\Cooked PC\Packages
Question: Where do I place these ALMIGHTY files when I have a Steam version of the game?
Answer: C:\D:\E:\F:\(or whatever drive you installed it on)\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Borderlands\WillowGame\CookedPC
(Basically place the.upk files into the general "Packages" folder, located inside of the Cooked PC folder.)
Question: How do I spawn these AMAZING weapon/gear into my game?
Answer: Start up WILLOWTREE, and create a new ITEM slot (for the Grimmjow Shield), and use the IMPORT ITEM button to place these command strings into the new item (Ctrl+C the following into your clipboard).
The_Dust_Wastes_3PDLC.Custom_Items.Gearbox_Grimmjow gd_shields.A_Item.Item_Shield The_Dust_Wastes_3PDLC.Body.body1_Gearbox_Grimmjow gd_shields.LeftSide.leftside4 gd_shields.RightSide.rightside4 The_Dust_Wastes_3PDLC.ManufacturerMaterials.Material3_Gearbox_Grimmjow gd_manufacturers.Manufacturers.Gearbox gd_shields.Prefix.Prefix_Quality4_Harmonious The_Dust_Wastes_3PDLC.Title.TitleP_Gearbox1_Grimmjow 1 5 1 71
Question: Now I have the Grimmjow Shield in my inventory, how do I get the rest?
Answer: Equip the shield in the game itself and go KILL stuff, the Grimmjow shield has:
A small chance to make a killed enemy drop a Legendary TDW weapon.
A very small chance to make a killed enemy drop a Pearlescent TDW weapon.
A unbelievably small chance to drop a Bloodless weapon.
Now you might fear the "small chances," but please keep in mind that this counts towards ALL enemies, so basically go to a villain infested compound and keep the KILL-O-METER going, you'll be bound to get a Pearlescent or 2.
So without further ado, please enjoy these STELLAR weapons. Also leaving behind a "thank you", etc. on my Talk page would be appreciated.
Also leaving behind a picture of the gear you've found during your raids on my Talk page or this page's Talk page, would be appreciated because I'm curious as of what you people might find out there.
Yours truly,
I... I am the King!TalkIt appears to be dawning on Glenn Beck -- what with yet another of his heavily armed fans now under arrest for casing out an Air National Guard base because she feared it was a FEMA concentration camp -- that some of the outrage he's so busily manufacturing on the air nightly might just boil over into violence again.
Yesterday on his Fox News show, he reviewed the tape coming in from the hooligans taking over the town-hall forums meant to discuss health care, disrupting them with tactics specifically intended to destroy any meaningful discussion, and was obviously pleased at the handiwork of his fellow tea-baggers. Indeed, it's unmistakable to everyone (even Beck, evidently) that there's an increasingly ugly undertone that forebodes violence. And if that happens, well, some of the blame might fall in his direction if it does.
So he took out a little insurance yesterday, imploring his increasingly angry audience not to resort to violence if they don't get their way politically:
Beck: The best thing that you can do right now is to let Congress know that you are watching them like a hawk. You show up. You let them feel your burning gaze on them at all times. But here's the thing that I -- I'm concerned about: Your interaction with them needs to be respectful, polite, forceful, and peaceful. I've been warning Congress now for a couple of years, and the time has come and passed for them to be able to learn from this. I've been telling them, you have to listen to the people, or they'll be in real big trouble. Well now, let me give the warning to you: If anyone thinks that it would be a good idea to turn violent, think again. It would destroy the Republic. I feel it with everything in me. There is a great reason for hope right now. Because, I am telling you, for the first time -- since I started saying this in the last couple of years -- for the first time I know it, I feel it, the American people are starting to wake up. These people in Washington have no idea what they have done. They have wakened a sleeping giant. But just one lunatic like Timothy McVeigh could ruin everything that everyone has worked so hard for, because these people in Washington won't pass up the use of an emergency. Look how the media ran with the abortion-doctor killing. They tried to pin that despicable act on Fox in general and specifically, Bill O'Reilly and me! The only thing either of us have ever said is there's no reason for that, ever.
Sorry, Glenn, but that isn't the only thing either of you have ever said. O'Reilly also happened to refer to Dr. Tiller as a "baby killer" nearly thirty times, and accused him of mass murder as well as running "an abortion mill" where he had "aborted 60,000 fetuses." He even mused aloud about someone taking him out.
Sure, you can add a disclaimer at the end telling people never to commit violence. But coming at the tail end of an endless litany of incendiary demonization, that's pretty weak tea as lame excuses go.
Likewise, there are the many incendiary things you've said just in recent weeks: calling President Obama a racist, a fascist, and a socialist; repeatedly telling your audience for three weeks running that you "couldn't debunk" the FEMA concentration-camp theories (followed by a single episode in which you did in fact debunk them); agreeing with your guest that the only hope for America is another major terrorist attack; and helping promote secession.
As we saw with the case of the Long Island Beckazoid freaked out about FEMA, saying these kinds of things -- things that not only create scapegoats but are demonstrably untrue, and indeed unhinged -- goes beyond entertainment. Rhetoric like this has a seriously unhinging effect on listeners who absorb it and believe it, because it's in fact several steps removed from reality.
But of course, Beck will never confront that reality now. Because when one of his acolytes acts out inevitably now, he can just point back to this episode and say, "See? I have always denounced violence!"
They don't come much more cynical than that.Description
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What are others saying about the Under Construction Page pluginI recently had the privilege of reading and reviewing Gift of the Phoenix by Donna Cook. Gift of the Phoenix is a new YA Epic Fanasy and was Kindle Book of The Year semifinalist for 2013. I was lucky enough to have the chance to do an interview with Donna and ask her a few Question about her and Gift of the Phoenix.
Head over to Donna’s Blog to see what she is working on now. And be sure to pick up read her new novel Gift of the Phoenix at Amazon. Cook has written one prequel novella titled Nashua’s Chronicles, and an upcoming sequel to Gift of the Phoenix is in the works.
What made you start writing?
When I first learned how to read, I remember my mother explaining where books come from. I was so young, I guess I thought books came into existence all by themselves. She told me the author is the person who makes up the story. My eyes grew wide and I thought, I want to do THAT. She may as well have told me how to cast spells, it seemed such a magical revelation. I still feel such joyous playfulness when I create stories. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.
What books are you reading now, or what type of books do you typically read?
I read all across the board, but contemporary fiction is the bulk of it. I’m also fond of a good classic, quality young adult, and the occasional fantasy. Right now I’m reading A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. Other recent reads: The Rosie Project, by Simsion Graeme; Incantation, by Alice Hoffman; Little Bee, by Chris Cleave; The End of Your Life Book Club, by Will Schwalbe; and Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger. Fantasy books I frequently recommend: The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss and The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner.
Do you have a schedule/system/routine for your writing?
I wish I were better about this. My husband and I have six kids between us, five still at home. There are days when I can put in a few hours and days when there’s not a minute to spare and I collapse into bed exhausted. When the kids are grown, I hope to have a better schedule. Until then I do what I can and try to enjoy them while I still have them.
Who edited your book, how did you find/choose them?
If there is something you know now, that you wish you knew when you started writing, what would it be?
Well, I started quite young so there were all kinds of things I didn’t know. I wish I’d really understood how much time and practice it takes to develop the advanced writing skills required to create a solid novel. I would have been easier on myself and not so discouraged by false starts. I think this is why I love to encourage young aspiring writers. Go forth and be fearless!
What genre do you consider Gift of the Phoenix? Do you plan to focus your writing career mostly in this genre?
Gift of the Phoenix is an epic fantasy adventure. There will be at least one follow-up novel, plus I have another stand-alone fantasy in the works. I’m sure I’ll get back to my literary roots and write a contemporary fiction novel, but I don’t know when that will be. I’ve learned the hard way that the Muse is in charge of things like that.
(After the GofP sequel) do you have plans for another novel or series?
Answered above, but I hope to write until the day I die. I’ll write as many novels as fate allows.
What types of inspiration help you to create the characters and magic in Gift of the Phoenix?
Sometimes I know exactly where I got an idea, but other ideas seem to spring into existence from nothing at all. Music often inspires me. Loreena McKennitt’s The Mask and the Mirror album is a favored way to get my creative mojo going. The theme song from Forrest Gump inspired the horse race between Marcellus and Janus. I also love looking at old maps and fantastical illustrations of faeries or mythical creatures. I don’t directly use what I’m looking at, but it gets my mind working. When I first had the idea to write a book about a Phoenix, I made a list of my favorite things and brainstormed ways to work them into the story. Only a small percentage of those ideas stuck, but it was a fun exercise. My love of lighthouses led to the creation of the Rock of Light.
When writing Gift of the Phoenix, did you start writing from the beginning, end, or somewhere in the middle of the book?
With most of my projects, Gift of the Phoenix included, I use a plain spiral notebook to brainstorm ideas for plot, scenes, and characters. I work randomly, so by the time I’m done the notebook is an unorganized mess. The book is pretty well set in my mind though. I figure anything I forget wasn’t good enough to keep anyway. Once I start writing the draft, I work from beginning to end.
What is your favorite scene from of Gift of the Phoenix?
Oooh, that’s a tough one. I have so many! Corren going through the Labyrinth. Nicolai tending to King Clement. Marcellus and Corren in the Haven of Kings. Just about any scene with Janus. 🙂
Who was the first character from the Gift of the Phoenix cast that you created?
The Three were created as one, inspired by my three boys, who were quite small at the time. One day I told my oldest son a story about three boys who go off on an adventure, each with their own magical stone. I wasn’t crazy about the story itself, but I loved the idea of three protagonists, and the three stones. Corren, Marcellus, and Nicolai formed organically, with personalities very different from my sons.
Can you tell us anything about the coming sequel?
Hmmm…. I tend to be quite tight-lipped about these things. Especially since I so enjoy weaving a mystery, which you saw in Gift of the Phoenix. I can tell you the sequel picks up right where Gift of the Phoenix left off. When Corren divides the egg of ash into seven parts, ceremonially placing each branch’s ash into their respective orbs, the Heads of the branches retrieve their ash from the altar. Only one orb will not lift off the stone. It’s up to Corren to figure out why. The answer entwines the fate of the Three with… well, that’s all I’m going to say. Sorry!
I want to thank Donna Cook again for taking the time to answer a few questions for me! This is the first interview I have been able to do for my blog. I look forward to the next in the series. If you would like to see my review of Gift of the Phoenix check it out here:
Gift of the Phoenix by Donna Cook – Review
Be sure to come back for another review and interview of Donna Cooks next novel, as well as other YA fantasy interviews and review.
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AdvertisementsNinety-one years after Von Richthofen died after being shot down near the River Somme in France Maciej Kowalczyk, a genealogist, found the document in archives belonging to the western Polish town of Ostrow Wielkopolski.
Mr Kowalczyk explained that the town, which in 1918 was part of Germany, issued the death notice in accordance to German law.
"Imperial regulations from 1879, relating to military personnel, who had left their permanent residence on mobilisation and were later killed, dictated that their death was registered at their last residence before heading to the front," he told the PAP news agency.
In 1914 Von Richthofen, then a cavalry officer with the 1st Lancers, was stationed in Ostrow Wielkopolski and gave it as his last official address before going to serve on the eastern front.
After transferring to imperial Germany's air force, Von Richthofen went on to become the Great War's most successful fighter pilot with 80 kills to his name, and winning the respect of both friends and foe alike.
Shot down behind British lines in April 1918 by either aircraft of the Royal Air Force or ground fire from Australian troops he was given was given a military funeral with full honours.
The discovery of the death certificate in Poland will strengthen the unusual but growing ties between the country and the German war hero.
Swidnica, the site of the Von Richthofen family seat, boasts memorials to the fighter ace, and local officials now tout the town's Red Baron connection as reason to visit, and even a local sports club has adopted his name.Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably well aware that the popular mobile game Flappy Bird was pulled this past weekend by its developer Dong Nguyen for being “an addictive product.” Countless fake apps have since sprung up, and unfortunately scammers have already figured out how to monetize the game’s demise.
Sophos has found infected versions of Flappy Bird in alternative Android markets (users need to sideload these apps, but as always, that hasn’t been a deterrent for most). One such fake app is a “trial version” that demands you send a text message (to a premium number, of course) and won’t let you completely quit the app until you do.
Trend Micro also found fake Android apps, which it says are especially rampant in app stores across Russia and Vietnam. While these behave exactly like the original app (they’re not trial versions), they also stealthily connect to a Command and Control server through Google Cloud Messaging to receive instructions.
These are for sending text messages, hiding the resulting notifications, as well as for transmitting over the user’s phone number, carrier, and Gmail email address registered with the device.
These are very basic threats, and ones we’ve seen on Android before. Thankfully, they won’t do that much damage to your Android phone or tablet, but that doesn’t mean you should still go out looking for the game.
In short, Flappy Bird is dead, but the scams are only beginning. Our advice is the same as always when it comes to Android malware: stick to Google Play and only install apps that you know are safe.
See also – First Android bootkit malware spotted; reportedly found on over 350,000 mobile devices, most in China and Android malware emerges on Google Play which installs a trojan on your PC, uses your microphone to record you
Read next: Update: Microsoft says changes to China-related Bing searches were an error, not censorshipImage copyright AFP Image caption Mitt Romney and Herman Cain: Eager to show they did their homework
Herman Cain did better than Mitt Romney in the latest Republican presidential candidates' debate.
The Herminator merely got some one else's name wrong, calling CNN's moderator Wolf Blitzer, "Blitz".
Mitt Romney in a jokey aside confirmed his first name is "Mitt". Only it's not. It's Willard. Mitt is his middle name.
This bit of silliness aside, the debate was by far the most interesting so far.
Real, substantial differences between the candidates were exposed. There was something of a sorting of the grown ups from the kids. I doubt there will be any clear agreement on winners and losers but it was a serious test of ability.
The debate was mainly on national security and nearly all of the candidates showed a tendency to eagerly disgorge a flood of facts to demonstrate their prowess.
But Perry and Cain seemed like schoolboys who had desperately mugged up on their homework and had memorised a couple of facts, but clearly hadn't been paying attention in class all year.
By contrast Michele Bachmann had her best performance for a while. She was fluid and clearly did know what she was talking about.
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman was masterful and joined the dots, for all the good it will do him.
Romney was measured and informed but not the hands down winner he has been in just about every other encounter. Indeed he was a bit windy.
The only solid priority I heard was to make a trip to Israel his first visit as president.
Righteous fury
I though this night would be all about Newt Gingrich, but it wasn't. He was solid, but almost retiring, offering little that was memorable or powerful.
But he confirmed again, what to me is his most attractive feature, that he thinks outside the box and has big thoughts about technology.
He said the biggest undiagnosed danger to national security was an EMP pulse.
It makes more sense than Rick Santorum's claim that the unspotted danger was Hezbollah in South America.
Ron Paul was passionate, and was the only one clever enough not to feel the need to show off.
He was clear and consistent in his difference from the other candidates. He's a libertarian rather than a conservative, and really does believe in less government, not just less redistribution. His foreign policy could be summed up in one of his phrases: "Why don't we mind our own business?"
He was against what he calls "endless wars", thinks foreign aid is pointless and that the Patriot Act is unpatriotic.
He all but exploded with righteous fury when Gingrich and others insisted that the presumption of innocence and criminal justice was only for proper criminals, not terrorists. Oh, and he would end the war on drugs and allow states to legalise marijuana, treating just like alcohol.
This early clash was just for starters.
Romney called out Huntsman on his backing for the reduction of troops in Afghanistan and then prodded him about it. Huntsman gave as good as he got, winning the encounter by insisting the commander-in-chief (ie the president), not the commanders on the ground should make the final decision.
Perry and Bachmann sparred over aid to Pakistan. Explaining why she wouldn't cut it, the congresswoman called the Texas governor "highly naive". She looked as though she had studied the problem and wasn't pandering to easy applause. He looked, well, naive.
There were no real gaffes, although Cain's plan to impose sanctions against Syria's oil industry would be less than effective as it has more or less ground to a halt because of existing sanctions.
This debate probably won't change many minds, but Newt didn't seem to build on his surge in the polls, and for once Willard didn't win.South African spies suspect China was behind a series of break-ins at a major nuclear facility, and that agents stole technology in order to gain the advantage in a new kind of nuclear power generation, according to secret documents leaked to Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit.
But public comments and diplomatic communications by the South African government on the incident avoided any reference to alleged Chinese involvement.
The intelligence documents contradict claims made by the South African government and nuclear officials dismissing the 2007 incidents at the Pelindaba Nuclear Research Center as "a piece of random criminality" and a simple "burglary attempt".
They also debunk the theory reported by a number of US media outlets, that the thieves may have been part of a "terrorist group" trying to "build a weapon".
South Africa’s spies conclude that China had dispatched the two groups of armed men who cut through a fence surrounding the nuclear facility, disabled alarms and shot a man who interrupted them.
He was left in a critical condition, while the attackers escaped with a laptop computer stolen from a control room. They were never caught.
China then moved ahead in its own development of the new technology that was being researched at Pelindaba, known as a Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, despite starting its project a year later than South Africa - which abandoned its own pebble-bed plans in 2010, citing a lack of investor interest.
"Random criminality"
Abdul Minty, South African representative at the International Atomic Energy Agency, dismissed the break-in as "a burglary attempt," while the head of the national nuclear corporation NECSA played it down as just "a piece of random criminality".
However, a secret South African intelligence briefing on counter espionage dated 2009 offers a fuller explanation.
It says South Africa had been developing Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) technology, for which the Pelindaba facility would be the fuel plant.
"Several |
audin (Fra) Team Europcar 1
Points - Zottegem, 199.8km 1 Peter Sagan (Svk) Cannondale Pro Cycling 20 pts 2 Arnaud Demare (Fra) FDJ 18 3 Alexander Kristoff (Nor) Katusha 16 4 Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 14 5 Oscar Gatto (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 12 6 Niki Terpstra (Ned) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 10 7 Maxime Vantomme (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 9 8 Jerome Cousin (Fra) Team Europcar 8 9 Davide Cimolai (Ita) Lampre-Merida 7 10 Johan Le Bon (Fra) FDJ 6 11 André Greipel (Ger) Lotto Belisol 5 12 Luka Mezgec (Slo) Team Argos-Shimano 4 13 David Boucher (Fra) FDJ 3 14 Jacopo Guarnieri (Ita) Astana Pro Team 2 15 Marco Coledan (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 1
Mountain 1 - Edelare, 89.1km 1 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 5 pts 2 Kiel Reijnen (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 3 3 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 1
Mountain 2 - Leberg, 97km 1 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 5 pts 2 Kiel Reijnen (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 3 3 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 1
Mountain 3 - Berendries, 101.5km 1 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 5 pts 2 Kiel Reijnen (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 3 3 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 1
Mountain 4 - Leberg, 124.2km 1 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 5 pts 2 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 3 3 Kiel Reijnen (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 1
Mountain 5 - Berandries, 128.6km 1 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 5 pts 2 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 3 3 Sam Bennett (Irl) An Post-Chainreaction 1
Mountain 6 - Valkenberg, 133.7km 1 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 5 pts 2 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 3 3 Sam Bennett (Irl) An Post-Chainreaction 1
Mountain 7 - Ten Bosse, 140.2km 1 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 5 pts 2 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 3 3 Sam Bennett (Irl) An Post-Chainreaction 1
Mountain 8 - Eikenmolen, 143.8km 1 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 5 pts 2 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 3 3 Tomas Vaitkus (Ltu) Orica-GreenEdge 1
Mountain 9 - Leberg, 169.4km 1 Damien Gaudin (Fra) Team Europcar 5 pts 2 Niki Terpstra (Ned) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 3 3 Vincent Jerome (Fra) Team Europcar 1
Mountain 10 - Berendries, 173.8km 1 Damien Gaudin (Fra) Team Europcar 5 pts 2 Oscar Gatto (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 3 3 Peter Sagan (Svk) Cannondale Pro Cycling 1
Mountain 11 - Valkenberg, 178.8km 1 Damien Gaudin (Fra) Team Europcar 5 pts 2 André Greipel (Ger) Lotto Belisol 3 3 Tom Boonen (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 1
Mountain 12 - Ten Bosse, 185.3km 1 Tom Boonen (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 5 pts 2 Vicente Reynes Mimo (Spa) Lotto Belisol 3 3 Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 1
Mountain 13 - Eikenmolen, 188.9km 1 Peter Sagan (Svk) Cannondale Pro Cycling 5 pts 2 Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 3 3 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 1
Teams 1 FDJ 15:01:30 2 Omega Pharma-Quick Step 3 Crelan-Euphony 0:00:09 4 Katusha 5 Team Europcar 6 Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 7 Cannondale Pro Cycling 8 Lampre-Merida 9 Team Argos-Shimano 0:00:18 10 Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise 11 Lotto Belisol 12 Astana Pro Team 13 Orica-GreenEdge 14 Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team 15 Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 0:08:35 16 MTN-Qhubeka 0:13:39 17 UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 0:15:02 18 Team NetApp-Endura 0:16:52 19 Team 3M 0:17:11 20 Accent Jobs-Wanty 0:21:42 21 RusVelo 0:29:57 22 An Post-Chainreaction 0:32:39 23 Champion System Pro Cycling Team 0:44:30
General classification after stage 1 1 Peter Sagan (Svk) Cannondale Pro Cycling 5:00:17 2 Arnaud Demare (Fra) FDJ 0:00:04 3 Alexander Kristoff (Nor) Katusha 0:00:06 4 Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 0:00:10 5 Oscar Gatto (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 6 Niki Terpstra (Ned) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 7 Maxime Vantomme (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 8 Jerome Cousin (Fra) Team Europcar 9 Davide Cimolai (Ita) Lampre-Merida 10 Johan Le Bon (Fra) FDJ 11 Damien Gaudin (Fra) Team Europcar 0:00:18 12 André Greipel (Ger) Lotto Belisol 0:00:19 13 Luka Mezgec (Slo) Team Argos-Shimano 14 David Boucher (Fra) FDJ 15 Jacopo Guarnieri (Ita) Astana Pro Team 16 Marco Coledan (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 17 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 18 Sébastien Turgot (Fra) Team Europcar 19 Baptiste Planckaert (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 20 Tom Boonen (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 21 Tom Veelers (Ned) Team Argos-Shimano 22 Sonny Colbrelli (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 23 Kurt Hovelynck (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 24 Tom Van Asbroeck (Bel) Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise 25 Alessandro Bazzana (Ita) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 26 Guillaume Van Keirsbulck (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 27 Rudiger Selig (Ger) Katusha 28 Elia Favilli (Ita) Lampre-Merida 29 Alexey Tsatevich (Rus) Katusha 30 Pier Paolo De Negri (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 31 Mickael Delage (Fra) FDJ 32 Gijs Van Hoecke (Bel) Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise 33 Jarl Salomein (Bel) Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise 34 Gerald Ciolek (Ger) MTN-Qhubeka 35 Nikias Arndt (Ger) Team Argos-Shimano 36 James Vanlandschoot (Bel) Accent Jobs-Wanty 37 Tom Dumoulin (Ned) Team Argos-Shimano 38 Mauro Da Dalto (Ita) Cannondale Pro Cycling 39 Leigh Howard (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 40 William Bonnet (Fra) FDJ 41 Matthieu Ladagnous (Fra) FDJ 42 Pieter Jacobs (Bel) Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise 43 Lieuwe Westra (Ned) Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team 44 Kevin Hulsmans (Bel) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 45 Viacheslav Kuznetsov (Rus) Katusha 46 Boy van Poppel (Ned) Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team 47 Blaz Jarc (Slo) Team NetApp-Endura 48 Luke Durbridge (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 49 Kenny Dehaes (Bel) Lotto Belisol 50 Murilo Antonio Fischer (Bra) FDJ 51 Vincent Jerome (Fra) Team Europcar 52 Nikolas Maes (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 53 Alexey Lutsenko (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 54 Dmitriy Muravyev (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 55 Vicente Reynes Mimo (Spa) Lotto Belisol 56 Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg (RSA) Team Argos-Shimano 57 Christopher Jones (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 58 Yohann Gene (Fra) Team Europcar 59 Yves Lampaert (Bel) Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise 60 Francesco Failli (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 61 Alan Marangoni (Ita) Cannondale Pro Cycling 62 Edward King (USA) Cannondale Pro Cycling 63 Mattia Cattaneo (Ita) Lampre-Merida 64 Egidijus Juodvalkis (Ltu) Crelan-Euphony 65 Kris Boeckmans (Bel) Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team 66 Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 67 Luca Paolini (Ita) Katusha 68 Roman Maikin (Rus) RusVelo 0:00:30 69 Bjorn Thurau (Ger) Team Europcar 0:00:52 70 Kess Heytens (Bel) Team 3M 0:01:36 71 Kevin Claeys (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 0:02:08 72 Frederique Robert (Bel) Lotto Belisol 0:02:12 73 Tosh Van Der Sande (Bel) Lotto Belisol 74 Davide Vigano (Ita) Lampre-Merida 75 Tomas Vaitkus (Ltu) Orica-GreenEdge 0:04:14 76 Martin Reimer (Ger) MTN-Qhubeka 0:05:23 77 Stefan Van Dijk (Ned) Accent Jobs-Wanty 0:06:59 78 Dominique Rollin (Can) FDJ 79 Anton Vorobyev (Rus) Katusha 80 Jonas Van Genechten (Bel) Lotto Belisol 81 Roy Curvers (Ned) Team Argos-Shimano 82 Iljo Keisse (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 83 Mike Terpstra (Ned) Team 3M 0:07:38 84 Alphonse Vermote (Bel) An Post-Chainreaction 85 Reinier Honig (Ned) Crelan-Euphony 86 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 0:08:29 87 Mattia Pozzo (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 0:08:34 88 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 89 Massimo Graziato (Ita) Lampre-Merida 0:08:36 90 Elia Viviani (Ita) Cannondale Pro Cycling 91 Thomas Vanhaecke (Bel) Team 3M 92 Dmitriy Gruzdev (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 93 David Veilleux (Can) Team Europcar 94 Guillaume Boivin (Can) Cannondale Pro Cycling 95 Andrea Palini (Ita) Lampre-Merida 96 Marco Canola (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 97 Sacha Modolo (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 98 Zakkari Dempster (Aus) Team NetApp-Endura 99 Wouter Mol (Ned) Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team 100 Russell Downing (GBr) Team NetApp-Endura 101 Andreas Schillinger (Ger) Team NetApp-Endura 102 Andreas Stauff (Ger) MTN-Qhubeka 103 Vladimir Isaychev (Rus) Katusha 104 Paul Voss (Ger) Team NetApp-Endura 105 Assan Bazayev (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 106 Nicolas Vereecken (Bel) An Post-Chainreaction 0:12:50 107 Steven Van Vooren (Bel) An Post-Chainreaction 108 Sam Bennett (Irl) An Post-Chainreaction 0:14:58 109 Kiel Reijnen (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 0:15:02 110 Kristijan Koren (Slo) Cannondale Pro Cycling 0:15:03 111 Simone Ponzi (Ita) Astana Pro Team 112 Andrea Guardini (Ita) Astana Pro Team 113 Jonathan Breyne (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 114 Markus Eichler (Ger) Team NetApp-Endura 115 Gregor Gazvoda (Slo) Champion System Pro Cycling Team 116 Romain Feillu (Fra) Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team 117 Maciej Bodnar (Pol) Cannondale Pro Cycling 118 Michael Hepburn (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 119 Timothy Stevens (Bel) Team 3M 120 Gert Steegmans (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 121 Viktor Manakov (Rus) RusVelo 122 Glenn O'Shea (Aus) An Post-Chainreaction 123 Valery Kaykov (Rus) RusVelo 124 Morgan Lamoisson (Fra) Team Europcar 125 Jacobe Keough (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 126 Artur Ershov (Rus) RusVelo 127 Baden Cooke (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 128 Artem Ovechkin (Rus) RusVelo 129 Kenny Robert van Hummel (Ned) Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team 130 Youcef Reguigui (Alg) MTN-Qhubeka 131 Marius Bernatonis (Ltu) Team 3M 132 Aidis Kruopis (Ltu) Orica-GreenEdge 133 Martin Wesemann (RSA) MTN-Qhubeka 134 Igor Boev (Rus) RusVelo 135 Andrei Solomennikov (Rus) RusVelo 136 Barry Markus (Ned) Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team 137 Wouter Wippert (Ned) Team 3M 138 Tim Mertens (Bel) Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise 139 Michael Van Staeyen (Bel) Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise 140 Frederik Veuchelen (Bel) Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team 141 Daniel Schorn (Aut) Team NetApp-Endura 142 Wu Kin San (HKg) Champion System Pro Cycling Team 143 Clinton Robert Avery (NZl) Champion System Pro Cycling Team 144 Matt Brammeier (Irl) Champion System Pro Cycling Team 145 Mark McNally (GBr) An Post-Chainreaction 146 Christian Delle Stelle (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 147 Preben Van Hecke (Bel) Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise 148 Nicola Boem (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 149 Filippo Fortin (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 150 Bradley Potgieter (RSA) MTN-Qhubeka 151 Francesco Chicchi (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 152 Mauro Finetto (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 153 Rafael Andriato (Bra) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 154 Roy Jans (Bel) Accent Jobs-Wanty 155 Tim De Troyer (Bel) Accent Jobs-Wanty 156 Lucas Euser (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 157 Maarten Neyens (Bel) Lotto Belisol 158 John Murphy (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 159 Jeffry Louder (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 160 Roger Kluge (Ger) Team NetApp-Endura 161 Marcel Kittel (Ger) Team Argos-Shimano 162 Ryan Roth (Can) Champion System Pro Cycling Team 163 Luca Wackermann (Ita) Lampre-Merida 164 Chad Beyer (USA) Champion System Pro Cycling Team 165 Roberto Ferrari (Ita) Lampre-Merida 166 Jens Mouris (Ned) Orica-GreenEdge 167 Niko Eeckhout (Bel) An Post-Chainreaction 0:22:20 168 Jang Chan Jae (Kor) Champion System Pro Cycling Team 169 Joren Segers (Bel) Team 3M 170 Michael Vingerling (Ned) Team 3M 171 Benjamin Verraes (Bel) Accent Jobs-Wanty 172 Jiao Pengda (Chn) Champion System Pro Cycling Team 173 Shane Archbold (NZl) An Post-Chainreaction 174 Danilo Napolitano (Ita) Accent Jobs-Wanty
Points classification 1 Peter Sagan (Svk) Cannondale Pro Cycling 20 pts 2 Arnaud Demare (Fra) FDJ 18 3 Alexander Kristoff (Nor) Katusha 16 4 Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 14 5 Oscar Gatto (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 12 6 Niki Terpstra (Ned) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 10 7 Maxime Vantomme (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 9 8 Jerome Cousin (Fra) Team Europcar 8 9 Davide Cimolai (Ita) Lampre-Merida 7 10 Johan Le Bon (Fra) FDJ 6 11 André Greipel (Ger) Lotto Belisol 5 12 Luka Mezgec (Slo) Team Argos-Shimano 4 13 David Boucher (Fra) FDJ 3 14 Jacopo Guarnieri (Ita) Astana Pro Team 2 15 Marco Coledan (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 1
Sprint classification 1 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 7 pts 2 Sam Bennett (Irl) An Post-Chainreaction 5 3 Mattia Pozzo (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 2 4 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 2 5 Damien Gaudin (Fra) Team Europcar 1 6 Kiel Reijnen (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 1
Mountains classification 1 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 40 pts 2 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 18 3 Damien Gaudin (Fra) Team Europcar 15 4 Kiel Reijnen (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 10 5 Peter Sagan (Svk) Cannondale Pro Cycling 6 6 Tom Boonen (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 6 7 Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 4 8 Oscar Gatto (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 3 9 Niki Terpstra (Ned) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 3 10 André Greipel (Ger) Lotto Belisol 3 11 Vicente Reynes Mimo (Spa) Lotto Belisol 3 12 Sam Bennett (Irl) An Post-Chainreaction 3 13 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 1 14 Vincent Jerome (Fra) Team Europcar 1 15 Tomas Vaitkus (Ltu) Orica-GreenEdge 1Woman adds vaginal yeast to sourdough starter, Internet flips out
When Zoe Stavri woke up with a yeast infection, she had a strange and intriguing idea: what about adding some of her vaginal candida to sourdough starter?
There's lots of reasons to suppose that this would be a bit of harmless weird self-experimentation, akin to those fun weirdos who culture cheese with their own bacteria: sourdough starter is made with random wild yeast to begin with; everyone who's ever performed cunnilingus has ingested vaginal yeast without harm; baking bread kills yeast; etc.
Very little whimsy or rationality emerged from the Internet's lizard-brain, though. Since Stavri started talking about her project on Twitter, she's been bombarded with scientifically illiterate, vagina-hating "eww gross" hate-tweets (made worse by, what else, a feature on the Daily Mail's website) (Stavri: "[Daily Mail readers] are far worse than the worst candida infection possible")
The bread turned out pretty good.
Stavri's writeup and postmortem on her culinary adventure with the Internet Hate Squad is, if anything, even better than fresh-baked bread.
Making sourdough starter entails encouraging stuff that’s present in the flour and just sort of floating around in the air in your kitchen and on your utensils to grow. That’s what wild yeast is. If that idea sickens you, avoid all sourdough, because that’s what it’s made of, but remember, people have been making and eating sourdough for millennia, and the human race hasn’t died out yet. All I’ve done is add a little bit of my own yeast. It’s somewhere between a Type I and a Type II sourdough, because I’ve added a tiny bit of yeast to the mix, although only a trace amount. “But candida albicans (vaginal yeast) isn’t for eating and will somehow make you sick,” you cry. Probably not. Like all bread made with yeast, once it’s cooked it’s not exactly going to go about colonising your gut with yeast. The biggest risk with using candida albicans for breadmaking is that it won’t rise–more on that later. “But what about vaginal bacteria and all the other minging stuff that’s come out of your quim?” you ask, becoming paler and paler as you continue reading this. First things first, any bacteria which lives in your warm soft parts lives there because it likes to be warm. Body temperature warm. It dies outside of that temperature range. However, let’s assume for the sake of argument that my vagina harbours a strain of bacteria that thrives equally in the ~37°C environment of my cunt as it does at the ~22°C of my kitchen, inside a bowl of flour and water. Were this the case, it still wouldn’t matter. I’m making fucking bread. You cook bread. All of the bread will reach the bacteria-murdering threshold of >70°C for long enough to kill anything that had survived.
I’m making sourdough with my vaginal yeast [Zoe Stavri/Another Angry Woman]
Baking and eating #cuntsourdough
[Zoe Stavri/Another Angry Woman]
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t have won the election without his tweets in a Financial Times interview published Sunday.
“Without the tweets, I wouldn’t be here,” he said, adding: “I have over 100m [followers] between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Over 100m. I don’t have to go to the fake media,” Trump told the Financial Times, in a discussion of how his online activity both worries and encourages corporate CEOs.
“I don’t regret anything because there is nothing you can do about it,” he said, regarding what he brushed aside as the occasional misfired tweet or comment. “You know if you issue hundreds of tweets, and every once in a while you have a clinker, that’s not so bad. Now my last tweet, you know the one that you are talking about perhaps, was the one about being in quotes wire tapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true … I predicted Brexit.” (RELATED: Twitter Doesn’t Rule Out Banning Trump If He Gets Too Unruly)
Republicans in Congress, and even members of Trump’s own staff, however, have taken a more negative view of his preferred method of communication, particularly now that he is president.
“I’d like to get him some Ambien,” Republican Sen. John McCain said Sunday in an ABC Facebook Live interview.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected] Kansas City Royals have a proud baseball history and the millions of their fans who spend their time and hard earned money deserve ownership who is dedicated to winning by every available means. Not just by drafting and development, but also through acquiring talent by paying market value for top free agents and through intelligent trading.
David Glass's tenure as owner has seen the Royals average 68 wins per season (not counting the 2012 final win total) with no reprieve in sight, given General Manager Dayton Moore's statement on sports radio 810 WHB that the Royals will not be competitive until 2014. David Glass's tenure as owner has seen the Royals' revenue sharing monies increase dramatically with little reflection of that in the major league payroll.
We demand new ownership that is willing to invest in a forward thinking, sabermetric inclined front office. We demand new ownership that is willing to take its hefty revenue sharing monies and reinvest that in major league payroll. We demand new ownership that isn't content to remain secluded in Bentonville, Arkansas and remaining detached from the Greater Kansas City area. We demand change, now.27-year old Brooklyn musician Nadav Nirenberg accidentally left his iPhone in the back of a cab on New Year’s Eve. In hopes of getting his precious phone back, he contacted his phone numerous times and even offered a reward to the one who has his phone. When he realized that his iPhone wasn’t coming back, Nirenberg was desperate. The opportunity came when someone logged into Nirenberg’s profile on the popular dating site OKCupid. The person holding the lost iPhone is now under Nirenberg’s nose.
“The thief had been on my old OKCupid account sending weird messages to girls at 6 in the morning! Not only is he stealing my phone, he’s creepy and disturbing, and gave me an idea,” writes Nirenberg on his blog. His idea was to create a fake email and a half-believable OKCupid account under the fake identity “Jennifer Gonzalez,” a 24-year old girl who just moved to Brooklyn and is looking for a man to take her out. Nirenberg, now under the guise of a Jennifer Gonzalez, sent a message to his own OKCupid account.
He got a reply and after a few hours of chatting, the presumed thief was invited to head over to Nirenberg’s apartment to have a “relaxing bottle of wine and a good time.” Clueless, the thief went to the apartment where Nirenberg was waiting. “Little did he know that on his way up the stairs I would pop out behind him, calmly give him $20 for my phone (it was in his hand) and tell him the cops were on the way (with a hammer in my hand). RETRIBUTION! The look of immediate shame on his face was priceless, homie was shook and must feel like an idiot. Dude was all dressed up, had a bottle of wine and stank of cologne,” Nirenberg recalled.
Filed in. Read more about iPhone.The restoration of domestic security promises to pose an especially difficult challenge for President Mohamed Morsi, who has vowed to improve the country's lot within his first hundred days in office.
Morsi's '100-day plan,' in effect since 2 July, was drawn up by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood – from which he hails – with the aim of ending chronic traffic congestion, fuel shortages, bread scarcities, poor public sanitation and an ongoing security vacuum.
The latter objective – ending domestic insecurity – was not accomplished under the interim governments of prime ministers Essam Sharaf and Kamal El-Ganzouri, both of whom were appointed during the 15-month rule of Egypt's military council, which ceded executive power to Morsi upon his inauguration in June.
With fewer political tensions now than during the transitional period, but with a collapsing national security system that still requires rebuilding, Egypt's new president has promised to re-establish public security within the tight timeframe that he has set for himself.
"My programme has many elements that will guarantee the restoration of security and stability," Morsi stated on 22 July, reflecting his confidence despite perennial hostility between the Brotherhood and police, another factor that could hinder his plan.
The targets of his 100-day plan that pertain to security include pay rises and perks for police personnel, the arrest of thugs still at large, an increased police presence on the street, and better facilities and equipment for law enforcement agencies.
Practically speaking, however, the president's plan has yet to pay any dividends.
Good intentions, no concrete results
The deterioration of domestic security has not seen any positive change within the past month, say security experts.
Ihab Youssef, secretary-general of the People and Police for Egypt, a local NGO, downplayed the anticipated effects of Morsi's security plan. Youssef told Ahram Online: "This programme has no clear outline and no timeline for implementation."
"Objectives like intensifying police patrols or enhancing work conditions for security personnel are no more than good wishes," he added. "These targets aren't accompanied by a thorough plan on how and when they will be applied."
"Some 30 days have now elapsed, and we have yet to see any concrete results," he went on. "And I don't think we'll see any in the remaining 70 days."
Morsi embarked on his 100-day plan immediately after his inauguration, even though the new government has yet to be formed. The incumbent El-Ganzouri cabinet is expected to remain in charge until the formation of a new government, members of which should be officially unveiled on Thursday.
A host of personalities have already been tipped for several ministerial portfolios. The successor to current Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim, however, remains unknown.
"It all depends on the new interior minister and what he will do," said Youssef. "A clear example of faulty planning is the recent countrywide redeployment of police officers, which is based largely on promotions and reassignments."
On Sunday, Ibrahim announced a host of major personnel changes within the ministry, including the promotion, transfer and discharge of large numbers of police chiefs and officers, in what appeared to be an attempt to reshuffle the ministry and its affiliated bodies.
"Why was such a move taken now before the installation of a new interior minister?" Youssef asked. "The new minister should be the one who decides this."
"It's a waste of time and effort since the incoming minister will most probably reshuffle the security apparatus again when he takes over," he said.
"The coming minister, whoever he will be, has to ensure that the interior ministry will be working as an institution. Many of the ministry's men are competent and skillful – regardless of the corrupt figures. They just need to work in a new effective system," Youssef added.
Police and Brotherhood: A new page?
Under the ousted Mubarak regime, the interior ministry routinely used torture at police stations and at the headquarters of the now-dismantled State Security apparatus, which was instrumental in suppressing political freedoms.
The Brotherhood, at the time, was among the groups that bore the brunt of such oppressive Mubarak-era policies, and was thus forced to work underground, barred from freely participating in Egyptian political life.
But after last year's Tahrir Square uprising, the Brotherhood successfully turned the tables on their former oppressors.
Once denied political representation, the group realised their first objective by establishing the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). The FJP subsequently captured roughly half the seats in the People's Assembly, the lower house of Egypt's parliament that was later dissolved on orders of the military.
After it was deprived of parliament, the Brotherhood fielded a candidate – Morsi – in Egypt's first post-Mubarak presidential election, which he won. After Morsi's assumption of power, however, the group has been accused of co-ruling the country.
Sceptics are convinced that many leading interior ministry officials, who used to deal harshly with the Brotherhood as a "banned" group, will have serious reservations about taking orders from a Brotherhood-affiliated president.
When asked about the issue, a captain from the ministry's Central Security Forces (CSF), who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Ahram Online: "I might agree or disagree with the president, but that will not affect my work in any way."
"If officers fail to follow orders, they will either be punished or expelled," he added. "They must keep their personal political beliefs aside."
Youssef, for his part, opined: "It has yet to be seen how things will turn out between the Brotherhood and police. I'm sure the latter are watching the Brotherhood, waiting to see what the group will do in terms of pushing reshuffles, relocations and dismissals [within the interior ministry]."
He went on: "And no doubt the Brotherhood is also watching the police, waiting to see whether they will act in accordance with Morsi's plan to restore security."
Winning over the public
Egypt's domestic security has significantly deteriorated since last year's uprising, which saw fierce clashes – resulting in hundreds of deaths – between Mubarak's police forces and anti-regime protesters.
Over the course of the 18-day revolt, the CSF attempted to forcibly disperse demonstrators with teargas and live ammunition in Cairo's Tahrir Square – the focal point of the uprising – and in other squares across the country, earning the ire of large swathes of the public.
Youssef believes that a degree of reconciliation must be achieved between the police and the people – not just the Brotherhood, which took part in the uprising – in order to turn a new page after years of Mubarak-era police abuse.
"The authorities must make an effort to let bygones be bygones and end the ongoing hostility between the public and police," he said. "But this has not happened yet."
For his part, former Major-General Mohamed Kadry Saied, a strategic and military analyst at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, told Ahram Online: "The police must understand that the situation seen under the former regime will not be repeated."
"Police can no longer persecute or abuse certain factions – the Brotherhood, the leftists or anyone else – or deal with people based on their political affiliations," Saied added. "But this will take time."
He went on: "It will also take time to change the longstanding modus operandi on the part of police. Morsi must sit down with specialists to ensure that his security plan is effectively implemented. While he will, of course, have the final say as president, teamwork will be crucial in this regard."
A new reality
Led by notorious former interior minister Habib El-Adly, the police under Mubarak had enjoyed unfettered powers, earning them a reputation for brutality – for which they were seldom held to account. They were helped in this regard by a longstanding Emergency Law, maintained for the duration of Mubarak's 30-year rule, granting police wide-ranging powers of arrest and detention.
"Working under such an Emergency Law is not natural, yet it was enforced for over three decades," said Youssef.
Following the revolution, however, the police have since lost their imposing status, while in May of this year the reviled Emergency Law was finally abolished once and for all.
In order for Morsi's plan to succeed, the police – still unsure of themselves in the wake of the uprising and now operating without the Emergency Law – now have 70 days left to restore security and win over the public.
According to the CSF captain, the task at hand appears insurmountable.
"Before Morsi put this plan into effect, he should have worked on encouraging law enforcement through media campaigns," he said. "The role of the media is crucial here, since criminals in many cases no longer fear the police."
On the Emergency Law, he said: "This would never be a problem; it was the State Security that used to enforce it, not the normal police who have the authority to arrest culprits caught in the act without the Emergency Law. But again, the problem remains that law is not enforced properly these days."
Law enforcement and torture were by far interrelated during the Mubarak rule, when policemen normally used to abuse detainees to get confessions.
Police torture, |
makers offer aesthetically customizable products, we’re creating custom fit products that you can also personalize aesthetically, with a vision of adding active meaningful years to people’s lives — and locally manufacturing near you.”
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Pre-order prices for the sandals start at $70 on Kickstarter, with higher price points offering a variety of combinations, including extra straps and more. That does mean that you’ll be paying a bit more than you would for a pair of ultra-low-cost sandals from your local general stores, but the campaign creators say their prices compare favorably to existing high-end sandals.
“There are high-end sandals in the market that sell for between $80-$120 and are marketed to offer improved comfort over typical flip-flops and sandals,” they continued. “Wiivv custom fit sandals include a lot of the comfort features competitive sandals offer, like our triple-density supportive foam foot bed. We then add the ability to have the sandal custom fit to you in three ways: custom arch support, adjustable straps fit to you, and custom toe thong placement — all at a similar price point.”
In other words, stop being a tightwad and buy the damn shoes already. Your feet will thank you for it!.- Watch them sing, and you might be convinced of it.
The Eucharistic Communicators of the Heavenly Father are a community of nuns from Colombia who have a great passion for music and an intense desire to announce God through the gifts he has given them.
Sister María Victoria de Jesús told CNA the mission of their apostolate “is to evangelize through as many means of communication as possible,” and added that the charism of the sisters “is to communicate the love of God the Father.”
They have released a Spanish-language album Yo le Canto, or “I Sing”, as well as numerous music videos online.
They are currently producing new songs for a 2017 release, and have been featured regularly on Catholic stations in Colombia, Peru, and Los Angeles.
The Eucharistic Communicators of the Heavenly Father were formed in 2004 by Mother Gabriela del Amor Crucificado and Father Antonio Lootens, from two communities of hermits. They are based in the Archdiocese of Cali, in southwestern Colombia, and the community includes some 65 religious women dedicated to evangelization through social media.
Sister Maria of Nazareth, who founded the musical group within the community, recalled “the words of Paul VI that the Church would be culpable if it did not use the powerful medium of television, and that John Paul II said there should be a group of consecrated persons dedicated to communications media: and thus our community was born.”
Sister María Victoria de Jesús noted that their music ministry “began three years ago, when we produced our first CD with the help of some lay persons.”
“In the past year, we began producing music videos so as to reach many more people. We work in all that is artistic and audiovisual: radio, film, music, television, and social media.”
While the community was principally founded to work in communications media in 2004, “the musical power emerged spontaneously with the sisters who were given musical talents.”
Sister Maria of Nazareth commented that “before bringing a message, it is necessary to have a witness of life, to be faithful to the Lord, and to his call. Really, our vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity help us to give of ourselves. The first medium of communication is our life and it is this that the world needs – living gospels. Then the rest follows.”
The texts, production, direction, and recording are done by the sisters themselves, who are prepared within their community to be able to perform these tasks.
“Visually we develop it all; we are trained to make a good audiovisual product. We develop it as a producer because we want the content to be high quality, to be the best for the Lord,” she said.
“Our goal is to support all the dioceses so that there is strength in the Church, and not just in Cali. To have a presence wherever there are persons who do not believe, do not know God, to look for the lost sheep and to strengthen those who are in the fold,” noted Sister Maria of Nazareth.
“When people listen to us they say they feel great peace, the love of God the Father, and some even cry. The sisters by their life of prayer touch hearts... which need a voice of encouragement, to feel loved by God. We seek to give people hope,” she concluded.
This article was originally published on CNA April 14, 2016.JOHNS CREEK, Ga. – Tiger Woods is vying for his 15th career major championship and first since 2008 in the 93rd PGA Championship. GolfChannel.com senior writer Rex Hoggard and editorial director Jay Coffin are tracking Tiger in Round 1 at Atlanta Athletic Club.
1:27 p.m.: Woods finished off his round appropriately by hitting the ball in two bunkers, making his bunker total 13 for the day. He blew it right off the tee, right on his approach and two-putted for bogey to finish at 7-over 77. Can't imagine a worse start for Woods. And to think, he actually made four birdies. (7-over 77) – JC
1:11 p.m.: I'm getting tired just watching this mess. It must be really tiresome having to actually hit the shots. So many of them, anyway. Tiger found another bunker off the tee, but hit the green and two-putted for par. One more hole left. Thanks goodness. (6 over through 17) – JC
1:04 p.m.: Bryon Bell may be happy it's a temporary gig on Woods' bag. The temp has raked more bunkers today than Steve Williams did in a dozen seasons. – RH
12:54 p.m.: Woods make par on the par-3 seventh hole by hitting the green and two-putting. Good thing. After the last hole I was getting sick of counting so high. (6 over through 16) – JC
12:45 p.m.: Woods balloons to 6 over after a double bogey at the sixth hole. Somewhere in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem is kicking something. Woods needs a tie for 40th or better to get into the first event of the FedEx Cup playoffs. – RH
12:44 p.m.: U-G-L-Y, he ain't got no alibi, it's UGLY. Woods finds the bunker off the tee and dunks it in the water on the approach. Doesn't get up and down. Double bogey. Yikes. Wonder if he'll talk when he's done. Guessing no. (6 over through 15) – JC
12:31 p.m.: Woods birdies the fifth to move to 4 over, which means Steve Williams is beating his former boss by six strokes (Adam Scott at 2 under), oh wait. – RH
12:30 p.m.: Tiger found the fairway on the par-5 fifth hole and blistered his approach just over the green. He got up and down to make birdie. Still, it ain't pretty. (4 over through 14) – JC
12:11 p.m.: Tiger must feel like me standing over the ball - he has no idea where it's going. On the par-3 fourth hole he blew it way right into a bunker when the pin was back, left. He failed to get up and down and made another bogey. (5 over through 13) – JC
12:01 p.m.: Woods tried the conventional approach on the third hole and actually found the fairway, his first fairway hit since the 14th hole. He hit the green and two-putted for par, which must've felt like a birdie after the way he's played the last three holes. (4 over through 12) – JC
11:45 a.m.: On the second hole Tiger missed his third consecutive fairway, and found a bunker. He hit a flier and said, 'Get. Down. Now.' He chunked it from the greenside bunker, then got up and down for bogey. A round that started with so much promise has quickly turned into a disaster. (4 over through 11) – JC
11:29 a.m.: Another ho-hum bogey on the first hole. Woods blew it left off the tee and hit and elderly man in the gallery. He rewarded him with an autographed golf glove, duffed one into the bunker and then failed to get up and down. Three over in his last two holes. Officially leaking oil. (3 over through 10) – JC
11:09 a.m.: Some nines are more eventful than others and that would certainly apply to Woods' opening turn. Following a solid start (3 under through five holes) he plays his last four in 5 over, including a double bogey at the last to turn in 2 over. (2 over through 9) – RH
10:51 a.m.: Moments after the PGA of America sent out a 'Ground Under Repair' notice for the damaged greens at Nos. 14 and 17, Woods rights the ship with a par at the 17th hole and the thought occurs - GUR (Game Under Repair) is a good assessment of Woods' current state. (Even through 8) – RH
10:38 a.m.: Not exactly the bounce back Woods was looking for at the 16th hole. Following a double bogey at the 15th, Woods misses his drive in the right bunker at No. 16, his approach short and left of the putting surface and his third in a green-side bunker for a scrambling bogey. (Even through 7) – RH
10:15 a.m.: Woods makes a double bogey at the 15th after hitting into the water, although it's worth pointing out that most players consider the 265-yard 15th a par 3 1/2. (1 under through 6) – RH
10:06 a.m.: Scratch that last update. Woods' tee shot at the 'drivable' par-3 15th drops into the pond in front of the green. – RH
9:56 a.m.: Woods makes a textbook birdie at the 14th hole, including a drive that left him just 104 yards to the hole, to move to within one shot of the lead. It's worth noting that this is the first time he's been in the hunt since the last time a major was played in Georgia (Masters). (3 under through 5) – RH
9:40 a.m.: Despite a wayward tee shot into a fairway bunker, Woods pars the 13th hole to remain at 2 under par and two shots off the lead. (2 under through 4) – RH
9:23 a.m.: Woods makes birdie the old fashion way (at least for him), drive into the trees at the 12th hole, second into a green-side bunker, blast to 3 feet and easy putt. (2 under through 3) – RH
9:06 a.m.: Woods pars second hole, a two-putt from 30 feet, and begins the long march to the 12th tee before realizing PGA officials are playing the hole a tee forward. Woods must not have gotten the memo. (1 under through 2) – RH
8:50 a.m.: Much has been made of the fact that this week marks the one-year anniversary for Tiger Woods and Sean Foley. For the record, Woods has 11 official PGA Tour starts with Foley. That's not even a good spring for most players. – RH
8:47 a.m.: Woods birdies his first from 18 feet. It took him more than nine holes to get his first last week in Ohio. (1 under through 1) – RH
8:37 a.m.: Tiger Woods hits fairway wood off first tee (No. 10). It's a better start than Firestone last week (22 of 56 fairways hit). – RH
7:52 a.m.: Tiger Woods sets out at 8:35 a.m. for the first round of the PGA Championship, his second event since withdrawing from May’s Players Championship with a left leg and Achilles’ tendon injury and his 10th major start since his last grand slam victory. We're with him step-for-step, filing a running blog. – RHSHE was Queen of the Blues and she brooked no rivals. During a tour of Britain in 1959, Dinah Washington told her audience: “I'm happy to be here, but just remember. There's one heaven, one earth and one queen: Elizabeth is an imposter.” Far from being shocked, her listeners loved it. It was just what they expected from the singer whose first hit had been “Evil Gal Blues”. Throughout her career, Dinah Washington's vocal power was matched by a formidable personality which kept her in the newspaper headlines as much as in the Top 40.
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Musically, style was the woman. Like many black American singers, her background was in gospel music: indeed, she was a church soloist at the age of 15. Yet even then, she had her eye on show business, and she translated the ardour of the gospel repertoire into the secular and sexual passion of the blues. Her delivery combined intense feeling with crystal-clear diction so that, as the music poured out, she still seemed in total control. An early critic was struck by her “tart, take-me-or-leave-me sound”, and her vibrant, seductively self-possessed timbre made her a star by the age of 20.
Nadine Cohodas's rich, well-researched biography compellingly charts her subject's rise, and the stormy dramas which attended it. Wilful and volatile, the Queen of the Blues always got what she wanted.
Her determination was a godsend to young musicians she believed in. When she demanded that her record company hire Quincy Jones—then an unknown arranger, now a global entertainment magnate—for her next album, its executives said they preferred “a name”. “Here”, replied the Queen, “is a name for your ass: Dinah Washington, and Quincy Jones is my arranger.” Mr Jones got his break. He also became one of the singer's many lovers, for the Queen got what she wanted romantically as well, at least in the short term. Her string of brief marriages and lovers is a life-long pattern that Ms Cohodas attributes to insecurity and to an inability to be alone.
Yet the impression from this book is not of vulnerability, but of a salty independence. Even in dealing with her public, Dinah Washington imposed her own terms, once shushing a noisy listener with, “Mister, I hope I don't have to call you motherfucker.” Whatever she called them, her fans were entranced by a style that could put its stamp on any material—blues, jazz or pop. She ranged with relish from the double-entendre rudery of “Long John Blues” to the high romance of “What a Difference a Day Made”. And musicians loved her too, despite the imperious moods. They respected her consummate professionalism and an ear so keen that she could, she said, hear grass grow.
Her talent was projected by sheer force of emotional commitment. As she put it: “I lead with my heart all the time.” To some critics, her full-frontal attack was ideal for rhythm and blues, but was less well suited to the tonal and rhythmic subtleties of jazz. Ms Cohodas acknowledges that the singer lacked the suppleness of such divas as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. Yet even jazz listeners praised what one called “that fine, hard Dinah clarity and impact of sound”.
Ms Cohodas's chronicle derives its interest and authority from such first-hand observations. Generally, the author does not overdo speculation, though she does keep the reader apprised of the racism black Americans—including stars—routinely had to endure. She also highlights the social pressure that the cult of beauty exerted on women, and even on Dinah Washington, who always harboured a sense of physical inferiority. Ms Cohodas believes that an obsession with dieting had something to do with the singer's death in 1963 (she was just 39) from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. Yet the Dinah Washington who dominates these pages does not seem at all cut out for the role of victim. Whatever the cost, she was every inch the Queen.A city committee gave new bylaws aimed at cracking down on bad landlords the green light on Monday.
City council will now debate the proposed rules at an upcoming meeting. If approved, inspectors will start visiting Toronto's 2,800 rental buildings to make sure landlords are providing proper space for tenants.
"By the end of this year we'll be in every building in the city," vowed Tracey Cook, the executive director of the city's licensing and standards division.
Once the city has what Cook called a "baseline assessment" of the buildings, it will be able to offer up better information to would-be renters about the conditions and how management has dealt with them. Cook said this could eventually resemble the city's DineSafe program, though rental buildings may not get the same green, yellow or red designation.
The bylaw also recommends that apartment building owners and operators:
Register each year with the city and pay an annual fee.
Develop a process for receiving and tracking all tenant requests.
Devise and maintain plans for waste management and cleaning.
Conduct regular inspections and take action when pests are detected.
Use licensed contractors for mechanical systems repairs.
Retain records relating to the operations of the building.
Cook said the standards in local apartment buildings "need to be raised."
The Greater Toronto Apartment Association opposes the city's plans, saying owners of apartment buildings already pay more in property taxes than homes or condo buildings, and that the new fee could affect affordability.
But tenant groups welcomed the decision.
Geordie Dent, of the Federation of Metro Tenants' Associations, said he hears the same complaints from renters so often he feels like he's in Groundhog Day.
Coun. Josh Matlow also praised the new rules, saying they will cut down on some of the awful conditions that exist in certain buildings in the city.
"What we can do, we should do," he said.
There are some things, however, that are out of the city's hands. For example, the province's 1991 rule, which allows massive rent hikes in newer buildings.2001's Anthrax mailer, Dr. Bruce Ivins, killed five people and then himself. The FBI's closing the case file on him today. Interestingly, the guy hated New York. Sometimes, it sucks! But there are ways around this problem.
6. Stop taking the subway. Self-explanatory, but in the event that you do derive some pleasure out of being transported by a never-timely rat-infested sweatbox staffed by people so angry you have to communicate with them in their native grumbles in order to negotiate the kind of situation that would require you to talk to them—like an unannounced service change, or your MetroCard not working, or some kind of emergency they should be attending to—which is often, go right ahead. But this is a nice place to walk. You should try walking, sometime.
5. Stop grocery shopping. Grocery shopping in this town is the goddamn worst. Whole Foods is essentially the sixth circle of the Inferno. The Park Slope Co-Op is basically an oppressive Communist hierarchy of people who will make you feel bad for eating everything but AssOats and Dayboat Bananas and Dirt-Strewn Organic Free-Trade Hormone-Free Tomatillos. Trader Joe's teases you with really great looking food that's cheap but as it turns out mostly tastes like shit. Also, more lines. Gristedes or Grosstedes or whatever you call it, it's an exercise in the restraint of your gag reflex, because they all smell like someone just barfed an entire bender of Pineapple Rum all over the front door. Same with Key Foods, because they're basically the same, but Key Foods is just out of reach of where you live, making schlepping your groceries a giant pain in the ass. And Fresh Direct is cool if you enjoy the routine of having to break down the 40 cardboard boxes that were required to deliver you a bottle of seltzer and a T-Bone you're not going to cook anyway. Just eat out. All the time. For every meal. Life will get better.
4. Stop reading the newspaper. If you have any common sense about you, the Sunday Styles routinely does bad things to your blood pressure, and you know, Thomas L. Friedman and Maureen Dowd and all the other absurd shit at the New York Times. The New York Post is meant to make you angry no matter who you are, and the New York Daily Snooze is just kind of there. The Wall Street Journal's now owned by Rupert Murdoch so you might as well just read the New York Post from five feet away and save yourself like what a buck? Whatever. And unless you already read The New York Observer you'll probably find something mean to say about it, starting with it's pink hue.
3. Avoid our sports teams.Ivins actually expressed his hatred for the Yankees in writing. Hating the Yankees is no reason to go postal, because everyone else in America hates the Yankees without freaking the fuck out, no? That said, New York's sports teams are the absolute worst. The Mets are patently depressing. The Yankees have the highest payroll in baseball, finally win their first championship in ten years, and then let their MVP get snapped up by the Angels. Also, they're owned by the Steinbrenners, who are assholes. Also, A-Rod thinks he's a centaur. The Knicks aren't going to not suck for another five years, at least, and also, they're owned by Jimmy Dolan, who's an asshole. Our hockey teams might be good but nobody really cares about hockey enough to know if this is true or not. The Jets and the Giants are kinda okay but you have to go to New Jersey to see them play, but nobody wants a stadium in Manhattan, with good reason. But also, Jets fans are total goons. You're probably just better foregoing professional sports altogether in this town.
2. Sell out. This is a pretty decent place to live no matter what, because everything's pretty neat and we have some pretty neat stuff, but you know what makes New York even better? Money. Lots of money. Money is awesome in this town. You know what's cool? An apartment that's kinda close to Manhattan that isn't a shoebox and doesn't try to routinely kill you via electric fire or rodents serving as inspirations for supporting roles in Korean monster movies. You know what's cooler? A townhouse in the West Village that's so whimsical if you look at it too long your face will collapse. Hate the press? Just buy a newspaper; they're basically all for sale right now on the cheap, anyway. Money solves lots of problems, and it solves a lot more problems in New York than anywhere else, because this city is basically nothing but problems.
1. Fuckoff. If you hate it so much here, why don't you just move? Move to Berlin! Lots of ex-pats still think Berlin is great. Or find the next Berlin! Or go to LA! Or Jersey! You can find yourself somewhere. But the last thing New Yorkers need are people who constantly complain about how much this city sucks. Because we have enough shit to deal with, thanks.Former senator Leticia Ramos-Shahani, 87, passed away on Monday, according to her family.
Her daughter Lila posted on Monday morning that Shahani passed away at 2:40 a.m.
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“Bereft and full of grief, but still strangely peaceful in the knowledge that she is now free from all suffering,” Lila Shahani posted on Facebook.
In an interview with CNN Philippines, Lila said her mother had stage 4 colon cancer.
“She carried on very well, at least for two years and underwent chemotherapy and stem cell therapy,” she said. However, the former senator developed infections and succumbed to pneumonia, which later developed into sepsis.
Lila said Shahani was admitted to the intensive care unit of the St. Luke’s Hospital in Taguig City. She passed away after falling into a coma and having very low blood pressure.
Shahani, who was the sister of former president Fidel V. Ramos, had an extensive career in government.
She was in the foreign service for 20 years and served as the United Nations Secretary General for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs. She became the Philippine ambassador to Australia, Romania, Hungary and West Germany before she was appointed Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs and Chairperson of the National Commission on Women.
She won as senator in the 1987 elections and chaired the committees on foreign affairs, education, culture and arts, agriculture and appointments.
She has three children with the late Ranjee Shahani, a former professor and writer. KS
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MOST READCities Make Public Their Accomplices In Wrongdoing By Issuing Settlements Tied To Gag Orders
from the buy-us-a-halo dept
It's not enough that lawsuit settlements for police misconduct, brutality or officer-involved-deaths come attached to "no admission of wrongdoing" statements. In far too many cases, they also come with stipulations forbidding recipients from making public statements about the lawsuit or its allegations.
When city officials here settle police-misconduct claims, they usually bar the person who alleged mistreatment from speaking publicly about the case. Violating that restriction can result in a settlement being cut in half.
The city [Baltimore] last year withheld $31,500 of one woman’s $63,000 payment after she posted messages about her case on a newspaper website, for instance.
"To me it was a gag order [that said], 'Here's hush money, don't ever say Darrien's name again,'" Susan Hunt, mother of Darrien, told Utah's KSL news about turning down the $900,000 settlement the city offered in response to her wrongful death lawsuit.
"My biggest concern is for the truth to be told," Susan said.
Criminal charges are commonly used to thwart the possibility of lawsuits, said attorney Marcus Sidoti, who has handled multiple civil rights lawsuits the city settled in recent years.
For instance, Judi Patrizi was arrested in 2007 and charged with obstructing official business after an officer said she impeded an assault investigation at Bounce Nightclub.
In a report, an officer described Patrizi pointing in his face and swinging her arm away from him -- an account later disproven by video surveillance at the club. The charges were later dropped and Patrizi sued the city saying she was maliciously prosecuted after the unlawful arrest. The city settled her case for $87,000.
In some cases, those who claimed police brutalized or shot them were offered plea deals that would reduce or drop charges against them only if they agreed not to sue the officers or the city -- a move some call unethical.
The Beecher School District [Flint, MI] paid nearly $250,000 to avoid two lawsuits over alleged sexual misconduct by a former public school administrator.
But no lawsuit was ever filed, so taxpayers did not have easy access to this information because of a state law that allows public bodies to enter into non-disclosure clauses that bar either side from discussing specifics of a case.
Court records are created when a lawsuit is filed and eventually dismissed, which could tip a potential FOIA user off to a settlement.
However, a keen eye may be needed to realize when a government agency agreed to a settlement with a non-disclosure clause to prevent a lawsuit from ever being filed, such as the situation in Beecher.
The Wall Street Journal points out that Baltimore is somewhat unique in its use of confidentiality agreements in settlement agreements. But it is by no means the only government entity to do so. The mother of Darrien Hunt, who was killed by Utah police officers last year, recently rejected a $900,000 settlement from Saratoga Springs over the inclusion of a gag order If the locality isn't interested in forcing gag orders on settlement recipients, the law enforcement agencies at the center of these lawsuits will sometimes help out by arresting plaintiffs and using pending charges as leverage against further public disclosure The Cleveland.com article lists a handful of other cases where lawsuit plaintiffs were arrested and charged with criminal activity after filing brutality complaints. In almost every case, charges were dropped or (in the one felony case) the grand jury did not return an indictment.This sort of thing isn't strictly limited to lawsuits filed over police misconduct. These tactics also used to protect other government employees and officials from public scrutiny Unless allowed to be filed under seal, court documents are, by default, public records. The best way to keep the public from viewing public records is to create as few of them as possible -- hence the quick settlements and the accompanying gag orders. If done swiftly enough,documents will make their way onto court dockets. Add in a bit more enforced secrecy, and even FOIA requesters won't know what to look for… or if anything even exists.While confidentiality clauses are common to lawsuit settlements between private parties, the use of them in the public sphere is not nearly as acceptable. These agreements force the public to not only pay for the misdeeds of their public servants but shield them from additional scrutiny. Settlements are often offered by government agencies because it guarantees them something they'd can't obtain through a jury trial: the ability to exonerate themselves. It also heads off the chance that they'll have to hand over other incriminating information in response to discovery requests.Nearly every lawsuit settlement contains clauses indicating that the payout is not an admission of wrongdoing. Government agencies are continually buying "innocence"... using money they've collected from citizens who have little say in how their tax money is spent. Whether it's a confidentiality agreement or a speedy settlement issued in an attempt to head off a lawsuit, the end result is the same: more secrecy, less accountability and the continued diminishing of any deterrent effect these civil suits areto have.
Filed Under: cities, gag orders, police brutality, police misconduct, settlements, silenceA member of the physical anthropology team, Rachel Kalisher, documents a 10th-9th century BC skeleton (Photo copyright Leon Levy Expedition)
Archaeology Casts New Light on the Philistines
An ancient cemetery brings us face to face with the Philistines.
The ancient enemies of Israel have revealed themselves at last.
For the first time in history, archaeologists have come face to face with the Philistines during an excavation of an ancient cemetery in Ashkelon, and long unanswered questions are finally being answered. Who were the Philistines? How did they bury their dead? Where did they come from? Discoveries announced this week are changing our understanding of all these things. It’s the kind of information that leads to textbooks being rewritten.
This year marks the culmination of the Leon Levy Expedition, which has been digging at the seaport city of Ashkelon since 1985, with the focus on the cemetery for the past three years. The announcement of the team’s discoveries coincides with the opening of the exhibit Ashkelon: A Retrospective, 30 Years of the Leon Levy Expedition at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem. Many of the finds at Ashkelon and other sites are on display, including a 16th century BC silver calf found in a shrine.
The 3,000-year-old cemetery was located just outside the wall of Ashkelon, one of the five primary Philistine cities, and represents the first indisputably Philistine cemetery ever discovered. The only other candidates were a cemetery in Azor, at the frontier of Philistine territory, and tombs at tels Farah and Eitun. But these were at the limits of Philistine influence, rather than deep in the heartland, and told a very different story.
Up until now, people suggested either cremation or ceramic Egyptian anthropoid coffins were the standard for Philistine burial. In Ashkelon, more than 210 bodies found in 150 burials dating from the 11th to 8th century BC were almost all in oval pit burials with grave goods. There were only four cremations. In addition, six ashlar burial chambers—those made with carefully tooled and squared masonry rather than rubble or rough stones—were found at the location. The finest tomb, made of sandstone blocks, was found with its stone door wrenched off and both bodies and goods stolen long ago by tomb robbers.
What The Graves Say
This tells us something very specific: the Philistines were not culturally Canaanite. In fact, they were unlike any of the people from the surrounding region, and the method of burial and other factors suggests that they may well have originated in the Aegean. Iron Age Canaanites and Israelites practiced multi-stage burials. The body would be laid out, often in a rock cut tomb, until reduced to bones. About a year after death, the bones would then be removed to niches in the tomb or ossuaries, or in some cases just swept under the tomb bench to make way for a new body.
The Philistines didn’t do this at all, and this one-stage burial is an unusual discovery for the region. Even when a tomb was re-opened to add another body, the remains already in there were not disturbed. This shows a distinctly different understanding of the relationship between the living and the dead and the attitudes towards human remains.
Another peculiarity was the absences of children’s graves, leaving open the question of what they did with the bodies of the young. Notably, deaths appear to have been natural, without the trauma that would suggest violent death.
Although most people were buried without grave goods, enough items were found at the site to flesh out our understanding of the Philistines. The grave goods tell the story of Philistia’s close trade ties with Phoenicia and its trade ports in Tyre and Sidon. (“The day is coming to destroy all the Philistines, to cut off from Tyre and Sidon every helper that remains,” Jeremiah 47:4) The most common items are small decorated Phoenician jugs, along with bowls and storage jars. A careful layout of a storage jar with a small jug inside and a bowl on top was found in many graves.
Weapons and jewelry also were in the graves, with rings, earrings, bracelets, and necklaces made of bronze. Carnelian—a reddish-brown stone that was considered semi-precious—was used for beads, and cowrie shells were interwoven in some items. There was also some fine silverwork. Weapons were less common, although one man was buried with a quiver of bronze arrows. Scarabs and amulets were also present in some graves.
The greatest discoveries, however, may be still to come. Since the archeologists now have remains that are indisputably Philistine, they can perform DNA testing to determine just where these peoples came from, what they ate, what diseases they had, and maybe why they died. Amos 9:7 tells us "Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?” Caphtor is believed to be Crete, and now the discoveries to Ashkelon seem to confirm that they did indeed come from the Aegean, bring their own style of craft and construction with them and blending it with what they found in 12th century BC Israel. The DNA testing may also unlock how the bodies were related to each other and to the population in which they settled.
Further Reading: I've written a series of posts on ancient burial customs of the Israelites.After hitting a near 19-year low of 4.4980 in January, the Malaysian ringgit has since recovered to gain more than 7 per cent against the US dollar.
SINGAPORE: The Malaysian ringgit touched a more than one-year high against the US dollar on Friday (Nov 17), extending its year-to-date rebound on the back of a slide in the greenback and better-than-expected economic growth numbers.
The currency rose to 4.1563 versus the US dollar earlier in the day – its highest level since October 2016 – before last trading at 4.1640, according to Bloomberg data. The ringgit, which hit a near 19-year low of 4.4980 on Jan 4, has gained almost 7.2 per cent thus far this year.
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This marks a turnaround from its performance over the past two years, when it was among Asia’s worst-performing currencies due to a toxic combination of threats – slowing economic growth, fluctuations in the price of crude oil, depleting foreign exchange reserves and a protracted political crisis over 1MDB.
Most of these concerns, however, seem to have cooled off this year.
Gross domestic product (GDP) released at noon showed Malaysia’s economy expanded 6.2 per cent in the third quarter from a year earlier, driven by domestic demand and strong exports. This beats a Reuters poll forecast of 5.8 per cent and marks the country’s fastest growth in more than three years.
Data from Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) also showed current account surplus in the third quarter widening to 12.5 billion ringgit, up from 9.6 billion ringgit in the April to June period.
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Meanwhile, oil prices have made a U-turn since June, with US crude oil last seen around US$55.36 a barrel and Brent crude at US$61.23 per barrel.
This bodes well for the third-biggest economy in Southeast Asia, which is the only net exporter of oil among Asia's major economies and the second-largest liquefied natural gas exporter in the world.
“We estimate for every US$10 increase in the oil price this would widen the trade surplus by about 0.4 per cent of GDP, helping to keep the current account in a comfortable surplus, which now stands at around 2.3 per cent of GDP,” noted a report from Nomura Research.
Also buoying the ringgit’s rebound is a limp US dollar, which DBS foreign exchange strategist Philip Wee described as the “biggest surprise of the year”.
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“The US economy has been doing quite well but this year, the US dollar has been oversold," said Mr Wee, citing uncertainties over the Trump administration's policies and political headlines.
COULD THE REBOUND LAST?
Speaking at the GDP briefing earlier in the day, BNM governor Muhammad Ibrahim described the currency’s rebound as a mirroring of economic strength and that it is “more reflective of financial flows in the domestic market”.
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I come from a family that lived the American dream. My father moved at the same age I am now (33) with a family of four from Taipei, Taiwan to Memphis, Tennessee. He spoke no English (and even still struggles today) and opened an Italian sandwich shop. The comedy is not lost on me.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kohavi’s thinks the Chilean startup community must “get used to talking English” as changes that will further along a startup environment. But cultural shift is a two way street. I know my father never asked any of his customers to speak Chinese to order an Italian sandwich.
An investor looking for a “commitment from the elite” of US$40M beyond government support might want to reconsider asking to conduct business in English when living in a Spanish native speaking country. In making a statement that a cultural shift is necessary, I see little effort in change from Mr. Kohavi’s side of the coin.
Mr. Kohavi’s next move is Singapore. A city where foreigners are easily welcomed and money is flowing. It is itself a city created by entrepreneurs in recent history. While I don’t know what Mr. Kohavi’s exact intentions are in Singapore, I know that in my experience as an entrepreneur, most investors would like to see some commitment to your efforts– and that commitment works both ways.
In a leaving comment, Mr. Kohavi admits it openly: “I will spend at least a few months in Singapore, although I’m not attached to a location”.
Good luck in Asia, Mr. Kohavi. I speak Mandarin too. It’s harder than Spanish.
Read next: Getting fat in space? The Kinect might tattle on youHalal food — which is prepared to adhere to Islamic dietary laws — is delicious. The Oklahoma City Thunder just discovered this fact after road games, thanks to Enes Kanter.
The Wall Street Journal reported the Turkish center, who is Muslim, gets his post-game halal meals specially ordered. Teammate Steven Adams asked to join in “because it’s awesome,” and Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka did the same soon after.
Now, when the team is on the road, Thunder staff members must find the best halal cuisine to order in. Adams and Kanter declared Boston is their No. 1 city for the stuff. Likely at the bottom of the list? Sacramento, says Adams.
One guy not participating? Star forward Kevin Durant, who joked he doesn’t get special treatment for his postgame meal:
“I’ve been here for nine years and I requested some stuff after the game and I have to pay for it on my own. And the second he gets here he gets his own menu.”
Also, he doesn’t just doesn’t like halal meals, calling the cuisine “nasty to me.”newsrelease Posted by Posted by dawn on July 4, 2013
copyedited fact checked editors' pick [?] Reviewed by Media Co-op editors.
RCMP arrest Media Co-op Journalist in New Brunswick
Arrest a blatant attempt to silence grassroots voices
by The Media Co-op
Miles Howe arrest. Photo by Jorge Barrera. Miles Howe arrest. Photo by Jorge Barrera.
Miles held in RCMP vehicle, 13:35 Eastern. Photo by Jorge Barrera. Miles held in RCMP vehicle, 13:35 Eastern. Photo by Jorge Barrera.
[SEE BELOW for latest updates] K'jipuktuk (Halifax) - In a blantant effort to silence his ongoing coverage of the struggle against seismic testing related to shale gas exploration in New Brunswick, a senior RCMP officer arrested Halifax Media Co-op reporter Miles Howe this afternoon.
"Miles was arrested while I waited with him to get permission to go see exploration site," tweeted APTN reporter Jorge Barrera, who was standing beside Miles when he was arrested. "Miles was arrested for allegedly 'uttering death threats' against senior RCMP officer who made the arrest after shaking Miles' hand." [UPDATE: unconfirmed reports say the charge is "uttering threats against a police officer" and not "uttering death threats."]
Miles has been covering the anti-fracking story from the front lines for weeks, posting his reports on the Halifax Media Co-op.
According to Barrera, the cops took Miles' phone and camera as evidence against him. "Reporting on #Elsipogtog anti-fracking protest just got more complicated," tweeted Barrera. "The RCMP has also been trying to recruit informants, offering cash."
We do not yet know where Miles will be taken by police. His arrest is a clear effort to silence grassroots voices.
Miles is the 30th person to be arrested at the site. Please click here to read his most recent story, which calls for support at the sacred fire and blockade today, as seismic testing is said to be resuming.
UPDATE (14:45 Atlantic time): From Jorge Barrera: "War Chief John Levi charged with obstruction today in connection with @MilesHowe arrest." Levi's court date is Friday, no further information on what's happening with Miles, we do know that as of 13:45 eastern he was being held on the site in a police vehicle.
UPDATE (16:26 Atlantic time): APTN reports that Miles Howe is being held at the Codiac police detachment near Moncton.
Halifax Media Co-op editor Ben Sichel contacted the RCMP in Fredericton and was told by Bert Hudon of the professional standards department that Miles Howe would not be released. "If he did that, why should we release him?" Hudon asked Sichel. "There must have been a reason for his arrest."
UPDATE (18:06 Atlantic time): An unconfirmed report has stated that Miles Howe has been released from custody. It is not known whether bail was posted. The same source states that the charge against Howe is "uttering threats against a police officer" and not "uttering death threats."
UPDATE (19:09 Atlantic time): CBC is reporting that Howe's arrest was related to an incident that took place on June 21st. The Media Co-op is awaiting a statement from the RCMP as to why his arrest took place today. The CBC article states that Howe is still in custody, but 3 other sources including Jorge Barrera of the APTN have stated that he has been released.
UPDATE (20:40 Atlantic time): We have confirmed that Miles Howe has been released from police custody with no conditions, and his possessions have been returned to him, including a camera and cell phone. He has been charged with threats as well as obstruction of justice.
UPDATE (23:07 Atlantic time): The Halifax Media Co-op will publish a detailed report on this story on the morning of July 5th.
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520 wordsWe’ve been asking when the Olympics will recognise eSports, or if they ever will, for a long time. Today the British government announced a program to get closer than it ever has been. eGames will run in a similar pattern to the Olympics, once every four years with events in the same country as that year’s host and organised with the help of the International Olympic Committee. It will be a non-profit organisation running tournaments for pride, medals and no prize money and was announced today at an event in London in association with ESL.
Which of the best PC games ever will be represented and will they all be MOBAs?
The news comes from our very own weekend reporter and eSports officianado Chris Higgins, who is attending the event and live tweeting the announcements. Here’s the official logo and details on hosting:
Logo for the games, which will be held during Olympic years in the host countries #LGF2016 pic.twitter.com/N921UqE5OJ — Chris Higgins (@higgyC) 6 April 2016
Brazil, Britain, USA and Canada will be the first participants, each with their own ‘eTeam’ – their words, I’ll stress – competing. The plan is to emulate the national pride and glory that is won at the Olympics, and reduce the focus on prize money that often dominates eSports discussions. What that means though, is this:
Medals, rather than prize money, to be awarded to competitors. Attempting to emulate the honour and national pride of Olympic sport #LGF2016 — Chris Higgins (@higgyC) 6 April 2016
I just don’t know how you can run a successful eSports event without prize money. In a perfect world all of these players are salaried, paid for their time and prize money is, as it is in other sports, secondary to the fact you’ve won. The only eSports where this is even close to true is League of Legends – everywhere else, prize money is the oil that runs the industry, along with unpaid passion and legions of fans. Exactly how they plan to attract high-level competition without that is anyone’s guess.
However, this isn’t a venture created purely by the games industry. Olympics and sporting organisations are getting involved in the planning and approval stages as well:
The international committee was advised by the IOC and UKIE and will set up 'advisory boards' in competing countries to oversee their eTeam — Chris Higgins (@higgyC) 6 April 2016
So, not a spot on the Olympics broadcast schedule for StarCraft, Dota or League, but the next best thing. If they can attract the proper talent, it could bridge the gap to mainstream more successfully than showings on ESPN2 and Sky Sports documentaries. Of course, that depends on which games are picked, how it’s broadcast, how much money it’s given and who pays attention. Something they haven’t been too forthcoming on:
Gotta level with you, been here 30mins and not heard which games are going to be played yet #LGF2016 — Chris Higgins (@higgyC) 6 April 2016
This has all been attempted before, with the World Cyber Games the most successful for a decade, but even it didn’t manage to stay afloat through eSports’ boom period – most fans are not interested in a multi-game event, only the biggest players in their chosen eSport playing regularly. Even the more diverse viewers prefer a weekend dedicated to CS:GO or League of Legends rather than splitting attention.
Still, not an idea I oppose, and one I hope does well. We’ll keep you updated with more information as it breaks.Photos & Videos
Grow Conditions
Week 5 Vegetation 18 hrs Light Schedule °F °C 27 Day Air Temperature °F °C 81 Day Air Temperature 5.8 pH 40% Air Humidity °F °C 23 Night Air Temperature °F °C 74 Night Air Temperature gal l Pot Size gal l 18.93 Pot Size inch cm 71.12 Lamp To Plant Distance inch cm 28 Lamp To Plant Distance
Nutrients
| :date: Week 5 |
| :bulb: 562w:straight_ruler:28' |
| :thermometer:️:sun_with_face: 78 - 84 |
| :thermometer:️:new_moon: 72 - 78 |
_______________________________________________________________________________________
11/15 - These girls are starting to smell as flowering starts. =D all Ph's 5.8
11/16 - LST adjusted, Ph adjusted.
11/17 - Topped front left plant. Water added ph adjusted
11/18 - LST adjusted. They are drinking a lot of water.
11/19 - Reservoir Change. Temperatures 70-79
11/20 - Ph's adjusted. Some nitrogen problems from Ph fluctuations.
11/21 - LST's fixed, spread the girls out ready for final week of stretching.GAME PREVIEW AND ANALYSIS
Both the Tigers and Gamecocks are coming off of big wins to start the 2017 season.
South Carolina’s defense will see a very similar offensive attack with the Tigers as they saw against NC State last weekend. Drew Lock will look to get the ball out quickly and often to his multiple weapons at the skill positions. J’Mon Moore and Johnathon Johnson will have a field day catching quick screens and slants if the South Carolina defense doesn’t repeat their superb tackling from a week ago.
Defensively, the Tigers will be less of a threat than the Wolfpack were for the Gamecocks. In 2016, Jake Bentley and the Gamecocks offense moved the ball the entire game and controlled the time of possession 36:00 to 24:00. With added weapons in Shi Smith and Ty’Son Williams, the Gamecock offense will look to repeat their attack from a year ago. On the defensive side, the addition of Skai Moore back to the lineup will help tremendously.
Drew Lock threw for over 300 yards against the Gamecocks a year ago, but was inefficient completing just over 50% of his passes. Moore’s presence in the middle of the field will not help Lock’s chances at all.Ukraine: The Clockwork Orange Revolution
“Well, I think any election [in Ukraine], if there is one, ought to be free from any foreign influence.” (President Bush, White House, 2 December 2004)
The elections in Ukraine last autumn were almost universally portrayed in our media as a David and Goliath contest between the new, squeaky clean, people’s champion, Viktor Yushchenko, and the corrupt state apparatus backed by Moscow, which was a relic of the Soviet era. Happily, so the story goes, the people’s champion prevailed, and democracy has finally come to Ukraine, and brought joy to George Bush’s heart. The story bears only a passing resemblance to reality.
Few journalists challenged that view, and those who did, for example, Jonathan Steele of the Guardian in an article entitled Ukraine's postmodern coup d'etat on 26 November 2004, came in for dog’s abuse.
OSCE Watch
Another proponent of an alternative view has been John Laughland, who writes for the Spectator and the Guardian, and is associated with the British Helsinki Human Rights Group.
(The Group takes its name from the Helsinki Agreement of 1975, whereby the states in Europe, and the US and Canada, agreed that the then frontiers in Europe should stand. The Agreement was the product of what was called the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which acquired a permanent secretariat in 1992 and became the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).)
According to the Group’s website, http://www.oscewatch.org/, “its purpose is educational - to provide original research information to a broad range of people interested in human rights issues in the OSCE area” and “it does not receive funding from any government”. Certainly, there is a lot of interesting information on the Group’s website about the states that have emerged from the Soviet bloc and Yugoslavia, information which is sadly lacking in our media. Generally speaking, the latter present the break up of the Soviet bloc and of Yugoslavia as a triumph of democracy over tyranny with barely a mention of the economic misery into which large swathes of the population were catapulted, while a few people became filthy rich by acquiring state assets for a pittance.
The Group had monitors on the ground in the Ukraine last autumn, and provided a continuous commentary on its website on the presidential electoral processes there. These involved a first round on 31 October, in which 24 candidates stood, and the then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich narrowly beat Viktor Yushchenko (by 40.1% to 39.2%), and a run off second round on 21 November between Yanukovich and Yushchenko, in which, according to the Central Election Commission, Yanukovich again beat Yushchenko (by 49.5% to 46.6%). However, this was overturned by the Supreme Court after accusations of widespread electoral fraud, and a re-run was ordered, which took place on 26 December. This time a new Central Election Commission declared Yushchenko the winner (by 52.0% to 44.2%), and he was inaugurated on 23 January as the successor to Leonid Kuchma as the President of Ukraine.
The Group has now produced a report entitled Ukraine's Clockwork Orange Revolution. It is well worth reading. The following are a few of the points it makes.
West’s favourite
Yushchenko became the West’s favourite despite the fact that he was as much part of the old guard as his rival Yanukovich. Yushchenko himself was Prime Minister from December 1999 until April 2001, when he was voted out of office by the Ukrainian parliament.
He began his career in the agricultural division of the Soviet state banking system, Gosbank. In 1989, he became Deputy Chairman of the Ukrainian division of the Agro-Industrial Bank (Agroprombank), which after independence became the independent Bank Ukraina. If he didn’t enrich himself at that point when he had the chance, he showed unique self-restraint.
Since his election, he has appointed Yulia Tymoshenko, a prominent ally in his Our Ukraine movement, as Prime Minister. She is a billionaire with vast interests in gas distribution: it is unlikely that she acquired this in a few years merely by hard work. She is wanted in Moscow under an Interpol warrant for, allegedly, bribing and blackmailing energy executives.
So the notion that Yushchenko and his associates are clean, in contrast to his opponent, is simply unsustainable.
One fact about Yushchenko has received very little attention in our media, namely, that he is married to a US citizen of Ukrainian descent, who worked for the Reagan administration. Her name is Yekaterina Chumachenko. In the 1980s, she worked as assistant to the US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, then in different capacities in the White House Office of Public Affairs and the Department of the Treasury. From 1994-99 she was head of the Ukrainian representation at Barents Group LLC, which acted as a consultant to the National Bank of Ukraine, when Yushchenko was chairman. It was at this time that she met Yushchenko. Conceivably, this may have something to do with him being selected by the US as the candidate to support, despite his questionable past.
Yushchenko poisoned?
The most bizarre incident that occurred during the election campaign was Yushchenko’s allegation that he had been poisoned by dioxin-related substances, which left his face pock marked and disfigured. This, he claimed, took place in September during a meeting with Colonel General Ihor Smeshko, head of the Ukrainian security services, a meeting to which he had gone voluntarily and with the foreknowledge of his aides. This was presented in the West as the ultimate example of the Ukrainian state apparatus acting on behalf of his opponent. But the story doesn’t stand up: it makes no sense for the security services to poison him at a time when he was known to be in their company. In any case, if they wanted rid of him, why didn’t they employ some more reliable means, like putting a bullet in his head?
An alternative explanation for Yushchenko’s condition is offered by Chad Nagle in an article for Counterpunch entitled Booze, Salo and Mare's Milk... Did Yushchenko Poison Himself?. He claims that his medical records show that over the past ten years he has had a variety of intestinal problems, which were severely aggravated by booze at his meeting with Colonel Smeshko last September, and that he invented the poisoning allegation to cover up his serious health problems, lest the public revelation of them lessen his chances of election. Nagle also claims that, back in September last year, the clinic that treated Yushchenko (Rudolfinerhaus Clinic in Vienna, Austria, which now publicly supports the dioxin story) described the poison rumours as "fallacious" and diagnosed Yushchenko with “severe pancreatitis, severe intestinal ulcers, gastritis, proctitis, peripheral paresis and a viral skin condition”.
Strategic orientation
The Western media gave the impression that there was a clear distinction between Yushchenko and Yanukovich on Ukraine’s strategic orientation, that the former saw its future in the EU, while the latter was wedded to a close and enduring alliance with Russia. But, according to BHHRG, no such clear distinction was evident in the electoral campaign in Ukraine.
Furthermore, the impression was given that Yushchenko stood for “economic reform”, which is the normal code word for free market economics, including privatisation of state assets. In fact, formally at least, there was very little difference between their economic programmes: Yushchenko fought on a rather populist platform promising more jobs, an increase in pensions and wages and an improved infrastructure for the country.
Yushchenko also undertook to withdraw Ukrainian troops from Iraq, if elected. Numbering 1,650, they are the sixth largest national contingent there (17 of them have been killed). And it now looks as if the withdrawal is actually going to happen: the BBC reported on 2 March that Yushchenko has announced a schedule for their departure beginning this month and ending in October. They serve under Polish command and Polish troops are also due to be withdrawn sometime this year.
Money from America
Another impression given by Western media was that Yanukovich had a near monopoly in the domestic media, even though it is almost all privately owned, a significant amount by allies of Yushchenko. According to the BHHRG, this was a gross exaggeration, and in the third election the opposite was the case – Yushchenko had a near monopoly.
Western media portrayed Yanukovich as Vladimir Putin’s man and implied that he received lots of assistance, including finance, from Russia. The BHHRG is of the opinion that although Yanukovich got the nod from Putin, he got very little else. One thing is certain: he got nowhere like the assistance that Yushchenko got from the West, including from the US taxpayer, through monies donated to local NGOs which supported his campaign. The total amount will never be known, but it probably runs into tens of millions of US dollars.
Money from the West funded the exit polls after the second election, which, by purporting to show that Yushchenko had won by a distance, were the trigger for the agitation which eventually led to the re-run of the election and Yushchenko’s final victory. President Clinton’s favourite pollster, Dick Morris, boasted after the event that he had provided advice on how to conduct the exit polls (Washington Post, 2 January 2005).
Foreign money funded the supposedly spontaneous “tent city” in Kiev, complete with concert stage and plasma screens, and paid for the rock bands to entertain the crowds. According to the BHHRG who had a representative on the spot throughout, the crowds were a fraction of the size – hundreds of thousands – reported in the Western media.
Ron Paul is a maverick Republican member of the US House of Representatives from Texas, and a member of the House International Relations Committee, with a particular interest in how US tax dollars are spent, since he believes in no, or at least very low, taxes. He told the Committee on 7 December 2004:
“We do not know exactly how many millions - or tens of millions - of dollars the United States government spent on the presidential election in Ukraine. We do know that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and that through a series of cut-out non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - both American and Ukrainian - millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.”
He went on to give specific examples of US tax dollars funding NGOs in the Ukraine that supported Yushchenko.
Needless to say, the US doesn’t allow this kind of foreign interference in its own elections – foreign funding of domestic elections is illegal in the US.
Clearly, when President Bush asserted that any election in Ukraine “ought to be free from any foreign influence”, he didn’t mean American influence.
This reminds me of a remark by Paul Wolfowitz a few months after the US invaded Iraq:
“I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. Those who want to come and help are welcome. Those who come to interfere and destroy are not.” (New York Times, 22 July 2003)
Obviously, Americans aren’t foreigners, no matter where they are in the world.
Second election fraudulent?
But was the second election on 21 November fraudulent? Was Yushchenko cheated out of a victory, as the exit polls seemed to indicate? It’s impossible to say for certain, but it is certainly not unknown for exit polls to be wrong, even those carried out by impartial and expert polling organisations. They were wrong in Ohio last November: had they been accepted as definitive on that occasion, John Kerry, and not George Bush, would now be President of the US. Overall, President Bush prevailed by 3 million votes in the official, tallied vote count, even though exit polls had projected a margin of victory of 5 million votes for Kerry.
Two exit polls were done in the Ukraine, giving quite different results. In its report, the BHHRG casts some doubt on the expertise with which one of them was carried out.
But wasn’t there widespread evidence of fraud, and didn’t the Supreme Court accept this evidence as compelling in ruling that the election be re-run? Well, no. The BHHRG report reproduces the Supreme Court ruling. It doesn’t mention fraud, but focuses on procedural violations, including violations that occurred in the pre-election period, for instance, in the drawing up of the election lists, composition of the election commissions, absentee voting and the media campaign.
Different electoral rules
But didn’t the fact that Yushchenko won the re-run on 26 December prove that the election on 21 November was fraudulent? Again, no. The momentum was clearly with Yushchenko once the election of 21 November was declared invalid. Furthermore, before the re-run on 26 December, the electoral rules were changed and so was the composition of the Central Election Commission.
On 7 December, in response to the outcry about the alleged misuse of absentee voting, parliament announced a package of reforms that amended the election law to limit absentee and home voting, which was restricted to ‘Group 1’ invalids and thereby excluded people infirm due to old age. Strange that none of the supposedly impartial outside observers complained about this disenfranchisement of the elderly, nor about the fact that the next day parliament approved a new Central Election Commission on which Yushchenko’s representatives formed an absolute majority and from which all pro-Yanukovich nominees were excluded.
US interference
The true story of the Ukrainian presidential elections is one of mass interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation by Western governments, especially the US. This type of interference began in Serbia in 2000, and was tried unsuccessfully in Belarus the following year. It was successful in Georgia in 2003, and now in Ukraine in 2004.
The notion that the US has a principled commitment to bringing representative government to every state in the world is an absurdity. The US has a principled commitment to bringing to power, and keeping in power, in every state in the world, governments that do its bidding, and it will interfere in any democratic process anywhere, anytime, in order to bring that about, if it serves its purpose to do so.
When he was running for election in 2000, it was possible to imagine that a Bush presidency would bring about a shift in US foreign policy towards less foreign intervention. His criticism of the Clinton era, as expressed by his foreign policy adviser, Condoleeza Rice, was that Clinton had engaged in intervention, which were not justifiable in terms of US national interests. Whatever substance there was to that stance, it disappeared after the events of 9/11: foreign intervention is now on the agenda with a vengeance: even though it was US foreign intervention in the Muslim world which triggered the events of 9/11, the US response has been to interfere a great deal more.
There are very few voices in the US who suggest that a more sensible response would be to interfere much less. One of them is Michael Scheuer, the ex-CIA man who wrote Imperial Hubris: Why the West is losing the War on Terror published last year. Another is the aforementioned Representative Ron Paul, who is a thoroughgoing isolationist and opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Here are the opening lines of a remarkable speech he delivered in the House of Representatives on 26 January 2005:
“America's policy of foreign intervention, while still debated in the early 20th century, is today accepted as conventional wisdom by both political parties. But what if the overall policy is a colossal mistake, a major error in judgment? Not just bad judgment regarding when and where to impose ourselves, but the entire premise that we have a moral right to meddle in the affairs of others?
“Think of the untold harm done by years of fighting - hundreds of thousands of American casualties, hundreds of thousands of foreign civilian casualties, and unbelievable human and economic costs. What if it was all needlessly borne by the American people?
“If we do conclude that grave foreign policy errors have been made, a very serious question must be asked: What would it take to change our policy to one more compatible with a true republic's goal of peace, commerce, and friendship with all nations? Is it not possible that Washington's admonition to avoid entangling alliances is sound advice even today?”
Labour & Trade Union Review
March 2005KARACHI: The Pakistan Cricket Board PCB ) on Wednesday sent a legal notice to the BCCI, initiating proceedings to seek compensation from the Indian board for not honouring the MOU to play six bilateral series between 2015 and 2023.An official source in the PCB confirmed to PTI that the notice was dispatched today."The legal notice has been sent after our legal advisors consulted a reputable law firm in London and have prepared a strong legal case to get compensation from the Indians," he said.The MOU, signed in 2014, was part of a deal between the two boards under which Pakistan supported the Big Three governance and financial model in the ICC.The source said that in the legal notice Pakistan had pointed out that the BCCI didn't honour the MOU despite it being signed in the presence of the ICC officials."The notice also says that due to India's repeated refusal to commit itself to the MOU, three series have not been played since 2015 two of them which Pakistan was supposed to host," he said.The PCB claims that it has lost between $200 and 300 million due to India's refusal to play the series that Pakistan was supposed to host."We were even willing to host our series at neutral venues as part of the deal but even then the BCCI kept on stalling us and then eventually refused," the source said.The PCB will now decide its next course of action after receiving an official response from the BCCI."We are prepared to go the courts or the ICC disputes resolution committee to get the compensation," he said further.The BCCI has repeatedly turned down offers from the PCB for bilateral matches on the grounds that it is not being given clearance by its government due to tense relations between the two countries.The PCB informally told the BCCI representatives at the recent ICC meeting of its decision to start legal proceedings against them to claim compensation for the MOU not being honoured.Ten Rules for Trading Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Other Crypto
BambouClub Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 24, 2017
#6 May 2018 Advice is to to register with these exchanges immediately, while they are still accepting new business:
BitmMEX: Leveraged trading
Binance: Largest exchange in the world. Recommended Buy: Binance Coin $BNB
Coinexchange: Low-cap alts specialist
HitBTC: A top-5 exchange with large volumes. Recommended Buy: Tezos IOU $XTZ
Altcoin: a new decentralized exchange operating atomic swaps
Bitfinex: Second largest global exchange.
The Ten Rules
31 December 2017: Performance of my Portfolio:
Since Entry June 2014: Portfolio is x 46.5, i.e. has increased 4,550%. My average Bitcoin buy price (June 2014 to December 2015) was $540. Bitcoin (at its current $13,947) is x 25.82, increase of 2,482%.
Year to Date (YTD) 2017: My portfolio is x 22, i.e. has increased 2,100%. Global Cryptomarket is x 33.62, increase of 3,262%. (From $18.2 billion to $612 billion.)
The main successes in my portfolio have been $BTC, $ETH, $EOS (ICO), $XTZ (Tezos ICO), $ZRX (0X ICO), $BNB (Binance Coin), $POWR, $BCH, $BCO (BridgeCoin).
‘When you See it, Bet Big.’ George Soros Index Track the Top 10 Cryptoassets Scale Out (Take some Profits) The Honeybadger Trade: Buy the Dip on Margin at Bitmex. Do not Over-Trade. Lock up Coins Let Profits Run. Cut Losses. Watch 7d Price Change not 24h or 1h ICOs are a Great Opportunity. Do Your Own Research. Research Micro-Caps that might rise by Orders of Magnitude. (I like KucoinShares $KCS. Buy at Kucoin Exchange.) It can pay to go long or short on margin. Buy (and Sell) Bitcoin on margin at Bitmex Exchange. Use margin if you want greater, faster returns (at a higher risk).
Rule 1: Build the Portfolio on Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the mother lode. It has been good to me and will always form the main part of my crypto portfolio.
Those (mainly low-income copy & paste journalists) claiming Bitcoin is in a bubble are too lazy and/or stupid to become informed. There is no Bitcoin bubble for these reasons.
Growth
Bitcoin has had phenomenal growth in its price and MCap since inception. If we exclude other cryptoassets, Bitcoin has been the best performing asset in the world every year since 2009 through to December 2017 with the exception of 2014. It has beaten all global currencies, equities, commodities, bonds, ETFs, real estate throughout that period. Bubbles are by definition short-lived, they do not keep bubbling for eight years.
As a result it has achieved a MCap of $56 billion and this place in a global table of iconic assets.
Trading Volumes
Volumes indicate the liquidity of an asset. The greater the liquidity the easier it is to buy and sell, even when there is turmoil, and the lower the Bid-Offer spread and therefore the cost of trading. You want to avoid assets with tiny liquidity as when the shit hits the fan it will be costly to exit. Bitcoin has world-class liquidity. I run a crypoasset analysis site named Blocklink.info. Here is a screen-grab of the most liquid assets in the world.
Source: Blocklink.info. Volumes for cryptoassets are fetched from the Coinmarketcap API using the CRYPTOFINANCE Google Sheets Add-On. Volumes for stocks come from Google Finance. You can check the US stocks volume at the NASDAQ site.
Bitcoin’s trading volume is up there with the great iconic American stocks.
Bitcoin’s price will continue to be volatile, but Bitcoin is travelling along a secular bull trend road, and that spectacular volume is not going to evaporate overnight.
Transaction Fees
Every month fees are ever higher which is watertight evidence of ever greater demand to use Bitcoin. That is, people want to send transactions across the blockchain, not just trade on the exchanges.
Tx fees time-series data is maintained at Blockchair.com
Bitcoin and My Portfolio
Bitcoin holds a dominant place in my cryptoasset portfolio. As a result of recent changes in UK regulations I have allocated my entire personal pension (like a US 401k or retirement account) into Bitcoin via the XBTProvider ETN.
Be more cautious about investing your 401k into Barry Silbert’s Bitcoin Investment Trust $GBTC. The (European) XBT Provider ETN is an open-ended fund which means it maintains a premium to the NAV close to 0% at all times. The Bitcoin Investment Trust is an inferior investment vehicle because it is a closed-end fund (it does not increase its holdings of the underlying asset when demand for the product increases) which means it is subject to wild swings in its premium, which has been as high as 150%. So you could make the mistake of buying when the premium is high and suffer swingeing losses even when the Bitcoin price is stable.
Rule 2: “When you See it, Bet Big.” George Soros.
Something extraordinary is happening. The cypto space in June 2017 is like the Internet space in 1995. It is a great opportunity.
Stanley Druckenmiller has written about his dealings with George Soros whom he quotes as saying ‘When you see it, bet big’. The funny thing is, I was mocked by a Hedge Funder on Twitter named Sarah Cone (@impcapital ) when I revealed that I had seen it and I had bet big. I bet big with my entire fucking pension.
George Soros: When you see it, bet big.
Here is Charlie Munger expressing a similar thought:
Rule 3: Index Track the Top 10 Cryptoassets
Until 18 May 2017 I held very little Ethereum and zero Ripple in my portfolio.
I made a great mistake in not buying Ethereum and Ripple in 2017 until 18 May. My mistake was Bitcoin Maximilism. I refused to have anything to do with Ethereum and Ripple because I didn’t like them. As a result I missed these returns.
Source: CryptoCurrencyChart
I came to my senses on 18 May, 2017 when I underwent an epiphany. I then made a new (self-imposed) rule : broadly track the Top 10 cryptoassets in my portfolio, regardless of my opinion about their individual merits.
I have applied a flexible, discretionary form of index-tracking since then.
I execute index-tracking manually off this Google Sheet:
At the time of writing, 20 June 2017, the results of index-tracking have been pleasing.
YTD 2017 returns for Cryptocurrencies, 18 May 2017:
My portfolio was up 106% YTD.
YTD 2017 returns for Cryptocurrencies, 20 June 2017:
My portfolio was up 281%. So in one month (18 May to 20 June) it has raced past Bitcoin, $GBTC, and Monero, and has made good ground in catching up with Global Cryptocurrencies.
I ruled myself free to apply discretion in my index-tracking. It was very clear early on that Ripple was in a secular bear market against Bitcoin from 18 May and I quickly became and stayed underweight in Ripple.
I also went underweight in Ethereum in mid-June at $350 — $360.
Why? Because:
Is Ethereum in a bubble?
I don’t know. Applying the same metrics used above to $ETH it does pretty well, but |
data for information that may have been incidentally collected about an American. No warrant or court approval is required, and the FBI insists these searches are one of the most essential tools in combating terrorist plots.
But a respected former Justice Department national security prosecutor questions if the searching has gotten too cavalier. Amy Jeffress, the former top security adviser to former Attorney General Eric Holder, was appointed by the intelligence court in 2015 to give an independent assessment of the FBI’s record of compliance.
October 2015 FISA court document READ
Jeffress concluded agents’ searches of NSA data now extend far beyond national security issues and thus were “overstepping” the constitutional protections designed to ensure the bureau isn’t violating Americans’ 4th Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure.
“The FBI procedures allow for really virtually unrestricted querying of the Section 702 data in a way the NSA and CIA have restrained it through their procedures,” she argued before the court in a sealed 2015 proceeding.
“I think that in this case the procedures could be tighter and more restrictive, and should be in order to comply with the Fourth Amendment,” she added.
The court thanked Jeffress for her thoughtful analysis but ultimately rejected her recommendation to impose on the FBI a requirement of creating a written justification why each search would help pursue a national security or criminal matter.
The Justice Department argued in that matter that the extra restriction would keep FBI agents from connecting the dots in terror cases and compared NSA searches to something Americans do every day.
“If we require our agents to write a full justification every time think about if you wrote a full justification every time you used Google. Among other things, you would use Google a lot less,” a lawyer told the court.
That was late in 2015. But by early 2017, the court became more concerned after the Obama administration disclosed significant violations of privacy protections at two separate intelligence agencies involved in the Section 702 program.
The most serious involved the NSA searching for American data it was forbidden to search. But the FBI also was forced to admit its agents and analysts shared espionage data with prohibited third parties, ranging from a federal contractor to a private entity that did not have the legal right to see the intelligence.
Such third-party sharing is a huge political concern now as Congress and intelligence community leaders try to stop the flow of classified information to parties that could illegally disclose or misuse it, such as the recent leak that disclosed intercepted communications between the Russian ambassador and Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
The court’s memo suggested the FBI’s sharing of raw intelligence to third parties, at the time, had good law enforcement intentions but bad judgment and inadequate training.
“Nonetheless, the above described practices violated the governing minimization procedures,” the court chided.
A footnote in the ruling stated one instance of improper sharing was likely intentional.
“Improper access” to NSA spy data for FBI contractors “seems to have been the result of deliberate decision-making,” the court noted.
The recently unsealed ruling also revealed the FBI is investigating more cases of possible improper sharing with private parties that recently have come to light.
The government “is investigating whether there have been similar cases in which the FBI improperly afforded non-FBI personnel access to raw FISA-acquired information on FBI systems,” the court warned.
The ruling cited other FBI failures in handling Section 702 intel, including retaining data on computer storage systems “in violation of applicable minimization requirements.”
Among the most serious additional concerns was the FBI’s failure for more than two years to establish review teams to ensure intercepts between targets and their lawyers aren’t violating the attorney-client privilege.
“Failures of the FBI to comply with this ‘review team’ requirement for particular targets have been focus of the FISC’s (FISA’s?) concerns since 2014,” the court noted.
The FBI said it is trying to resolve the deficiencies with aggressive training of agents.
That admission of inadequate training directly undercut Comey’s testimony earlier this month when questioned by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
“Nobody gets to see FISA information of any kind unless they've had the appropriate training and have the appropriate oversight,” the soon-to-be-fired FBI director assured lawmakers.
The struggle for the intelligence court and lawmakers in providing future oversight will be where to set more limits without hampering counterterrorism effort
The FBI told Circa in a statement, "As indicated in its opinion, the Court determined that the past and current standard minimization procedures are consistent with the Fourth Amendment and met the statutory definition of those procedures under Section 702."
Jeffress, however, warned in her 2015 brief of another dynamic that will pose a challenge too, an FBI culture to use a tool more just because it can.
“These scenarios suggest a potentially very large and broad scope of incidental collection of communications between a lawful target and U.S. persons that are not the type of communications Section 702 was designed to collect,” she told the court in a written memo.
And when questioned at a subsequent hearing, Jeffress observed: “I don’t think that the FBI will voluntarily set limits on its querying procedures, because law enforcement agencies tend not to take steps to restrict or limit what they can do, for obvious reasons.”
Circa congressional correspondent Kellan Howell contributed to this story.Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield (6) leaps in for a touchdown against Iowa State during the first quarter of an NCAA college football game in Norman, Okla., on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015.
Junior quarterback Baker Mayfield was in contention for the Heisman Trophy in 2015, but ahead of next season, Mayfield has made a concerted effort to get in better shape.
"He’s already improved his body," Stoops said at his Thursday press conference. "I was teasing him just the other day and I said ‘Baker, you’ve improved your body.’ He’s leaned up, gained strength and quickness but he’s eliminated some body fat. He’s stronger and hasn’t lost weight."
Mayfield isn't only trying to improve himself, however.
Oklahoma's only other option at quarterback appears to be early enrollee Austin Kendall, and Mayfield has taken the freshman under his wing.
Kendall enrolled in January, and while the coaches haven't been able to teach him yet, Mayfield's backup is already making strides at preparing for his first season with Oklahoma.
"This is a big time. They've already been over there working once or twice a day on either their routes or going through their passing schemes and reads," Stoops said. "He's already experiencing our offense, and we haven't even been able to have a chance to coach him yet.
"I know Baker's done a great job of mentoring him and coaching him and getting him started. But now we'll have a chance to make a big jump out of here in the spring with Lincoln [Riley] getting with him and spending more time with him."
Stoops says Kendall doesn't appear to be behind physically. He mentioned the freshman is sneaky quick, and he fits in well with OU's group.
Stoops addressed Cody Thomas' situation as well. The redshirt sophomore opted to re-join the baseball team soon after OU's Orange Bowl loss and the coaches aren't planning for Thomas to return in the fall.
Thomas would be welcomed back, Stoops said. But OU's staff feels they'll be comfortable with their quarterback session at the end of their summer session once they can get Mayfield and Kendall on the field.Sometime toward the middle of 1988, something fantastic happened for three million kids who had noticed the product registration card in the Nintendo Entertainment System they'd received for Christmas a few months prior: A free magazine showed up in their mailboxes.
This wasn't just any old magazine, though. It was the premiere issue of Nintendo Power, nearly 100 pages crammed full of screenshots, artwork, previews, tips, and features dedicated entirely to games for their NES. And for a modest sum, kids (who dutifully asked their parents, of course) could subscribe to the magazine and be assured receipt of a similar stack of information every other month.
Sure, it was thinly veiled advertorial; endlessly effusive coverage of games with nary a critical word inserted edgewise comprised the sum total of Nintendo Power's content, and you had to look really hard to find a hint of snark or lack of enthusiasm for even the most mediocre piece of software. But that was perfect for the audience. Nintendo Power mostly sold to kids for whom the NES was their first-ever gaming experience, or the first console they owned, or who had weathered the Atari crash and hungered for new and exciting experiences outside of arcades. The NES audience 25 years ago didn't want to hear what was bad; they wanted to hear what was cool, what they should be excited about, and why their purchases were totally justified and brilliant. You know, exactly the same as today's console fanboys.
Before wikis, we had a bimonthly tips section.
Unlike other game companies, Nintendo has always operated under a closed, insular business model. Nintendo Power was one of the first times we truly saw that style in action -- and the first indication of how effective it can be when executed properly. Nintendo Power focused entirely inward on Nintendo products, promoting only software for the company's platforms and giving first priority to first-party software launches. Much like Nintendo's hardware business, their in-house magazine served their own needs first and foremost and offered a far from egalitarian platform for third parties.
Yet for those proselytized into the Nintendo way -- which, let's be honest, meant most '80s kids who liked video games -- Nintendo Power's singular focus was perfect. Young gamers who owned an NES and could afford to buy only a few games each year didn't want to waste their time and money on magazines highlighting computer games or a section of screens of games on sale in Japan. They wanted information on the system they owned, details on games they could (and should!) own, and Nintendo Power offered those things and nothing but.
Nintendo Power also represented a microcosmic view of the Nintendo software ecosystem on a less obvious level. Much of the magazine's content (and even its design) was handled in Japan, with its American staff collaborating closely to tailor the content and design for the U.S. audience. Nothing about the magazine overtly screamed, "This was made in another country," but its garish design and jumbled layouts adhered closely to the Japanese periodical aesthetic that defines the country's gaming magazines to this day. Not surprisingly, NOA President Minoru Arakawa had conceived the Nintendo Power brainchild after being inspired by imported publications such as Famicom Tsushin (aka Famitsu).
The magazine's Top 30 section was constructed on the same polls that helped determine the magazine's general editorial plan.
Where Electronic Gaming Monthly cheerfully swiped Famitsu's four-man "cross review" format, Nintendo Power's appropriation of the Japanese publishing discipline ran deeper. Features like its tips-and-tricks section, its expansive game maps (built from screenshots captured painstakingly in an era before emulation and digital video), and even goofy cartoon features like "Howard & Nester" echoed Japanese publishing tendencies despite having been crafted specifically for American readers. Top-flight Japanese illustrators like Katsuya Terada and Shotaro Ishinomori (of Cyborg 009 fame) contributed regularly to the magazine well into the 16-bit era, bringing into play unusually high-quality artwork that didn't come off as overtly anime-like (a style which, NES publishers strongly believed, was so deeply offensive to Americans that they were better off changing anime-style box art into ugly, amateurish paintings).
At its debut, Nintendo Power in many ways represented a culmination of Nintendo's existing publishing experiments, the Fun Club Newsletter and the Nintendo Player's Guide. The former took the form of a bimonthly newsletter (initially printed with two-tone ink but ultimately evolving into a glossy, full-color publication produced at considerable cost) that essentially read like Nintendo Power in miniature, highlighting upcoming games and offering tips and strategies for popular titles. Add to that format the essence of the Player's Guide, which laid bare the secrets of the system's best early-era releases (Kid Icarus, Castlevania, Metroid, etc.) through extensive maps, and the science of the magazine fell efficiently into place.
A gallery of Nintendo Power covers during the NES era represents a lineup of the finest 8-bit classics the system had to offer, with only a handful of duds breaking the streak
Surprisingly enough, you'd be hard-pressed to find serious criticism of the early years of Nintendo Power online. While its contemporary publications tended to brush it off (one roundup in a mainstream news periodical memorably described its design as "peanut butter-and-jelly layouts") and not take it seriously, its target audience -- the NES faithful -- loved it. The fact that it was decidedly one-sided, a step removed from advertorial, didn't matter. Nintendo Power preached to the choir, and those who hadn't been indoctrinated simply ignored it.
Perhaps this respect (or lack of disrespect, anyway) comes from the fact that despite its promotional nature, Nintendo Power had a remarkably amount of editorial integrity. For years, the book eschewed paid advertising. Of course, the periodical existed entirely to sell kids on NES games, yet the leads behind the magazine -- editor Howard Philips and Nintendo Vice President of Marketing Gail Tilden -- ran the coverage plan as a meritocracy. As they explained to Gamasutra, before being included in the magazine, each NES game first had to be evaluated through a "power system" that determined the "heat" each title generated among players and professionals alike. Licensees could beg all they wanted, but ultimately Nintendo Power focused on games whose quality and appeal held up; as such, the book effectively curated the system's highlights.
A gallery of Nintendo Power covers during the NES era basically represents a lineup of the finest 8-bit classics the system had to offer, with only a handful of duds breaking the streak. The inner pages admittedly tended to be a little less discriminating, with previews and even post-release coverage for obvious junk (e.g., LJN's dreadful offerings) penned by writers whose frustration becomes clear with the hindsight of adulthood and a proper understanding of irony. Still, truly poor NES games could only ever hope for a small box-out in the upcoming releases list at best, or perhaps a sympathy cheat code somewhere down the road. Nintendo Power curated the greats in expansive spreads and downplayed junk software through omission.
The "Howard & Nester" cartoon represents the essence of Nintendo Power: Though ultimately little more than a combination tip/promotion for a current game, its entertaining presentation made it into something memorable.
Nintendo Power's nature changed over the years as Nintendo's hammerlock on the U.S. gaming market weakened. As Sega's Genesis assaulted the company's American monopoly with both withering commercials and soaring sales, Nintendo Power shed its friendly NES-era trappings and took on a harder edge, with louder design, bolder colors, and even more aggressive typefaces. The transition into the 3D era saw Nintendo Power go into full propaganda mode, trumpeting Nintendo's official marketing line to ignore competing consoles like PlayStation and Saturn until the N64 finally launched and it was at last time to "change the system." While the magazine had always existed as a marketing mouthpiece -- its title reflected the company's NES-era tagline, "Now you're playing with power" -- that fact grew more evident as Nintendo's dominance slipped and its blinkered focus on Nintendo products began to ring false, like a state-run paper that echoes the hollow propaganda of a crumbling regime.
Still, even if its ulterior motives consisted entirely of building sales, Nintendo Power stood as a valuable ambassador and tool for discovery in its prime. Among other things, the magazine made a heavy push to promote role-playing games and other niches. Clearly Nintendo hoped to recreate those genres' success in Japan, but thanks to its constant emphasis on the likes of Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy (and eventually the launch of a regular RPG column that even highlighted import-only titles) countless gamers discovered a style of game they might otherwise have ignored. Even brief blurbs for quirky mid-tier titles like River City Ransom and Golgo 13 lent them an air of intrigue that encouraged many players to investigate them.
Eventually, Nintendo's marketing ventured in a different direction as DS, Wii, and the so-called Blue Ocean deprecated the core gamer who had comprised the Nintendo audience for so long. The company handed over the reins of the magazine to Future, who revitalized Nintendo Power for several years until Nintendo elected not to renew the NP license. The magazine wheezed its last breath last year, and though self-published enthusiasts aim to take up the torch, no magazine will ever quite be like Nintendo Power... both for better and for worse.Mark Singer is a staff writer at the New Yorker. In 1996, he was asked by its then editor, Tina Brown, to profile Donald Trump, an assignment that involved spending weeks in the property tycoon’s company. Following Trump’s successful campaign to be the Republican party candidate for president, Singer has now revisited these encounters in a hilariously scathing book, Trump & Me. On its jacket is a blurb from its subject. It reads: “Mark, you are a total loser! And your book (and writings) sucks!”
‘Could he actually win?’ Dave Eggers at a Donald Trump rally Read more
Do you think Trump can win?
No, I don’t. I was worried about it two or three weeks ago. But he has shot himself in the foot since then. Attacking Gonzalo Curiel [the US district judge who is handling the Trump University lawsuit] was an unforced error, a stupid thing to have done. There are four and a half months to the election, and he will do this kind of thing again and again. He is shameless. People at his rallies seem convinced this guy is going to build this wall [between the US and Mexico]. It’s a metaphor, but they think it’s real. And since he is shameless, he will encourage these illusions. But this notion that anyone can control Trump... He can’t be controlled. It’s obvious. He’s all id. So, he will continue to shoot himself in the foot. Also, Obama is unfettered now because he has endorsed Hillary. This is payback time for him. He is going to be Clinton’s greatest weapon.
But what if he does win?
Well, he is the commander-in-chief so that nixes the coup. But the National Security Agency and the CIA: these people are not going to go along with a Trumpian abnegation of civil liberties. There will be chaos of some sort. People say he’ll get elected and then impeached. That would be no fun, but it might be necessary. He has already done enormous damage to the United States. He has hurt it abroad. Every time he makes these anti-Muslim statements, he feeds the Isis narrative. This man is so self-involved, and now it’s layered with this extra megalomania because he is near real power.
Is the US press up to scrutinising him?
They’re rising to it now but, for a while, it was the most disgraceful performance. When Trump announced [he was running], people thought it would be great comedy, good for satire. I dissented from that. I knew how toxic he was. Given the tenor of the times, I knew he was not going to be good for the country. Anyway, it took a while for the factchecking [by the press] to kick in, and meanwhile he was overwhelming his opponents in debates by insulting them. They had no idea what to do: they were flummoxed, and so they fell one by one. The horse race became the narrative, and that lasted for months. No one was doing the reporting. But they’re doing it now. Trump University [against which there are fraud allegations] has been out there for years; his dealings with women, also. People need to look at his track record. His only real success has been branding himself.
In his introduction to your book, the editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, traces Trump’s decision to stand for president to the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner, when Obama made jokes about him. [In a dig at Trump’s obsession with his citizenship, Obama said he was ready to make his “birth video” public; he then showed a clip from The Lion King.] Do you agree that humiliation was the spur?
It’s not clear. In terms of his ego, that would mean he felt those jokes, and I doubt he can feel anything. But if you see the video of him, he’s seething. Watch it on YouTube. It’s terrific!
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It never occurred to me that he would cash the cheque. He must have needed the money.’ Photograph: Richard Saker for the Observer
When Brown asked you to write about Trump, did your heart sink?
Yes, it did – although I thank her now. A friend of mine, another reporter on the magazine, said: ‘Just don’t do it.’ But Tina had a special drawer in her desk, and in that drawer was a jar, and in that jar were my testicles. [Singer had spent four years writing a book, and thus had not been writing many pieces for Brown.] I had to follow my testicles. Once I got into it, though, it was interesting to go into how he did things, and that’s when I realised the extent of his financial difficulties. [In the 1990s, Trump was in debt; among other things, he missed a $30m interest payment to one of the estimated 150 banks that were concerned about his financial wellbeing.] But he was too big to fail: that’s the simplest shorthand. He had over-leveraged himself, and the banks had to write off some of his debts, and then he just turned around and said: “I’m back and I’m better than ever.”
Later, your profile of Trump appeared in a collection of your work, a book that was reviewed positively in the New York Times. Trump responded to the review in a letter to the paper in which he said that you, unlike him, were “not born with great writing ability” and generally slagged you off. Your book shot up the Amazon chart and, as a token of your gratitude, you sent him a cheque.
Yes, for $37.82 (£26.74). And he cashed it. I was going to send him $1,000 because I wanted him to cash it. But I didn’t have $1,000. It never occurred to me he would cash this cheque. I sent it as a “fuck you”. People always want to know why he cashed the cheque and it’s obvious: he needed the money. [Laughs] You know, when he attacked me, I thought: I can die happy. I wrote about him again a couple of times, but it was only earlier this year that I decided to do this book. I guess I thought: Well, the country seems to be going down the toilet – what’s in it for me? A totally Trumpian thought.
Trump is arriving in the UK this week. What should we make of that?
I don’t know. It’s bizarre, coming here the day after the Brexit vote. But good luck! I guess you should think of him as someone who’s bringing back mad cow disease. That should do it.
Trump & Me by Mark Singer is published by Penguin on 5 July, £9.99. Click here to order a copy for £6.79Jack Koziol APT Presentation Plagiarism
Wed Nov 2 16:25:51 CDT 2011
Jack Koziol of the InfoSec Institute (infosecinstitute.com) gave a presentation in 2010 titled "Advanced Persistent Threat: Understanding attacks on America's most sensitive computer networks uncovers startling security gaps". The slides can be found on the ISI web site or slideshare.net, uploaded by 'Infosec Institute'. According to the PowerPoint advanced properties, they were created on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 by author 'Jack Koziol', but the company shows 'Georgia Tech'. Google searches showed no link between Koziol and Georgia Tech, but searches did reveal the source of his slide deck.
Based on a comparison, Koziol copied a slide deck from John Copeland, used a significant amount of material without editing, and then added additional slides to it. Copeland's PowerPoint file shows the author as 'Copeland John', company listed as 'Georgia Tech' and created Monday, April 21, 2008.
The Plagiarism
The following table details Koziol's slides that were taken from other sources, making up 65% or more of the material. Given the variety of sources used, it is clear that Koziol willfully infringed copyright and plagiarized most of the material. Given the list of ISI clients he includes at the beginning, it is disturbing that so many agencies and companies have paid them for services.
Several slides appear to be written by Koziol, but contain typo/spelling and technical errors. For example, on slide 52 he uses "drives" instead of "drivers". On slide 40, he states "because it is a zero day, [Adobe] Reader is unpatched, Antivirus has no signature for the attack, ASLR is defeated". ASLR is not inherently defeated just because an attack happens to be zero-day, and neither is ASLR a reactive technology like Antivirus.Steve Connor
The Independent
April 14, 2008
A new form of cloning has been developed that is easier to carry out than the technique used to create Dolly the sheep, raising fears that it may one day be used on human embryos to produce “designer” babies.
Scientists who used the procedure to create baby mice from the skin cells of adult animals have found it to be far more efficient than the Dolly technique, with fewer side effects, which makes it more acceptable for human use.
The mice were made by inserting skin cells of an adult animal into early embryos produced by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). Some of the resulting offspring were partial clones but some were full clones – just like Dolly.
Unlike the Dolly technique, however, the procedure is so simple and efficient that it has raised fears that it will be seized on by IVF doctors to help infertile couples who are eager to have their own biological children.
One scientist said this weekend that a maverick attempt to perform the technique on humans is now too real to ignore. “It’s unethical and unsafe, but someone may be doing it today,” said Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of American biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology.
“Cloning isn’t here now, but with this new technique we have the technology that can actually produce a child. If this was applied to humans it would be enormously important and troublesome,” said Dr Lanza, whose company has pioneered developments in stem cells and cell reprogramming.
Read entire articleThe killer ape theory or killer ape hypothesis is the theory that war and interpersonal aggression was the driving force behind human evolution. It was originated by Raymond Dart in the 1950s; later it was developed further in African Genesis by Robert Ardrey in 1961.[1]
According to the theory, the ancestors of humans were distinguished from other primate species by their greater aggressiveness and this aggression remains within humanity, which retains many murderous instincts.
The theory gained notoriety for suggesting that the urge to do violence was a fundamental part of human psychology. The hunting hypothesis is often associated with the theory, because of similarities and because Robert Ardrey has developed both.
Definition [ edit ]
The expression killer ape does not mean an outstanding aggressive kind of ape; in fact the term refers to anthropological analysis of human aggression. Accordingly, the killer ape is a notably belligerent species on which our instincts might be rooted, because this very ancestor could establish itself due to its special aggression.
As founder of this thesis, Raymond A. Dart (1893–1988) dealt with this issue in his professional article The predatory transition from ape to man, 1953.[2]
The predatory transition from ape to human [ edit ]
The step from ape to human [ edit ]
Dart refers to the Australian anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith (1871–1937), a specialist in anthropology.
The question is what exactly caused the evolutionary step from ape to human. Basically, there are three versions: the increase of brain size, the acquisition of speech, or upright posture. Smith excludes this last option; otherwise the traditional erect gibbon would be a possible ancestor of humans. For him, the most relevant differentiator was the bigger brain. It would have made the bipedal movement possible and would have accelerated the enlargement through common use of its hands, which are no longer needed for locomotion.
Until Raymond Dart found the Australopithecus africanus (1925a), this controversial problem could not be solved.
The "Taung Child" [ edit ]
This approximately 2.5 million year old cranial bone, also known as “Taung Child”, was a first proof of bipedal apes. Robert Broom (1866–1951), primarily a Scottish physician, who spent his life as an archeologist in Australia since 1892, agreed to this statement, too. Five years later he decided to spend the rest of his life in South Africa. His excavations from 1946 pointed into the same direction, when he also discovered bones from the Australopithecus africanus.
However, further examinations showed that, in these cases, the size of the brain was not to be equated with the evolution’s level. In fact, it is much more popular to connect the accomplishment of more and more complex movements directly with an evolutionary response, which caused the brain to grow.
Both Dart and Broom, as well as Charles Darwin (1809–1882), agreed that this new type of locomotion brought a remarkable advantage in comparison to other co-specifics, to rival animals or to the quarry.
The findings of Makapan [ edit ]
Osseous findings at a limestone cave located in Makapan, South-Africa, led to the question to what extent this advantage, in combination with a more and more improved skill using tools, affected the behavior of the apes.
These findings showed explicit cracks and fractures, which are likely to be done on purpose. Additionally, there were clubs, bludgeons and spears formed by the long limb bones or the horns of antelopes. This new special weapon leaves small punctured, round, and triangular holes in skulls, depending on how it was formed.
This new development in building weapons shows a clear increase concerning the aggression of the animals.
The "proto-men" [ edit ]
Dart carries that issue to extremes and equips this new type of ‘carnivorous and killing’ apes (“proto-men” in his own words) with weapons. Furthermore, he describes them as organized in a tribe, so they were able to hunt bigger animals. The ability of making fire and remarkable social skills prompt Dart to bring them more in line with humans.
Observations from Sgt. H. B. Potter (Zululand, South Africa) show that this kind of development is still up to date as it is mentioned in The predatory transition from ape to man by Raymond Dart.[2] He describes a pride of baboons that hunts antelopes. Indeed, he admits that this depends on seasonal circumstances, because nutrition was rare. Nevertheless, he proves explicit behavior.
The eating habits [ edit ]
Concerning the eating habits from then until now, Dart argues that there has always been an ambition to eating meat: grubs and insects, bigger mammals and even human flesh (i.e. distinctive cannibalism) are the results.
A deficit from “animal proteins” has to be compensated, so consuming meat is essential to survive.
Reception [ edit ]
The comment written by the editor of Dart’s article Dr. Alan H. Kelso shows how few scientists accepted the new ideas of Dart and Ardrey. Not only did Dart require a long time to publish his work, but also the epilogue contains notices like: “Professor Dart’s thesis that the South African apemen, at the stage they were found, were omnivorous, must be considered as proven. Of course, they were only the ancestors of the modern Bushmen and Negroes, and of nobody else.”
Another obvious piece of evidence would be the rejection of Dart’s thesis by a scientific convention at Livingstone (Zambia, Southern Africa), which led Ardrey into writing his book African Genesis. He felt himself forced to defend the opinion of his mentor.
The ethologist Konrad Lorenz also showed interest in similar ideas, in his book On Aggression (1963).[3] In his introduction he describes rival butterfly fish defending their territory, leading him to raise the question of whether humans, too, tend to intraspecific conflict.
The Seville Statement on Violence, released under US auspices in 1986, rejected violence and in particular warfare as genetically determined.
A 2008 article in Nature by Dan Jones stated that "A growing number of psychologists, neuroscientists and anthropologists have accumulated evidence that understanding many aspects of antisocial behaviour, including violence and murder, requires the study of brains, genes and evolution, as well as the societies those factors have wrought." Evolutionary psychologists generally argue that violence is not done for its own sake but is a by-product of goals such as higher status or reproductive success. Some evolutionary psychologists argue that humans have specific mechanisms for specific forms of violence such as against stepchildren (the Cinderella effect). Chimpanzees have violence between groups which have similarities to raids and violence between human groups in non-state societies. Several studies have found that the death rates from inter-group violence are similar for human non-state societies and chimpanzees. On the other hand, intra-group violence is lower among humans living in small group societies than among chimpanzees. Humans may have a strong tendency to differ between ingroup and outgroup which affects altruistic and aggressive behavior. There is also evidence that both intra-group and inter-group violence were much more prevalent in the recent past and in tribal societies. This suggests that tendencies to use violence in order to achieve goals are affected by society. Reduced inequalities, more available resources, and reduced blood feuds due to better functioning justice systems may have contributed to declining intra-group violence.[4]
The idea that man is naturally warlike has been refuted in for example the book War, Peace, and Human Nature (2013), edited by Douglas P. Fry.[5]
References in fiction [ edit ]
Movies such as Planet of the Apes (1968) show that this issue affected common people, too. In fact, it’s based on Pierre Boulle’s novel of the same title, but the content is almost similar to the topic.
This theory can be seen in the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and also appears in the television show Sliders, which made extensive use of the killer ape theory in storyline arcs involving the Kromaggs. (The names of Dart and Ardrey were combined by the professor Arturo character in the series into "Drayer" who purportedly came up with his world's "killer ape theory".)
See also [ edit ]"We have to try our hardest in training and in the minutes we have to make the decision difficult for our manager"
Carles Gil has a special Saturday ahead, as Valencia CF take on Elche CF in a regional derby in La Liga. The VCF player returned from a loan spell at Elche only this past summer, and has a close connection with the club whom he helped to promotion in 2012/13.
“I have a lot of affection for Elche and it is going to be a special game, in which I will try to give my all to take victory with the team,” said the young talent, who has become more prominent in recent games. “I try to follow Elche when I can. They haven’t had a good start to the season, but the same thing happened last season and they managed to turn things around. If we don’t have a good game, then I’m sure they will make things difficult,” warned Gil.
VCF are back at home after an unsuccessful away trip to Riazor, where they lost 3-0 to Deportivo la Coruña. Mestalla has been a fortress for the team so far this season, so the return is a welcome one. “We have to win and be strong,” said the winger. “We are demonstrating what we are capable of and there is no pressure; instead there are good expectations for us as a home side, because we have such great fans.”
The club have almost a week’s rest between games, but they want to get back to playing midweek fixtures in Europe next season, as Gil reiterated. “The aim is to get into the Champions League. We don’t like to talk about what is going to happen at the end of the season, however; we prefer to take things game-by-game.”
On a personal note, the player brought up through the ranks at junior level wants to feature more this season: “It’s logical that at the start of the campaign the manager goes for the same group of players, when they have begun so well. We have to try our hardest in training and in the minutes we have to make the decision difficult for him, and manage to play more.”A group representing more than 14,000 active and retired FBI agents has fired back following President Donald Trump’s assertion earlier this month that the agency’s “reputation is in tatters.”
“Attacks on our character and demeaning comments will not deter Agents from continuing to do what we have always done—dedicate our lives to protecting the American people,” the FBI Agents Association, FBIAA, said in a statement on Tuesday, without mentioning Trump by name.
President Trump tweeted on Dec. 3 about the FBI, saying: “After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.”
He followed up with a similar theme while answering reporters’ questions on Dec. 15 at the White House, just before speaking at an F.B.I graduation ceremony. “It’s a shame what happened with the FBI but we’re going to rebuild the FBI, it’ll be bigger and better than ever,” Trump said, according to CNN.
Yesterday the FBI Agents Association issued a statement. It responds to "recent attacks on our character and demeaning comments about the FBI." Here's the statement in full: pic.twitter.com/4YiFXLlmsw — Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) December 20, 2017
Trump was referring to former FBI Director James B. Comey, who the president fired in May. His dismissal ultimately led to the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to look into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election.
Thus far the investigation has led to charges against former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former aide Rick Gates, former foreign-policy aide George Papadopoulos, and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Both Flynn and Papadopoulos have pleaded guilty to charges that they lied to FBI agents.
Trumps tweets came after news that the top agent |
Saddam Hussein in 2003. Nor has Hezbollah, Iran’s supposed arm in Lebanon, ever tried to impose theocracy, not even in parts of the country where its influence is strongest. If the West is serious about limiting Iran’s influence, it should not strive to isolate Iran and its allies, such as Hezbollah, but rather press its own allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, to stop treating the local Shiites as second-class citizens and depriving them of their civil rights and religious freedom.
Anti-Iranian rhetoric may serve as a cover for the narrow political agendas of some of the West´s allies in the region. Saad Hariri claims that Iran has created IS by supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, but this narrative ignores the role played by other actors in the region, notably Saudi Arabia, in disseminating and financing the extremist version of Islam that underpins the brutal actions of IS. Such reductionism, however, should not come as a surprise considering Hariri’s close ties with the Saudis (even to the extent of his pledging allegiance to the new Saudi King Salman). And although there is no reason to doubt Hariri’s personal commitment to fight IS, some members of his party have been embarrassingly close to some notorious Sunni jihadists. The FC’s anti-Iranianism should not obscure the question of whether the party is the truly moderate force it claims to be or simply a sectarian Sunni force.
Ultimately, achieving a nuclear deal is still the best way to address the more objectionable aspects of Iran’s regional policies. The deal is important not so much because of the number of centrifuges Iran will be allowed to run or other technical details, but because it would open the possibility of a broader rapprochement between the West and Iran. This would create conditions for a discussion of regional matters, including Iran´s support of organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas.
By contrast, aggressive attempts to exclude Iran from the region will not only fail, but also backfire. They will encourage Tehran to assert its influence in ways that others may find problematic. In fact, such a policy toward Tehran has been pursued since 1979. It manifestly failed to either check Iranian influence or enhance stability in the Middle East. The continuation of such policies would only create a highly unwelcome distraction from the fight against IS and al-Qaeda. It’s time for the West to choose its allies in the region according to their readiness and ability to contribute to this fight, even if that approach requires a reconsideration of some traditional alliances.
Photo of Fouad Siniora
This article reflects the personal views of the author and not necessarily the opinions of the European Parliament.Music has the power to move us, but many people underestimate how it affects us in the workplace. Can you really hear “Let it go” without wanting to stand on your chair and belt out the lyrics for the entire office to hear?
The beat pumping out of our speakers doesn’t just affect how we feel. It also impacts the way we work. The question is, does music make you more productive and efficient?
In this article, I’ll look at how music affects our work. Together we’ll discover how we can harness the power of music to boost our productivity, with productivity music recommendations.
How music impacts your productivity
Different genres of music have varying effects on our brains. What boosts productivity for one person may be distracting for others, but there are some general principles to help you select the best productivity playlist:
What you’re doing matters
When you’re writing or doing a language-heavy job, songs with lyrics are distracting. Music with lyrics kick your brain into multitasking mode. It’s essentially like someone talking over you while you’re working.
For writing and reading new information, opt for instrumental-only music.
That doesn’t mean you have to write off music with lyrics altogether though. Save those songs for times when you are stuck doing a repetitive task like filing papers or clearing your inbox.
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Your music taste matters… sort of
Another important consideration is how much you like what you hear. A 1994 research study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that surgeons listening to music worked more effectively than those who worked without it. This was true regardless of whether the surgeons picked the music or if the researcher selected it for them.
Hearing a song you love can definitely provide some motivation—especially if you’re bored or don’t enjoy the task you’re doing. Hearing music you like improves your mood, which can boost your productivity.
5 rules for the perfect productivity playlist
1. Embrace the sounds of nature
When you think of listening to rain fall or birds chirp, you might immediately imagine an afternoon at the spa. This relaxing music can put us in a better mood, which can definitely improve our efficiency at work.
It’s not just that the sounds of nature make us feel better. They also affect the brain in the best way possible for improving cognitive function. Since natural sounds often have an element of randomness, they can help improve our focus without becoming a distraction. Sounds related to water appear to be the most effective.
A 2015 study in the The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America found that natural sounds are an excellent way to mask the background din of the open office plan.
2. Get motivated (and drop the bass)
Sometimes you need to feel empowered at work. Music allows us to tap into your inner strength. The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University recognized the clear connection between music and motivation. They conducted a study which asked participants to rate songs according to how they made people feel while they were performing different tasks.
The takeaway: songs such as 50 Cent’s “In Da Club,” “Get Ready for this” by 2 Unlimited, and “We Will Rock You” by Queen were clear winners when it came to motivating participants. Though these songs all come from different genres, they all have a pumping bass that leaves the listener feeling energized.
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Study participants completed their tasks with greater efficiency and used more confident and empowered language when compared to a group listening to less intense music.
3. Turn up your favorite song
While music generally makes people feel better, being able to listen to music you like creates a marked productivity boost.
This is what Dr. Teresa Lesiuk, a professor at University of Miami, found when conducting research on the connection between music and productivity. Since songs tend to relax listeners, they often afford them the chance to explore solutions they may not have considered when in a hyper-stressed state.
4. Play at your speed
There’s a reason why we tend to run faster and perform better at the gym when we’re listening to fast music. Even if you’re not actively listening to a song, the tempo can impact your work speed at the office as well.
According to a study from BMS College of Engineering in Malaysia, when looking for a stress-relieving song, choose something with about 60 beats per minute. The tempo is slightly slower than the resting human heart rate. This larghetto beat, neither too fast or too slow, is enough to produce a calmer state without making you want to fall asleep.
Perhaps you need to feel energized. If that’s the case, you need an uptempo playlist. A 2007 research study found that people do a better job with cognitive tasks when they’re listening to songs with a quick tempo. If you’re not sure where to look, Baroque music is a safe bet.
If you’re looking for a more customizable experience, check out Focus @ Will. They have some great playlists for concentration, and they’ll tailor your playlist to fit your needs.
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5. Make sure the music is not too loud
It can be tempting to crank up the tunes that inspire us the most, but excessive volume is distracting. A 2012 article in the Journal of Consumer Research discusses the connection between volume and productivity.
Music played at a reasonable volume encourages creativity and abstract thinking. Turn it up too loud though and you won’t be able to hear yourself thing. Anything louder than 85 decibels, the approximate volume of a snowblower, is too loud. On the other hand, your volume should be loud enough to mask the sounds of office chatter.
Recommended productivity music playlists
1. Productivity music playlist from Evan Carmichael
Evan Carmichael, best known for his motivational YouTube videos, has put together a 2-hour playlist to help you focus. Full of electronic uptempo instrumental music, this playlist paves the way to getting more done in less time.
2. Upbeat instrumental work music by Live Better Media
If you aren’t a fan of electronica, you might enjoy this playlist of positive uptempo songs. There are over two hours of music to get your mind working and put a smile on your face.
3. Music to increase work productivity: The Pulse
This playlist sounds a lot like video game music, and it does a great job of waking up your brain without distracting you.
4. 8 Hours of productivity music with binaural beats by Greenred Productions
Turn this on in the morning and you’ll be set for the entire day. This music has an ethereal quality that will leave you feeling relaxed and help you find your flow state.
5. The Most Productive Playlist Ever – Songs For Work on Spotify
If you’re in the mood for some popular music that will motivate you to reach new heights, this one’s for you. Some of these lyrics are NSFW though, so make sure you’re listening to this through headphones.
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6. Productive Morning on Spotify
When “The Most Productive Playlist Ever” seems a bit too intense, try “Productive Morning.” It includes songs from well-known artists, but these are mostly instrumental.
Embrace the power of sound
There’s nothing saying you have to work in grave silence all day.
To get the biggest productivity boost from your playlist, be mindful of the volume and tempo. If you’re writing, stick to the instrumentals so that your brain doesn’t try to decipher lyrics while trying to think up sentences for you. Be mindful of your own energy level when you’re choosing music.
Most importantly, play what you like. There’s plenty of science supporting the positive effects music can have on listeners. It’s up to you to find your personal soundtrack for a focused and productive work day. Happy listening!
Featured photo credit: Unsplash via unsplash.comNOTICE!!
Yes! We finally have our show dates. The show will be, November 2nd & 3rd 2019.
By the time of our show, the 250 million dollar remodel will be complete. We will have a beautiful pool complex, movie theater, bowling alley, and all tower rooms remodeled. The show is still smoking. We will also have an adjacent large lounge with full bar, open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It will be located where the old buffet was.
With the Palace Station’s new and improved facilities in place, our 10th-year milestone event the best show ever!
Guest Speaker for 2019!!
We are thrilled to have Sykes Wilford as our guest speaker for this year please click here to read his bio!!
We are happy to announce the official West Coast release of the long awaited, new Peterson Pipe Book, by Mark Irwin and Gary Malmberg.
The book is being published by Briar Books Press. Gary Schrier always does a beautiful job on his books.
Mark Irwin will be attending the show for a special book signing and a one hour presentation on the book, at 1 pm on Saturday.
The 2018 show is finally in the pouch, Leonard
HERE Felsenfeld was kind enough to share his pictures from the show, they can be seen, they are really professional.
HERE. The 2018 guest speaker was Rick Newcombe the video of his talk is provided by Mike at Briar Blues and can be viewed
HERE. And here is yet another sample of photo’s by Steve Johnson (who also has the distinction of writing the show report) of the 2018 West Coast Pipe Show. You can view them
Click here
2017 West Coast Pipe Show: They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that is what we have to share!!to enjoy pictures of the 2017 show. The report is finally available, click here to read!!
FINALLY ready for your viewing pleasure. The 2016 picture gallery isready for your viewing pleasure. Click here to see the amazing pictures…
And the West Coast Pipe Show Report is now available to read, great big thanks to Steve Johnson and his writing skills and witty prose!!
Here is the 2015 Awards dinner with special speaker Brian Levine.
You can see interviews with some of the 2015 Show vendors on our YOUTUBE CHANNEL!!
Sights and Sounds from the 2014 Show
After the tremendous success of the last six shows, we look forward to an even bigger and better year in 2016. Once again smoking will be permitted in the entire show area, including an all new “Smoking Lounge” incorporated into the ballroom. The lounge will be open day and into the evening with a full bar and comfortable seating.
FOR GENERAL SHOW INFORMATION GO HERE
FOR VENDOR TABLE AND DINNER RESERVATIONS GO HERE
Budget Car Rental has offered special pricing for the show.
To get your special pricing you must follow the directions here.
Show sponsors
For current pipe news visit http://www.briarreport.com/Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stirred outrage on Wednesday when he outlined what an "America First" foreign policy will look like under U.S. President Donald Trump, namely that values such as freedom and human rights will not get in the way of "national security and economic prosperity."
"I think it is really important that all of us understand the difference between policy and values," Tillerson told employees during a supposed State Department "pep talk" on Wednesday evening that was reportedly transmitted to U.S. diplomatic outposts around the world. "Our values around freedom, human dignity, the way people are treated—those are our values. Those are not our policies."
"In some circumstances, if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our values, we probably can't achieve our national security goals," he continued. "If we condition too heavily that others just adopt this value we have come to over a long history of our own, it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance on our national security interests our economic interests."
While some reacted with anger, saying that the former ExxonMobil CEO was bringing his Big Oil-style of governance to U.S. diplomacy, others noted that he was simply laying bare standing U.S. policy.
The Trump administration has come under fire for embracing some of the world's most reviled dictators, most recently North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, and Tillerson's speech was widely understood to be a defense of that pattern.
The address also comes amid rumors of massive cuts to State Department personnel. Earlier this week, Tillerson said he'd be asking employees to complete an anonymous survey "as input to efficiency improvements," which could include slashing up to 2,300 jobs. Though he did not mention the proposed budget cuts in his address, he acknowledged that the rumored changes are "really stressful for a lot of people."
For many observers, the corporate-style streamlining of the U.S. State Department and deprioritization of human rights were a reflection of Tillerson's background.
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"As Exxon CEO, Tillerson worked closely with long-standing dictatorships, where human suffering is most acute,"journalist Antonia Juhasz noted on Twitter.
Similarly, Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote: "In the Tillerson/Trump/Exxon world, values are a liability. They stand in the way of making money and projecting power."
Responding to Tillerson's statement that American foreign policy in recent years had become "out of balance," Tom Malinowski, former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor under former President Barack Obama said the speech was "the most clueless...given by a secretary of state in my lifetime."
"Clueless of what came before him, and of how U.S. foreign policy has changed in the post-Cold War era; clueless about what the world expects of America, including that we defend universal values and norms; clueless about what the people he is supposed to lead actually do and the harm being done to their mission and morale by by his cluelessness," he told the Guardian. "The speech was like being told the amputation of your limbs will be good for you by a surgeon who skipped medical school."
Rob Berschinski, vice president of policy at Human Rights First, also wrote on Twitter that "Tillerson's false dichotomy between universal values & human dignity and our policies is misinformed and dangerous."
However, a number of journalists who have reported on the United States' lapses in regards to human rights—and support for governments, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, who also abuse those rights—argued that Tillerson's statement was simply amplifying a "credo U.S. govt has followed for decades," as Shadowproof's Kevin Gostola put it.The internet is often celebrated for giving a voice to anybody and everybody. But in a world of wannabe journalists and self-appointed ‘experts’ on every subject, it’s worth asking whether these people know more (or even as much) as those established, apparently old-fashioned experts who came before them.
The rise of user-generated content has brought about an elevation of the role of amateurs. News organisations are crying out for ‘citizen journalists’, asking the public to help ‘make the news’; they are also offering money for eye-witness accounts and mobile-phone video clips (2). TV companies trawl the internet looking for entertaining clips to televise. In Britain, Channel 4 has just launched Homemade, a user-generated video show, and ITV1 gave primetime coverage to I Was There: The People’s Review, which aired grassroots, frontline footage from big and not-so-big events of 2006.
For Time magazine, 2006 was all about ‘community and collaboration on a scale never seen before’. It was about ‘the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace’. Accordingly, the new web world has become ‘a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter’ (1). This trend looks set to continue in 2007, enabled by new Web 2.0 tools such as discussions groups, blogs, wikis and podcasts.
With this proliferation of user-generated content has come the notion of a collective intelligence, or what some have termed ‘a global brain’ (4). Such collective intelligence is supposedly made up of an international community of ordinary people who contribute and peer review content to ensure that the highest level of knowledge on a particular subject is attained. Dan Gillmor, technology journalist and avid promoter of citizen journalism, sums up the thinking behind these developments with his mantra: ‘My readers know more than I do….’ (5)
Meanwhile, big brand companies ask their customers to design new products, create original advertising campaigns and help to develop future company policies. Nokia’s ‘Concept Lounge’, L’Oreal’s ‘You Make the Commercial’ and Orange’s ‘Talking Point’ are cases in point (3).
The idea behind collective intelligence is that any one can contribute to the knowledge pool on any chosen subject. As such, all views contribute to the collective sum of all human knowledge. And increasingly, collective intelligence is seen as preferable to professional expertise. Indeed, many in the blogosphere seem fundamentally suspicious of funded or ‘engineered’ content – that is, researched, credible, verified and edited content.
Of course, everyone is entitled to voice their own opinion and contribute online, if they have access. But is it really the case that we no longer need professional expertise? And are all opinions equally valid – or are some opinions simply more valid than others?
Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia that relies on volunteers to pen its millions of articles. Unlike Encyclopaedia Britannica, which charges for its content and pays a staff of experts to research and write its articles, Wikipedia gives away its content for free and allows anyone – amateur or professional, expert or novice – to submit and edit entries. Much was made of a study conducted by Nature magazine at the end of 2005, which found that Wikipedia was about as accurate in covering scientific topics as was Encyclopaedia Britannica. According to the survey, based on 42 articles reviewed, the average scientific entry in Wikipedia contained four errors or omissions, while the average entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica contained three. Of eight ‘serious errors’ the reviewers found, including misinterpretations of important concepts, four came from Wikipedia and four from Encyclopaedia Britannica.
However, soon after this report was published, Encyclopaedia Britannica published a damning response accusing Nature of misrepresenting its own evidence. Dozens of inaccuracies attributed to Encyclopaedia Britannica were, in fact, not inaccuracies at all, and a number of the articles examined were not even in Encyclopaedia Britannica. It has been reported that the study was poorly carried out and its findings were laden with errors; one publication accuses Nature of ‘cooking’ the report (6).
Yet hundreds of publications jumped on the Nature story, echoing the argument that Wikipedia (based on collective intelligence) was as good as Encyclopaedia Britannica (based on professional knowledge). Jim Wales, founder of Wikipedia, continues to cite the Nature survey in his defence when quizzed about the accuracy of information on Wikipedia.
Those who advocate collective intelligence believe that the whole is greater than the sum of any individual part – expert or amateur. But to reach such understanding requires the pulling together of all the disparate parts into a coherent, reliable and credible whole. Who acts as the filter? Surely the only way of achieving a coherent overview is to invite experts to sift through the barrage of content and judge what is quality and what is not?
It is true that a small proportion of bloggers are authorities in their field or are ‘professional amateurs’ (7). In fact, over 70 per cent of the content on Wikipedia is written by less than two per cent of the total number of contributors. But this does not warrant the idea that we are witnessing the ascendancy of a new collective intelligence that will develop and disseminate ideas across the globe.
As demonstrated by Wikipedia, even ‘best of breed’ advocates of collective intelligence cannot maintain or guarantee intellectual rigor by mere virtue of being a self-monitoring community. Quoted in The New Yorker, Eric Raymond, the open-source pioneer whose work inspired the development of Wikipedia, argued that ‘the open-source model is inapplicable to an encyclopaedia. For software there is an objective standard; either it works or it doesn’t. There is no such test for the truth.’ (8)
Ironically, Nature magazine has itself come up against the limits of user-generated content. It recently announced that it is abandoning its experiment with an open, online peer-review process to help vet scientific research, citing lack of interest in the review process where real knowledge was necessary for any meaningful participation (9).Sony has announced the new PS Vita Slim will come to the UK, having previously been a Japanese exclusive in the form of the PS Vita 2000 series.
Originally, the PS Vita 2000 series was only destined for Japanese markets, but Sony has now revealed it will arrive in the UK as soon as the PS Vita Slim.
The PS Vita Slim news was announced during a special PlayStation briefing, just two months after the launch of the PS4, which has increased PS Vita compatibility including Remote Play.
Sony has revealed the PS Vita Slim can be pre-ordered today for a release date on February 7. It will launch for around £180, £50 less than the original Vita’s RRP.
“Retains unique features that are key to the PS Vita, but it’s also had some changes made to it.”, said Ben Law, Senior Product Manager for Hardware at PlayStation UK
PS Vita Slim Features
The new PS Vita has been redesigned to be slimmer, lighter and longer lasting than the original PS Vita.
Design-wise, the new PS Vita looks very similar to its predecessor, but it is 20 per cent lighter at 219g, and at just 15mm thick it is also 15 per cent thinner.
Sony has also kitted it out with 1GB of internal storage, meaning you can store a few Indie games or other small titles directly on the PS Vita itself rather than having to immediately fork out for one of Sony’s proprietary Vita memory cards.
The biggest change between the PS Vita models is that the latest edition swaps the original OLED display for a cheaper, LCD display.
This will mean a reduction in display quality, but that should be made up for with a price drop.
Sony has also redesigned some of the PS Vita’s buttons, removed the back lit home button in favour of new LED lights at the top and improved the battery life by an hour to around 6 hours of continuous gameplay.
The proprietary PS Vita charger has also been ditched in favour of a microUSB port, which should reduce your charger load when travelling.
The new PS Vita only comes in black for now, unlike in Japan where there are alternative colours available.
Speaking to TrustedReviews, Ben Law said: “We’re just looking at the black model at the moment. Hopefully we’ll have some news in the future about the full colour range.”
Read more: PS4 Remote Play is Sony’s killer feature and it’s not even newCopyright by KXAN - All rights reserved An unattended candle sparked a fire at this house in the 3400 block of Ambleside Drive on Sunday, June 11, 2017. (Austin Fire Department)
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved An unattended candle sparked a fire at this house in the 3400 block of Ambleside Drive on Sunday, June 11, 2017. (Austin Fire Department)
AUSTIN (KXAN) – Fire investigators say a candle ignited a house fire in north Austin Sunday afternoon.
The call for the fire came in at about 3:20 p.m. in the 3400 block of Ambleside Drive between Mopac and Amherst Drive south of Parmer Lane, said the Austin Fire Department.
Firefighters said they attacked the fire aggressively and managed to confine it to a single bedroom. That's where they said the candle was left unattended and caused the fire, which investigators ruled as accidental.
No one was injured, but AFD said two people who lived in the single-story house have been displaced and will be staying with other family members.
Investigators said the fire caused about $30,000 in damage.A while back I received a parcel. Inside was a leafblower, a steam cleaner and an extension cord.
I hadn’t ordered any of these things, but the box was addressed to me. So I assumed someone on the internet sent them me as a joke. A leafblower – because there’s a leafblower hidden in GMod. A steam cleaner, because GMod is on Steam. And an extension cord because GMod is an extension of Half-Life 2.
So obviously I set the leafblower up and piss arsed about with it around the house. Then I packed it all away and thought nothing of it.. until a couple of months later when I got a note through the door from a guy down the road. Apparently he’d ordered this stuff and the parcel company didn’t know who it was for, they just had the post code, but they’d delivered something to me before so they’d put my name and address on it.
So I taped the leafblower back up and made it look like I hadn’t been running around the house blowing shit over with it and put it all back in the box. I bullshitted the neighbour, telling him we assumed it was a Christmas present we’d ordered so just put the box away without opening it. This went down well, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. Even as I was speaking I could tell he was imagining me blowing frozen peas around in the bath with his new leaf blower.After our TIGA Award-nominated remaster of Battlezone (1998), we know that many fans of the pioneering FPS-RTS hybrid have been asking for its acclaimed sequel, Battlezone II: Combat Commander, to receive the same treatment. Well...
Developed by Big Boat Interactive and published by Rebellion, BATTLEZONE COMBAT COMMANDER remasters Battlezone II with slick new visuals, mod support for the game's two-decade old modding scene, cross-play online multiplayer between GOG & Steam for up to 14 players, achievements, cloud saves* and more!
A mysterious alien force threatens humanity itself. In this galaxy-wide war, you are in command of the resistance. Leading from the front, you take to the battlefield in thrilling first-person combat, piloting futuristic, customizable war machines including hover-tanks, colossal mech walkers, lightning-fast mortar-bikes and more.
But you don't just fight from the front - you are in total command! A gripping singleplayer campaign will test your mettle as you learn to plot strategy, construct bases, form your armies, deploy defenses and call in airstrikes. Achieving victory is no mean feat in this remarkable blend of classic real-time strategy and first-person action.
To save humanity, you must prove yourself a true combat commander!
BATTLEZONE COMBAT COMMANDER is coming to Steam & GOG.com in 2018.Copyright by WJHL - All rights reserved Mary Winter (Source: Johnson City Police Department)
Copyright by WJHL - All rights reserved Mary Winter (Source: Johnson City Police Department)
JOHNSON CITY, TN (WJHL) - A Johnson City woman was charged with attempted first-degree murder Tuesday.
According to a Johnson City Police Department news release, officers responded to a home on Sequoyah Drive in Johnson City just after 6 p.m., where they found a man lying in the driveway with a gunshot wound in his upper left chest and another gunshot wound to the upper left arm.
The man's wife, Mary Winter, 42, admitted to police that she shot her husband and was taken to the police department for questioning.
According to the release, Winter confessed to the shooting and was charged with attempted first-degree murder.
The man was taken to the Johnson City Medical Center, where he was listed to be in stable condition in the ICU. Police believe that he does not have any life-threatening injuries.
The shooting was related to domestic dispute over missing methadone. Winter admitted to police, that earlier in the day, she purchased a gun so that she could get the methadone back from her husband.
Winter was taken to the Washington County Detention Center, where she was being held on $75,000 bond pending her arraignment Wednesday at 1:30 p.m.
Copyright 2016 WJHL. All rights reserved.Army Focus on Counterinsurgency Debated Within
Read the Report Internal Army Report By Col. Sean MacFarland Criticizing the Decline of Traditional Training (PDF)
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy Lt. Col. Gian Gentile Courtesy Lt. Col. Gian Gentile
Enlarge this image toggle caption Ohio State University/AP Ohio State University/AP
An internal Pentagon report is raising concerns about whether the Army's focus on counterinsurgency has weakened its ability to fight conventional battles. The report's authors — all colonels with significant combat experience — say the Army is "mortgaging its ability to (successfully) fight" in the future.
The report, recently obtained by NPR, is the latest twist in an ongoing debate within the Army over whether it is now too focused on counterinsurgency training. The counterinsurgency doctrine emphasizes the use of minimal force, with the intent of winning the hearts and minds of a civilian population.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent a subtle but firm message to the Army a couple of weeks ago when he announced that Gen. David Petraeus — a staunch counterinsurgency advocate — has been nominated to take the helm of Central Command, where he will oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The post is arguably the highest-profile assignment in the U.S. military today.
"I would say that Gen. Petraeus' promotion is an affirmation of the fact that the counterinsurgency doctrine he wrote and the counterinsurgency strategy that he implemented in Iraq was successful," says Lt. Col. John Nagl, one of the Army's top experts on counterinsurgency doctrine.
Field Manual 3-24
Nagl's book on counterinsurgency, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, is a modern classic on the subject. Nagl was based in Anbar province during a 2003-04 tour in Iraq, and he says it was there that he realized the U.S. Army had gotten itself tangled up in an insurgency.
"What I saw was an Army that was not as ready to fight this kind of war as it should have been, and so I came back from Iraq determined to help the Army learn how to fight this kind of war more effectively," Nagl says.
He began helping write the Army's counterinsurgency handbook, better known as Field Manual 3-24. The manual is like a roadmap for officers: It emphasizes the use of minimal force. The idea in a counterinsurgency campaign, Nagl says, is to drive a wedge between the civilian population and insurgents who live among them.
But the man most closely identified with counterinsurgency doctrine is Petraeus, who oversaw the writing of Field Manual 3-24.
When Petraeus updated Congress last month on progress in Iraq, he highlighted the doctrine as a reason for a decline in violence. He cited "the employment of coalition and Iraqi forces and the conduct of counterinsurgency operations across the country."
'A Counterinsurgency-Only Force'
Col. Sean MacFarland was among the first to successfully apply counterinsurgency doctrine in Iraq in 2006. And yet he was a co-author of the recent internal Army report suggesting that the Army is far too focused on counterinsurgency training. This singular focus, he writes, is weakening the Army.
The report cites field artillery as an example of an area that has suffered from inattention. Since 1775, artillery units have served as the backbone of the U.S. Army. But today, a stunning 90 percent of these units are unqualified to fire artillery accurately — the lowest level in history.
MacFarland declined to be interviewed for this story. But views like his have been amplified publicly by an iconoclastic, Berkeley-educated officer, Lt. Col. Gian Gentile.
"Due to five years in Iraq and six years in Afghanistan, I believe that the U.S. Army has become a counterinsurgency-only force," Gentile said recently during a public lecture in Washington. He also declined to comment for this story.
Gentile, who served two tours in Iraq, is perhaps the most outspoken internal critic of what he calls the Army's dangerous obsession with counterinsurgency.
"The high public profile of the new counterinsurgency manual, combined with the perception that its use and practice with the surge in Iraq has lowered the violence, I think has had a Svengali effect on us," Gentile said during the lecture. "It's almost like we have a secret recipe for success now involving counterinsurgency and irregular war."
Gentile, who is chairman of the American history program at West Point, has many silent supporters in the Army, but he's also been loudly criticized.
Overstating Success?
In a recent posting on a counterinsurgency blog, Col. Peter Mansoor, a top aide to Petraeus who also helped write Field Manual 3-24, accused Gentile of "misreading the history of what's happening in Iraq."
In response, Gentile charged Mansoor with "overstating" the success of counterinsurgency tactics.
Still, Mansoor insists that the Army's current training regimen is spot on.
"The wars we're fighting now are counterinsurgency and for those who argue that the Army and the Marine Corps and whole military should go back to training for high-intensity combat operations, my response would be, we have two wars we're fighting now and we need to prosecute them to the best of our ability," Mansoor says.
Nagl says he is convinced that irregular warfare and counterinsurgency campaigns will define what the U.S. military will do in the future.
"War in the Information Age is war in which our enemies will fight us using Information Age weapons — precision-guided missiles, cell phones, the Internet — all of the implements of technology that the Information Age allows," Nagl says. "But they will also use them in an Agricultural Age manner, drawing upon the strength of tribes and basic family units and they will wage war from among the peoples."
Repeating 'Folly of Iraq'
Retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, whose research helped transform the Army's organizational structure in the 1990s, doesn't necessarily dispute that point, but he says he disputes the idea that the Army's adoption of counterinsurgency has made it a better force.
He argues that this viewpoint encourages a more interventionist posture within the Army — a position that will make it easier for the Army to wage war in the future.
"I think it's downright dangerous because it suggests that we can repeat the folly of Iraq," Macgregor says. "That somehow or another, next time we can get it right without understanding that if the population is living within a social structure that doesn't want to change, if the population doesn't want you in the country, if there is no legitimate government to begin with, your intervention is doomed to inevitable failure."
But Macgregor and Gentile are swimming against a powerful current. Counterinsurgency doctrine is intimately tied to a new role the Army has formally carved out for itself.
Earlier this year, it added "stability operations" to its growing portfolio of jobs. So a mission once derided as "nation-building" and "peacekeeping" by powerful figures in the Bush administration is now a key part of how the Army sees its role around the world.Many of us are nostalgic for the golden years of cycling and we love to romanticise its forgotten blue-collar past. Those who love to boast about their history knowledge will tell you about the days back in the 50’s when Coppi and Bartali had epic battles in the high mountains of the Giro d’Italia as if they were there to see it for themselves. That was back when cyclists were real men and the sport was tougher than ever. Or was it?
Generation of The Storytellers
I had an interesting chat with this 75 year old gentleman I bumped into during a ride and we got talking about how things were back in his day of racing. He had been riding his whole life and came by it honestly. No embellishments, no grandeur of the glory days.
“Those guys love to talk it up. The older they get, the tougher they were,” he told me. Back when he was racing in the 60’s most of the races in Australia were handicaps. “The fields weren’t deep enough to have graded races. There was no attacking and solo |
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If you’re new to Uber, your first ride is also on us! Sign up and use the code UBERTYCHO.We live in the age of the startup. It’s never been easier to build a product and start a company. And, thanks to the boom in angel investing and crowdfunding, it’s never been easier for startups to raise money. The analytics firm CB Insights logged more than seventeen hundred seed-investment deals in the U.S. tech industry in 2012, more than three times the number from three years earlier. But there’s a catch: starting a company may be easier, but making it a success isn’t. Competition is fierce, profits are scarce, and venture capitalists aren’t generous when it comes to later stages of funding. As Gideon Lewis-Kraus shows in “No Exit,” a new Kindle Single about startup culture, the life of a new company is often brutish and short. Though we may be seeing a “Cambrian explosion” of new companies, as The Economist recently put it, there’s a mass extinction going on, too.
The fact that most new businesses fail is hardly a secret. So why are so many people gambling on ventures that are likely to end badly? A traditional answer is that entrepreneurs are just more comfortable taking risks than the rest of us. The eighteenth-century Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon, who coined the term “entrepreneur,” defined it as a “bearer of risk.” And in 1921 the economist Frank Knight argued that the function of entrepreneurs was to “specialize in risk-taking.” Yet studies of entrepreneurs find that, in general, they’re as risk-averse as everyone else. Only when it comes to starting a business are they daring. And that’s because the fundamental characteristic of entrepreneurs isn’t risk-seeking; it’s self-confidence. A 1997 study in the Journal of Business Venturing found that entrepreneurs are overconfident about their ability to prevent bad outcomes. They’re also overconfident about the prospects of their business. A 1988 study in the same journal of some three thousand entrepreneurs found that eighty-one per cent thought their businesses had at least a seventy-per-cent chance of success, and a third thought there was no chance they would fail—numbers that bear no relation to reality. A recent paper called “Living Forever” notes that entrepreneurs are more likely than other people to overestimate their life spans.
Entrepreneurs may recognize that, in general, starting a business is risky. They just believe that their innate skills will win out. David S. Rose, a serial entrepreneur turned angel investor, and the author of the new book “Angel Investing,” told me, “You have to have an unreasonable level of confidence as an entrepreneur, or you’ll never get started.” This helps entrepreneurs keep going in what’s often a bleak and frightening endeavor. “Starting a company is extraordinarily difficult, even agonizing,” Rose said. “You need self-confidence and ego to get through it.” At the same time, the fact that so many entrepreneurs are convinced that they will succeed makes success less likely, by swelling the ranks of competitors. This dynamic was made famous by the economist H. Scott Gordon: in a 1954 essay, he noted that, because fishermen were “incurably optimistic” about their abilities to bring in a big catch, there were always too many fishermen working in the ocean, which, in turn, made it harder for them to earn a living.
In the startup world, endemic optimism is amplified by other factors. The ease of developing a product and getting seed money gives entrepreneurs a lot of positive feedback early on. The rise of “accelerators” like Y Combinator—which provide funding and also mentoring and networking services (a kind of boot camp for entrepreneurs)—has made building a business seem less risky. On top of this, there’s a widespread tendency to treat failure as a badge of honor: “Fail fast, fail often” is a familiar mantra in Silicon Valley. There’s now a regular FailCon, where people come to hear other entrepreneurs tell about the hard times they endured and about how starting a business and failing actually makes you more likely to succeed in the future. It’s a comforting message, but the evidence suggests that past failure really just predicts future failure. A 2009 study of venture-backed firms found that entrepreneurs who had failed in the past were not much more likely to succeed in new ventures than first-time entrepreneurs were—some eighty per cent of those who had failed before failed again. A later study of more than eight thousand German ventures came to an even grimmer conclusion: founders who had previously failed were more likely to fail than novices.
You might suppose that entrepreneurs would be better off curbing their optimism. But we’ve built a whole system on unrealistic expectations. Because we don’t know how to identify good companies in advance, investors end up funding lots of them in the hope that a few will hit it big. As a character on the new HBO series “Silicon Valley” says of a V.C., “You know how sea turtles have, like, a shit ton of babies because most of them die on the way down to the water? Peter just wants to make sure his money makes it to the ocean.” The economy has come to rely on this Darwinian process to drive innovation. “Overconfidence means that many more companies start up than will ever succeed,” Brian Wu, a professor of strategy at the University of Michigan, told me. “That’s unfortunate for individual companies. The paradox is that it’s really beneficial for society.” In the delusions of entrepreneurs are the seeds of technological progress. ♦Even now, 16 years on, I can still see the banner hanging in the Millennium Stadium. I laughed when I saw it then and it still makes me smile now.
It was August 2001, three months after the favourite season of my professional career had ended in a blaze of trophies and a place in the Champions League, and Manchester United's fans wanted to let Liverpool know what they thought of our unprecedented achievement.
We'd become the first English club to win both domestic cup competitions, as well as the UEFA Cup but, unsurprisingly, there was no recognition from Old Trafford. United's fans dubbed it the 'Mickey Mouse Treble', two years after completing their own treble. They told us ours was inferior.
(From L-R) Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard and Sami Hyypia with their three trophies in 2001
Manchester United fans showed Liverpool what they thought of their 2001 treble of cups
I've thought about that banner more and more since last Sunday, when Zlatan Ibrahimovic took centre stage at Wembley and won United the EFL Cup. One down, two to go. Would they call it the Mickey Mouse Treble at the end of this season?
United are in an outstanding position to emulate what we achieved under Gerard Houllier.
The League Cup has been secured, the Europa League looks there for the taking and the only possible cloud on the horizon is the collision with Chelsea in the FA Cup quarter-final.
Celebrating with Michael Owen, Fowler (both left) and Gerrard (right) after the UEFA Cup win
You can argue that United are the most in-form team in the country. They have lost just one of their last 26 matches in all competitions and in Ibrahimovic, they have got an iconic player who is dragging all those around him up a level.
This, however, is where they are going to find their pursuit of history starts to get difficult, when the fixtures mount up and there is no margin for error.
In some ways, trying to win cups is more fraught than trying to win the league, as one really bad night and everything comes crashing down.
The buzz we had in 2000-01 was unique. We played 34 matches between January 1 and May 19, but lost only four.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic's brace helped Manchester United secure the EFL Cup at Wembley
Everyone remembers what we did in Istanbul in 2005 but that campaign was like nothing I ever experienced for the intensity that seemed to surround every fixture.
One spell demanded we play eight games in 22 days; the sequence included an Anfield showdown with United, both legs of our UEFA Cup semi-final against Barcelona, the FA Cup semi-final, a Merseyside derby at Goodison Park as well as a clash with Leeds, our rivals for a place in the top three.
What we ended up achieving was remarkable, something that had never been done before. I'm not comparing it to the treble of Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup, but don't for one minute try to tell me it wasn't special. It won't be any less special if United land it this year, either.
I would say, though, that the UEFA Cup was a higher quality competition 16 years ago than the Europa League is now and that point was proven by the fact our opponents included Olympiacos, Roma, Porto and Barcelona on the way to the final against Alaves.
United? They face a long trip to Rostov this week, but it's a tie I expect them to negotiate. Should they progress, I don't see many dangers lurking, other than the winners of the ties between Schalke and Borussia Monchengladbach and Roma and Lyon. United should beat them all.
Patrick Kluivert (centre) and Barcelona were the opposition in the 2001 UEFA Cup semi-final
When I look back now, it still seems surreal. We got on the kind of roll that United will be aiming to continue against Bournemouth on Saturday; we seemed to win every week and bounced from one big game to another.
It culminated in a crazy final seven days, which saw us play finals in Cardiff and Dortmund before going to The Valley to clinch what Houllier felt was our biggest feat, Champions League qualification.
I didn't see it that way. Medals were — and always will be — the best thing to show your accomplishments in football.
There was also the unusual occurrence of playing two finals in four days. It's not something that happens often. Look at United: they have existed for 139 years but the only time they had back-to-back finals was in 1999.
What ultimately got us across the line was Gary McAllister's last-minute free-kick at Goodison Park on April 16, which secured a 3-2 win. Had we dropped points against Everton, having lost our previous game against Leeds, we may not have come back from the disappointment.
So that is the challenge facing Mourinho and his squad. Their performance against Southampton was criticised, but who cares? They don't. They won.
United boss Jose Mourinho has complained of fixture congestion in recent months
It was the same for us when we beat Birmingham in the 2001 League Cup final. We scrambled through on penalties, but that set us on our way.
Can it do the same for them? Certainly, it will have raised their belief and given players who are not used to winning the taste of success.
Frankly, performances do not matter in the next three months. As the challenges get harder and harder, all that matters is getting the job done.
Mourinho has complained about the way fixtures are piling up — they already have two Premier League games against Southampton and Manchester City to re-arrange — but the more success they have, the more complicated it will become. We played 63 games in 2001. United may end up playing 66.
It is something they will have to put up with. If they progress in the Europa League, as I expect them to, the semi-final in May will be sandwiched in between Premier League games against Arsenal and Tottenham, their top-four rivals.
The Europa League gives Mourinho a safety blanket that Liverpool never had in terms of getting into the Champions League.
Liverpool played 63 games during their stellar 2001 campaign - United could face 66 matches
He identified that competition early in the campaign and the biggest threat to their dream looks to be Roma. The final, in Sweden, is four days before the FA Cup final.
That competition presents the biggest problem. The quarter-final at Stamford Bridge will be decided on the night and while Antonio Conte's men will be favourites, do not underestimate how pumped up Mourinho will be to avenge the 4-0 defeat Chelsea inflicted in October.
If they can clear that hurdle? I'd back them to beat any of the potential FA Cup semi-finalists, given Mourinho's big-game experience.
So there it is. United and Liverpool, of course, will always be measured by league titles and European Cups, but three cups in a season? It's no mean feat.
I just hope United's fans don't need to make another banner to mark this one.
CAREFUL DANNY, I NEVER FACED RELEGATION. WILL YOU?
It turned out to be a lively day on Twitter for me on Wednesday after I became involved in a spat with Leicester defender Danny Simpson.
I had heard Leicester's players were not happy with the column I wrote last week, when I said they should be embarrassed for the role they had played, on and off the pitch, in Claudio Ranieri's sacking.
Things finished with Danny telling me, much to the delight of the Manchester United fans on social media, how I'd never lifted the Premier League! I didn't want to respond with anything about trophies, as you're never quite sure what those former United fringe players claim to have won.
He wouldn't however, respond to one question I asked him: what happened with the meeting between the players and Leicester's owner in Seville? I'm still waiting for an answer.
Leicester defender Danny Simpson made his views clear during a Twitter spat on Wednesday
While I'm waiting, I will be interested to see how Leicester perform against Hull on Saturday. I thought Leicester were outstanding against Liverpool.
But Jurgen Klopp's side played exactly the same way as Manchester City did when they were beaten 4-2 by Leicester in December — when Ranieri was in charge — and gave Leicester an open door.
Marco Silva will make Hull a lot more difficult to beat, by playing deep, and I think almost every other team Leicester play from now on will do the same, as it is suicide to play a high defensive line against Jamie Vardy's pace.
If they overcome those difficulties, they will have no worries about staying up. But if they don't? Danny Simpson will achieve another thing I never did. Relegation!Twentieth Century Fox A scene from the 2008 movie "Shutter" shows a ghostly shape in a photo.
Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell has busted a lot of ghostly myths over the past 40 years — but the spookiest part of his job comes when he actually catches a ghost red-handed.
No, we're not talking about spirits of the dead: These "ghosts" are hotel clerks who flick the lights to keep the guests talking about the place's ghost story. Or a mischievous child who plays tricks on his parents. Or maybe a camera crew catching weird-looking "orbs" floating through the frame — orbs they didn't notice until they looked at the pictures later.
"Much of what so-called ghost hunters are detecting is themselves," Nickell, the author of "The Science of Ghosts," told me this week. "If they go through a haunted house and stir up a lot of dust, they shouldn't be surprised if they get a lot of orbs in their photographs."
The orbs are actually out-of-focus reflections from a camera flash, created by dust particles floating in front of the lens. The clumping noises that ghost hunters hear often turn out to be the footsteps of crew members elsewhere in the building, or even someone on a stairway next door. And those weird readings they pick up with thermal imagers? They're typically left behind by the flesh-and-blood visitors.
A tough job
Tracking down the truth behind spooky sightings is a tough job, but somebody's got to do it, Nickell said.
"It takes only a moment for someone to say that they saw something," he said, "but it can take a huge expenditure for someone to fly somewhere, and they might never re-create that one little moment."
Joe Nickell Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell appears to be surrounded by an aura in a photograph that was created to duplicate a spooky effect.
Nickell, a former professional magician and detective, has been that someone for Skeptical Inquirer magazine and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry since the 1970s. "I've been in more haunted houses than Casper," he joked. And the truth is that there are worse jobs in the world.
"I wouldn't want anyone ever to know this, but it really is a great deal of fun to do what I do," Nickell said.
In "The Science of Ghosts," Nickell spins a series of tales about his worldwide travels. His first haunted-house investigation, in 1972, took place at Toronto's Mackenzie House, where residents reported seeing apparitions hovering over their bed, and hearing footsteps when no one else was in the house. Nickell ascribed the apparitions to "waking dreams," a phenomenon that leads people to see things when they're half-asleep or in an idle reverie. And as for those footsteps: Nickell found out that there was an iron staircase in the building next door. The strange sounds were traced to a late-night cleanup crew tromping up and down those stairs.
Nickell learned a lot from that first case. "You must go on site, and you must investigate just like any other piece of detective work," Nickell said. "You can treat the house as a sort of crime scene."
Other cases involved spirit photographs, such as the ones that show orbs or bright streaks. One family called Nickell in to explain a series of pictures that showed bright, hazy loops of energy in the foreground. Nickell eventually figured out that the loops were created when a flash bounced off a camera strap dangling in front of the lens. "Now we know about the camera-strap effect," Nickell said.
Taking on TV psychics
Nickell also takes on psychic mediums who claim to speak with the dead. In the book, he traces his encounters with TV-show medium John Edward, who uses so-called "cold reading" techniques to draw information out of a crowd. (For example, "I feel like someone with a J- or G-sounding name has recently passed....")
"The people who profess to be able to talk to the dead tend to be either fantasy-prone personalities, or charlatans, or possibly a bit of both," Nickell declared. "They would be harmless if they didn't mislead so many people."
Nickell totally understands why a belief in ghosts and the afterlife is so important to people. "If ghosts exist, then we don't really die, and that's huge.... It appeals to our hearts," he said. "We don't want our loved ones to die. We have this whole culture that we're brought up with, that encourages this belief in ghosts."
Once a ghost story gets attached to a place or a situation, then almost anything that happens can be interpreted as supporting that story, he said. That's one reason why ghostbusting can be a thankless job. Another reason is that it's so hard to wrap your arms around the evidence — or, more appropriately, the lack thereof.
"No one is bringing you a ghost trapped in a bottle," Nickell said. "What they're offering is, 'I don't know.' Over and over, they're saying something like this: 'We don't know what the noise in the old house was, or the white shape in the photo. So it must be a ghost.' These are examples of what's called an argument from ignorance. You can't make an argument from a lack of knowledge. You can't say, 'I don't know, therefore I do know.'... If I could just teach people a little bit about the argument from ignorance, I think we could give the ghosts their long-needed rest."
Do you agree? Or do you have some truly spooky ghost stories to share for the Halloween season? Whether you're a believer or a skeptic, feel free to share your tale as a comment below.
Extra credit: Even as Nickell and I were having our conversation this week, word was getting out about the death of skeptical thinker Paul Kurtz at the age of 86. Kurtz was the founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, the Center for Inquiry, Prometheus Books and Skeptical Inquirer. He was also Nickell's mentor.
"Paul really gave me an office to work out of, and he just let me work," Nickell said. "I think of him as the father of the worldwide skeptic movement."
Nickell noted that some skeptics think there's no need to respond to claims they consider silly. But Kurtz took a different view. "He realized early on that there really needed to be a voice to respond," Nickell said. And that's what made Nickell what he is today: the world's longest-running full-time professional paranormal investigator.
More Halloween tales:
Stay tuned for more Halloween angles in the days ahead, including reality checks on werewolves (Team Jacob!) and vampires (Team Edward!).
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.It’s a long weekend, so go out and make the most of it.If you want a way to honor veterans, here is a list of local Memorial Day events. Here are some other happenings this weekend:
ALL WEEKEND
‘TESLA: A RADIO PLAY FOR THE STAGE’: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, J. Pierpont Morgan and several other of history’s most influential will make appearances in the Laguna Playhouse production “Tesla: A Radio Play for the Stage.” The play, which tells the inspirational yet controversial story of inventor and futurist Nikola Tesla, will be presented by an all-star cast for four shows from Friday, May 26 through Sunday, May 28. The cast includes actor French Stewart (NBC’s “3rd Rock From the Sun”) as the Serbian American inventor. 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 26; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 27; 1 p.m. Sunday, May 28. 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Tickets: $35-$45. Information: 949-497-2787; lagunaplayhouse.com (Read more about the play.)
STRAWBERRY FESTIVAL: The 59th annual Strawberry Festival kicks off Friday, May 26, in downtown Garden Grove, a four-day fair that honors central Orange County’s farming history, highlights local and national celebrities, raises money for nonprofits, and typically attracts 300,000 people over the Memorial Day weekend. 1 to 10 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday. Downtown Garden Grove, around Main and Euclid streets. Free; unlimited rides cost $30 on Friday and $35 the rest of the weekend; food prices vary. Information: strawberryfestival.org. (Read more about the festival.)
‘SCOTTISH FEST USA’: This family-friendly festival celebrates Celtic culture and honors the military and first responders. Events include Celtic music, 3rd Marine A/C Wing Band, sheep herding, kids jumpers, archery, shopping, heritage, athletics, bagpipes, dance, Celtic food and more. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday at OC Fair & Event Center. Free-$18. Admission includes Celtic Concert, 6-7:30 p.m. Saturday. 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. Information: 310-951-4302 or scottishfest.com.
ROSE SHOW: Come to Roger’s Gardens this Saturday, May 27, and Sunday, May 28, for the 24th Annual Amateur Rose Show & Contest. Join us for one of our most popular summer events. Enter our contest by bringing in your rose entries. Rosarians and staff will be available to assist you. It’s easy, just cut a few of your favorite and best roses from your garden and bring them in. If you know the name of the rose, bring that as well. We will provide the vases and do the rest of the work. You may enter as many roses as you wish, but only one rose of each variety. First, second and third place will be selected in each division with nearly $1,000 in awards. The event is from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Judging is Saturday from 11 a.m. to noon. Free. 2301 San Joaquin Hills Road., Corona del Mar. Information: rogersgardens.com
FRIDAY
BLACKEST OF THE BLACK: Glenn Danzig has created a completely immersive two-day event, the Blackest of the Black Festival, to be held Friday, May 26 and Saturday, May 27, at Oak Canyon Park in Silverado. The sprawling green landscape will be completely transformed into a Danzig-approved fantasy land filled with music from acts such as Suicidal Tendencies, Corrosion of Conformity, Suicide Silence, Ministry, Atreyu, Vamps, DevilDriver and, of course, a headlining and festival-closing set by Danzig. 5305 E Santiago Canyon Road. Tickets: $39-$79. Information: http://blackestfest.com/ (Read more about the show.)
CELTIC WOMAN: Celtic Woman is returning to Southern California to promote “Voices of Angels,” which reached the top of the Billboard World Chart. The group will be at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa on Friday, May 26. The revolving group celebrates the musical ensemble’s 12 years of success with its latest album, which blends Irish music and adult contemporary pop. The collection presents some of the group’s most popular songs, including “My Heart Will Go On,” “Mo Ghile Mear,” “Amazing Grace” and “You Raise Me Up” – all backed by the 72-piece Orchestra of Ireland. Tickets start at $49. 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 714-556-2787 or scfta.org. (Read more about Celtic Woman.)
BALLET AT THE BARCLAY: Orange County Ballet Theatre presents an evening of diverse works, “Momentum 2017,” that push the boundaries of ballet. The show features San Francisco Ballet Principals, Jennifer Stahl and Luke Ingham. 7:30 p.m. at Irvine Barclay Theatre. $28-$35. 4242 Campus Drive. Information: 949-854-4646 or thebarclay.org.
MOVIES AT THE GREAT PARK: Come out and enjoy Movies on the Lawn at the Orange County Great Park. On Friday, May 26, it’s “Blue Hawaii” with Elvis Presley. Starts at dusk on the terraced lawn. Bring low-back chairs, blankets, a picnic or food available for purchase. Elvis Presley stars as a returning soldier who opts out of his family’s pineapple business to work for his girlfriend’s tour agency. 6950 Marine Way, Irvine. Information: 866-829-3829.
ANAHEIM BALLET: On Friday, May 26, Anaheim Ballet will give Orange County audiences the chance to go behind the scenes when the company performs #NOFILTER” at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts’ Samueli Theater. The program consists of seven staged works – some classical, some contemporary – as well as an enticing look at the work that goes on behind the curtain. Along with Anaheim Ballet’s resident company members, Frances Chung from San Francisco Ballet, Yumi Kanazawa from the Joffrey Ballet and Jim Nowakowski from Season 12 of Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance” will grace the stage. 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 26. Tickets $25-$70. Information: scfta.org or anaheimballet.org. (Read more about the show.)
ARTS ON THE LAWN: The Arts on the Lawn event with artists, dancers, musicians, actors and artwork on display, will take place 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, May 26, at Santa Ana High School, 520 W. Walnut St. Information: 714-567-4900.
SATURDAY
NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK: The House of Blues Anaheim is celebrating its 25 anniversary with a show featuring New Kids on the Block on Saturday, May 27. 7 p.m. Tickets are $98 and up. 400 West Disney Way, Anaheim. Information: houseofblues.com/anaheim.
DOWNTOWN BEER HOP: Come explore Downtown Santa Ana, one local beer at a time. Take a stroll on Saturday from noon – 4 p.m. with a an OC Brewers Guild tour guide leading you through the rich history of the area featuring stops to enjoy OC craft beer and food samples. Participating locations include Recess @ 4th Street Market, Native Son, Hectors, McFadden Public Market & Mission Control, Mission Bar, The Good Beer Co. and Blackmarket Bakery on Broadway. Tickets $45. Information: eventbrite.com/.
SUNDAY
‘THE HEARTBEAT OF MEXICO’: A Celebration of Music and Culture: Enjoy performances by many of Southern California’s top Mexican and Mexican-American performing groups, plus culture and art booths, food on sale and more. 1-5:30 p.m. at Chapman University, Aitken Arts Plaza. Free. The fiesta concludes with Mariachi Flor de Toloache and Las Cafeteras. 6 p.m. at Chapman University, Musco Center. Events in the plaza are free, concert tickets are $10-$20. One University Drive, Orange. Information: muscocenter.org
‘BOOTS ON THE BEACH’: Newport meets Nashville presenting country favorites Pickleback Shine, the Kelly Rae Band, and the Kelly Boys. The festivities kick off with the Spurs & Suds Craft Beer Tasting at 5 p.m. followed by the live country music and dancing starting at 7 p.m. Country BBQ and a full bar will be available for concessions purchase. 5-10 p.m. at Newport Dunes Waterfront Resort. Parking is $10. 1131 Back Bay Drive, Newport Beach. Information: 949-729-3863 or newportdunes.com.
MOVIES ON THE ROOF: On Sunday, May 28, The Frida Cinema returns to the rooftop with another free outdoor screening. Join some paranormal scientists – and a rather large marshmallow man – on the rooftop of the 5th & Spurgeon parking structure to watch Ivan Reitman’s 1984 blockbuster hit, Ghostbusters. Starting at 6:30 p.m., take the elevator or stairs up to the 4th floor of the parking lot at 301 E. 5th Street, get comfy, grab some food at one of our local restaurants, swing by The Frida for your popcorn, candy, and soda needs, then watch ghosts on the big screen starting at 8 p.m. Bring a blanket, towel, low-back chair, or anything else you need to get comfy for a movie under the stars.Sanctuary Wood, Ypres, Belgium, where trenches have been preserved since World War One. (Photo: John Gomez/shutterstock.com)
The fields of Northern France and Belgium still bear many of the scars of last century’s Great War, but they are a faint reminder of battle carnage on the Western Front. After the Armistice, farmers returned to find their fields and villages totally destroyed by four years of trench warfare. Craters mark spots where artillery shells exploded but much of the area is now covered over with grass, hedgerows and forests.
Except for one place.
In 1919, a Belgian farmer called Schier returned to his land on a hill over looking the ancient medieval city of Ypres, and simply left it as it was. Once part of the British front line, it lies there today looking much as it did a hundred years ago: a mess of rusted barbed wire, shell holes full of water, trees shattered by artillery fire and a system of trenches and tunnels filled with mud.
Still privately owned by the Schier family, it is one of the few sites in Flanders where you can experience something of the actual terrain suffered by soldiers during World War I. On British military maps, it was noted as Hill 62, for its elevation in feet above sea level. For the tens of thousands who lived and died here it was known as Sanctuary Wood. To go there now is to experience the horrors of life in the trenches for yourself.
Looking into the trenches. (Photo: Amanda Slater/flickr)
The old medieval cloth manufacturing city of Ypres in Belgium looms large in the British psyche due to the amount of casualties suffered here. In the early stages of the war, Germany raced to the sea in an attempt to defeat France by attacking through Belgium. This strategy, known as the Schlieffen plan, drawn up years before the war started, would avoid the heavy French fortifications further south and seize Paris in a sweeping attack from the side. British made their stand to block Germany at Ypres. In a salient (a bit of battlefield in enemy territory) jutting out from the city both sides dug in trenches and for four years inflicted some of the bloodiest fighting of the Great War upon each other, in the now familiar pattern of minimal gains for massive casualties.
The road leading to the British front lines from Ypres is today marked by one of the most somber of all war memorials, the Menin Gate. A colossal archway on a scale of the main concourse at Grand Central Station in New York, it is covered in the names of nearly 60,000 soldiers of the British Empire who died here. Standing underneath it, the names stretching beyond what the eye can see, it is unfailingly moving. However, these are just the names of those who died with no known grave. They were simply swallowed up and disappeared in the fields surrounding Ypres. Every night at 8 p.m. a memorial service is held for the missing. No wonder British writer Siegfried Sassoon wrote of the memorial—“Here was the world’s worst wound.”
A view of Sanctuary Wood in September 1917. (Photo: Courtesy WW1 Cemeteries)
The identifiable dead are buried in countless cemeteries located in the Ypres Salient. Almost every copse and country lane features a meticulously tended graveyard, maintained by the Commonwealth Graves Commission. The largest, Tyne Cot, located on a ridge east of Ypres holds nearly 12,000 burials; Sanctuary Wood, a few miles to the south, has just over 600. Each head stone is immaculate, with the grass as neatly trimmed as a vicarage lawn, with memorial books present to help visiting relatives find a particular tombstone amongst the hundreds of thousands.
But while the government-funded commission diligently tend their memorials, the privately-owned Sanctuary Wood is something of an anomaly. Entering the farm house through a cafe, the building was turned into a museum in 1919, and is filled with the rusted artifacts Shier found on his property. Rifles encrusted with mud, German steel helmets riddled with bullet holes, and a collection of period stereoscope photographs of the battlefield. Walking through the farmhouse into the back garden, past rolls of barbed wire and an alarming stockpile of German artillery shells, a wooden sign post indicates the way to the “British Front Line.”
Rusting war toys. (Photo: Luke Spencer)
Climbing down into the ruins of the trenches, it is perhaps the only place left to physically understand the daily horrors of life on the Western Front. The flat lowlands of Flanders were particularly susceptible to flooding. The summer of 1917 saw some of the heaviest rainfalls recorded, and the Salient turned into a lethal quagmire of glutinous mud, constantly churned up by incessant shellfire. I visited Sanctuary Wood in the height of a dry summer and still the trenches were swamped with mud and rain. A hundred years later the wood still looked desolate, a nightmarish lunar landscape of craters, shattered tree stumps and barbed wire.
Working at London’s Imperial War Museum, historians Nigel Steel and Peter Hart started in the 1980s to collect firsthand accounts from those who lived and fought at Ypres.
“It was a nightmare,” wrote Private William Collins of the Royal Army Medial Corps, “all you had was a couple of duckboards.....and either side of it was about ten feet of mud. If you fell off it would take a traction engine to pull you out.”
Tunnels within the trenches. (Photo: Amanda Slater/flickr)
Sanctuary Wood was given its peaceful sounding name in the early days of the war, when the heavy woodland provided perfect cover for respite from German guns, and a place to treat the wounded. Within months though, the constant artillery bombardments turned the wood into a devastated nightmarish landscape. “Ironic to be called by such a peaceful name! - Can a wood be so called when that entire region is....desolate with huge holes, naked and burned, and reduced to shreds,” wrote Phillipe Bieler, a Canadian soldier who recorded his experiences of the front in his memoir Onward Dear Boys.
Others had similar experiences. Private Alfred Warsop of the 1st Battalion Sherwood Foresters, wrote:
“I was sitting in a trench, soaked to the skin. I had to change position as the side of the trench was slowly sinking being only made of wet mud… The conditions were abysmal enough without the ever present dangers of shellfire, trench raiding parties, poison gas attacks and raking machine guns....There was a flash in the sky. I realized with a shock that I had been badly hit. My right arm jumped up on its own and flopped down. It felt as if my left arm and part of my chest had been blown clear away.”
The preserved trenches at Sanctuary Wood, however, have been controversial. As a privately owned property, the old British front line isn’t protected by the watchful eye of the Commonwealth Grave Commission. All over Northern France and Belgium, farmers and construction workers still regularly find remnants of the Great War, everything from unexploded artillery shells to rusted live hand grenades. The so-called Iron Harvest in 2013 alone unearthed over |
(use theon the left or the search function )Take careFerFALLosing vice presidential candidate and ex-senator Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. filed an electoral protest Wednesday with the Supreme Court (SC), asking it to stop the inauguration of Leni Robredo as the country’s new deputy leader.
Marcos filed the 1,000-page petition with the court—acting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal—urging it to study affidavits and certificates of canvass that he claimed provided “clear and convincing evidence of what is now known as the biggest electoral fraud in the history of the Philippines.”
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“It is my moral and social duty to the Filipino people to expose the truth and the fraudulent machinations, anomalies and irregularities which attended the recently concluded May 2016 elections, by filing this election protest. I owe it to the 14 million people who voted for me and to the millions of Filipinos whose voices were not heard,” Marcos said in a statement.
An estimated 100 Marcos loyalists, many of them wearing red shirts and headbands, picketed Supreme Court in Manila, chanting “Marcos, Marcos pa rin.” The slogan was largely during the election of his father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Robredo welcomed the protest, which would allow her to respond in a proper forum, her spokesperson Georgina Hernandez said. “We will be able to answer to allegations leveled against us,” she said, and welcomed the “formal process” that Marcos initiated.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) for its part expressed confidence the move would not dent the credibility of the May polls.
“The filing of a protest is part of [the] electoral process actually,” Comelec Commissioner Luie Tito Guia told reporters. “The filing of the case will give an opportunity for all parties to really prove or disprove the allegations.”
In his petition, Marcos said the votes that were counted for Robredo were “products of electoral frauds, anomalies and irregularities.” He said votes counted for him “were significantly reduced, manipulated and altered” to make it appear that he placed behind Robredo in the race.
Marcos lawyer George Garcia described a series of electoral frauds, anomalies and irregularities allegedly by personalities allied with Robredo. Marcos was leading during the first day of canvassing on May 10, but tailed Robredo from the second day of the canvassing until the end.
Garcia said Marcos was specifically contesting the election results in 39,221 clustered precincts in 25 provinces and five highly-urbanized cities all over the country.
Marcos’s petition argued that the automated elections was flawed and that there were “traditional” modes of cheating like vote buying, pre-shading, intimidation and failure of elections, among others.
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It also pointed out the unauthorized introduction by Smartmatic’s Marlon Garcia of a new hash code (or a new script/program) into the transparency server, which it said triggered unauthorized changes in the vote.
Marcos argued that 13 days before the Election Day, Comelec issued a resolution ordering the Board of Canvassers not to transmit the Certificate of Canvass until all SD cards from the vote-counting machines would have been uploaded or imported into their Consolidation and Canvassing System.
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MOST READEarth-Directed CME Released by Long Duration Solar Flare
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Three views over time of the coronal mass ejection (CME) released by the sun on Feb. 9, 2013 as seen by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Credit: ESA&NASA/SOHO Three views over time of the coronal mass ejection (CME) released by the sun on Feb. 9, 2013 as seen by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
On Feb. 9, 2013 at 2:30 a.m. EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, associated with a long duration C2.4-class flare. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 500 miles per second, which is a fairly typical speed for CMEs. Historically, CMEs at this speed are usually benign.Not to be confused with a solar flare, a CME is a solar phenomenon that can send solar particles into space and reach Earth one to three days later.Earth-directed CMEs can cause a space weather phenomenon called a geomagnetic storm, which occurs when they connect with the outside of the Earth's magnetic envelope, the magnetosphere, for an extended period of time. In the past, CMEs at this strength have had little effect. They may cause auroras near the poles but are unlikely to disrupt electrical systems on Earth or interfere with GPS or satellite-based communications systems.NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center ( http://swpc.noaa.gov ) is the United States Government official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.Updates will be provided if needed.For answers to this and other space weather questions, please visit thepage.To view past solar events, visit theMANILA, Philippines - The cost of damage to agriculture in areas affected by Typhoon Lando has risen to P6.4 billion with the rice subsector sustaining the most damage, the Department of Agriculture (DA) reported yesterday.
Damage incurred on rice soared to P5.7 billion with 383, 668 metric tons of production (MT) lost. Damaged were 272, 006 hectares, 269, 694 hectares of which have chances of recovery.
Losses incurred on corn crops reached P88.32 million with 5,954 MT of produce lost. Affected were 13, 051 hectares, 12,634 hectares which may still recover.
The value of damage to high value crops is now placed at P528.9 million with 21,836 MT of produce lost. Affected were 4,233 hectares of cultivation area, 2,808 hectares of which may still recover.
The fisheries subsector sustained damages valued at P20.96 million while the livestock subsector sustained damages valued at P3.9 billion.
Edilberto de Luna, Agriculture Assistant Secretary, said the department has prepositioned rice and corn seeds for distribution to farmers. It is also prepared to procure additional vegetable seeds.
For his part, Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said affected rice cultivation areas would still be able to recover in time for the January and February harvest if farmers could replant immediately.
In a related development, the National Food Authority (NFA) said it is reinforcing rice stocks in areas affected by the typhoon.
The NFA office in Region 3 has released a total of 1,167 bags of rice in the province of Aurora as early as Oct. 17 for relief purposes. A total of 4,202 bags of rice were released by the agency to all other provinces in Central Luzon.
Prepositioned rice stocks in Region 3 would be sufficient for 19 days consumption.
Some 32,189 bags of rice had also been released by the NFA since Friday in affected areas in Regions 1 to 5 and the National Capital Region.Band call it a day after four albums
The Maccabees have announced that they are breaking up, confirming the news in a statement released today (Monday, August 8).
The London fivepiece released four albums in total since forming in 2002. Their most recent record ‘Marks To Prove It’, released in July 2015, followed on from ‘Given to the Wild’ (2012), ‘Wall of Arms’ (2009) and debut ‘Colour It In’ (2007). The band headlined Latitude Festival in July.
READ MORE: The Maccabees’ 2015 NME Cover Feature
In a statement posted to Facebook and Twitter, the band write of their split: “There have not been fallings out and we are grateful to say that we are not leaving the group as a dividing force”.
The group also state that the members will “continue making music” and promise farewell shows for later in the year.
Read the statement in full below.
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SEE MORE: The Maccabees’ 10 Best Songs Ranked
Guitarist Felix White has recently told NME that they had not been writing new material. “We’ve got nothing in the way of new songs or ideas at the moment,” he said. “We’ve written on tour in the past, but we just haven’t done it this time around. We haven’t talked about new songs as a band at all.”
Jordan Hughes/NME
Writing at the time of its release, NME said of the band’s final album ‘Marks To Prove It’: “By turning their focus outwards, The Maccabees have paradoxically learned more about themselves, what they can do as a band and where they can go from here. It might not have been an easy path, but the bruises show on the end product as beautifully as a black-and-blue sunset.”
https://link.brightcove.com/services/player/?bctid=4565929444001DETROIT, MI- General Motors Co. will purchase 200 million shares of GM common stock held by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for $5.5 billion.
The Detroit-based automaker made the announcement Wednesday as part of the U.S. Treasury's plan to fully exit GM within 12 to 15 months, subject to market conditions.
"This announcement is an important step in bringing closure to the successful auto industry rescue, it further removes the perception of government ownership of GM among customers, and it demonstrates confidence in GM's progress and our future," said GM chairman and CEO Dan Akerson in a statement.
After the repurchase, the U.S. Treasury will continue to own approximately 300 million shares of GM stock, or approximately 19 percent of the automaker.
The U.S. Treasury intends to begin its final selling of its remaining shares as soon as January 2013, according to officials. The U.S. Treasury said the "manner, amount, and timing of the sales under the plan are dependent upon a number of factors."
“The auto industry rescue helped save more than a million jobs during a severe economic crisis, but TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) was always meant to be a temporary, emergency program," said Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability Timothy G. Massad in a statement. "The government should not be in the business of owning stakes in private companies for an indefinite period of time.”
The repurchase price of $27.50 per share represents a 7.9 percent, or about $2, premium over the stock's Tuesday closing price. The share buyback is expected to close by the end of the year, according to officials.
GM will record a $400 million charge on its balance sheet in the fourth quarter.
The Obama administration is poised to lose a substantial amount of money with the announced exit strategy. In August, it was reported to recoup all of its nearly $50 billion from GM, the U.S. Treasury
GM, or "Government Motors" as some critics have called it, has continually been ridiculed due to the government ownership, which was the result of the auto industry bailout that began under President George W. Bush in 2008 and which was expanded by President Barack Obama in 2009.
The U.S. Treasury initially owned nearly 61 percent of GM as part of the auto bailout, which forced the automaker and crosstown rival Chrysler through a government-backed bankruptcy.
The Obama administration completely exited Chrysler last year after recovering $11.2 billion of its $12.5 billion bailout to the Auburn Hills-based automaker.
Since offering a record IPO in November 2010, GM's stock price has fallen from about $33-a-share to under $19 earlier this year.
In pre-market trading Wednesday, GM stock [NYSE: GM] is trading more than $2 more than its $25.49 closing price.
Check back to MLive.com/auto for more information.It’s not unusual to hear about IEDs in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, but one would hardly think such a thing would be found in Indiana.
But it was…
On Monday, ABC57 reported:
An IED that was found along a road in La Porte County has been detonated in an open field.
The Porter County Bomb Squad detonated the devices in an open field on Johnson Road around 7:30 p.m. Monday night.
The explosives appeared to be in jelly form inside two mason jars, with two strings inside leading to the outside of the jars.
According to Captain Mike Kellems with the La Porte County Sheriff’s Office, a resident was cleaning up trash from the side of the road and found something she believed may have been a homemade firework.
She took it home, but then became concerned, so around 1:45 p.m. she called the sheriff’s office.
When deputies arrived and inspected the device, they discovered it was more consistent with an IED.
Here’s the video report, courtesy of ABC57:
Trending: Jackson, Michigan – Another Fake Hate Crime: LGBTQ Activist Burns Down Own Home with Pets Inside
ABC57 News – See the Difference Michiana
Related:1. Your words hurt. Every single parent is fully aware that there’s a stigma attached to our position — that we arrived at our status through stupidity or immoral actions. To begin with, you never know someone’s story, you can do everything “right” in life and still end up a single parent. Or, you can have an unplanned pregnancy or get divorced, life happens and the thing to remember is that every single parent is doing the best they can for their kid. Putting them down doesn’t give the kid a better life, but encouraging and supporting the parent might.
2. We will freak out if you ever refer to our kids as “baggage” — but we kind of also get not wanting to date a single parent. It’s not for everyone and honestly, if you’re not sure you’re ready for a kid please self-select yourself out of our dating pool. Kids are a big deal, mine is the most important part of my life and it’s imperative that anyone I date be willing to respect that.
3. We’re not rich. If you’re a single mother people assume you are covered through child support, but in most cases this is not true. Not every non-primary parent pays child support and when they do, it’s usually not enough to cover most or all of the child-related expenses. It’s estimated that raising a kid costs $250,000 — very few people can go that alone.
4. There will always be some “drama” with our kid’s other parent, if they’re around. We try as hard as we can to be reasonable adults but everyone gets emotional where their kids are concerned. There ARE going to be conflicts, and that’s natural and a lot healthier than pretending you will never have a difference of opinion with someone about raising your kid.
5. We feel isolated and lonely. We don’t belong with the other moms who have their husbands financial and emotional support — but we don’t belong with our other single friends either, they have no idea what having a kid is like. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a few great single parents in your life, it’s really hard to connect with others.
6. We worry constantly that we aren’t doing a good enough job. Every parent worries this but they don’t have the societal voices telling them they actually might be. “Kids need a mom and a dad.” Right? But that’s out of our control at the moment, and all we can do is channel those worries into doing the best job we can.
7. We aren’t very much fun. Being the only person in the world responsible for another person’s life can run you ragged. I’m tired all the time. When my parents volunteer to babysit for the night I’d love to meet up with my friends and go dancing at the bar like they want me to… but all I can find the energy to do is fall asleep on the couch at 8pm. I feel like I’m letting those friends down every time this happens, but I can’t help myself.
8. We don’t have a strong sense of “self”. Of all our friends — married friends, single friends, we are the ones who get the least amount of time to care for ourselves. When I hear people talking about reading or new fitness goals I’m always very jealous. All my time is spent working, cooking, taking care of my house and being with my kid through it all. I can take him to new lessons or to try a new sport, but that doesn’t free up time for me to do the same. I stick around to watch because I think that’s what he wants.
9. Long before our kids could understand adult conversation, we talked to them like they could. Nothing inappropriate, but when you’re alone most of the time with a baby, you’ve got to talk to someone.
10. Someone complimenting our kid means the world to us. This isn’t surprising, but it is surprising how infrequently single parents can hear this — most people have a co-parent to lean on and gain support from. When you go it alone, you need to be your own support system, and it can be so, so rewarding — it just comes with it’s own challenges.How to book your first Destination Wedding in just 10 days
By Mark Condon | 30 August 2016
Whether we like to admit it or not, for us wedding photographers, destination wedding photography has a certain allure to it.
Perhaps it’s the prestige we feel when a client values our work so much that they’re willing to pay for us to fly somewhere for their wedding, rather than hiring a local photographer. Or perhaps it’s simply because deep down we all want to travel, and getting paid to do it makes it even more enjoyable.
Whatever the reason, shooting a destination wedding is often at the top of our wedding photographer bucket list!
The reality of travelling for destination weddings is of course not always quite as glamorous as it may seem from the outside. Aside from the fact that it’s rarely more lucrative than a local wedding and makes little short-term business sense, it can also be tiring, stressful, and lonely.
In addition, arriving to your destination safely with all your gear intact and performing as you would do locally is a skill in itself that takes experience to get right.
This being said, destination wedding photography certainly does have its benefits. Shooting beyond your normal environment is a welcome break that can refocus your eyes creatively and provide a mental refresh for what can sometimes be somewhat monotonous job.
In addition, having work from a destination wedding in your portfolio can open new doors by adding value to your brand, elevating your work from local competitors.
How to book a destination wedding… if you’ve never shot one before
“Show what you want to shoot” is the default advice from successful veterans, but for eager newcomers to the world of destination wedding photography, this Catch-22 situation is frustrating.
How can you show destination wedding photos on your site if you haven’t shot a destination wedding?! The paradox reminds us of when we first started out as wedding photographers, needing to somehow build our wedding portfolio out of thin air.
So here’s my fast track guide on how to book your first destination wedding. The ‘in 10 days’ is merely to illustrate that this method is a short cut – the first time I implemented it I actually booked an overseas wedding in just 7 days, with zero prior destination wedding experience.
Intrigued? I’m about to break it down for you step by step but before I do, I recommend you get hold of a copy of More Brides for many more tips on boosting your wedding bookings.
Before I start, one caveat. If this is your first destination wedding photography gig, you need to be prepared to work for much less than you are accustomed.
Travelling for photography work is an acquired skill, and without this experience, you shouldn’t be charging your clients the same rate as you do in your home town.
Also, unless you’re in the small percentage of wedding photographers out there with outstanding and unique wedding work, the client can easily book someone local who may well provide a similar level of service for a cheaper price.
Think of your first few destination wedding photography gigs as a way to build your portfolio and add value to your brand. If you can breakeven after all the travel expenses, count yourself lucky.
After you’ve had a bit of experience, you can work out a way to charge for both your travel and your service, but for now, remain humble!
The step-by-step guide to booking your first destination wedding
Using a combination of a targeted landing page, a modest Facebook advertising budget, and some basic sales psychology, you can vastly reduce the time required to book a wedding outside your locality.
#1 The Landing Page
I cover the topic of landing pages in more depth in this post on online marketing for photographers, but all you need to know at this stage is that it’s beneficial to use a landing page rather than simply directing paid Facebook traffic to your homepage.
Step 1
Create a blank landing page. You can use specific landing page software or just create a new page on your website. If you go this route, I recommend you remove your website’s existing menu and any other elements that can cause distraction.
Step 2
Choose a headline (the ‘H1’) that mentions the exact location you are trying to target. You can choose a country or a city in that country if you have a specific location in mind.
Don’t worry too much about optimizing for search traffic at this stage. The goal here isn’t to make your landing page rank in Google – it’s to convert visitors into leads, i.e. to get a bride’s email address.
As an example, I used ‘New Zealand Wedding Photography’ as my landing page’s headline.
Step 3
Insert one of your best portfolio photos as the ‘hero’ image. Make sure it’s not location specific (for example, it doesn’t show the Eiffel Tower in the background). Just make sure it’s one of your best.
Step 4
Under the image, write some short content, being careful not to say outright that you’ve shot in said country, but rather, try and allude to the fact that you have.
There is a subtle difference between outright lying (never do this!) and leading the client to think what they want via your writing and images.
Here’s an example of the text I used:
Hi there, I’m Mark. I offer Creative, Candid and Modern Wedding Photography in New Zealand. If you’re getting married in New Zealand, I’d love to be your photographer!
Whether you’re getting married in Wellington, Queenstown, Aukland, Lake Tekapo or anywhere in this wonderful country, I’m excited to hear more about your wedding plans.
Get in touch using the contact form below and I’ll tailor a custom wedding collection to your budget.
It’s worth noting that this text is markedly different to what I’d normally have on my website. I’m casting my net much wider with this approach.
Step 5
Add around five more portfolio-worthy images that are also non-location specific.
Step 6
Add a contact form with Name, Email Address, Phone Number and Wedding Location.
If you have any other elements you think will add value to your services, such as a graphic to show awards won or recent blog features, feel free to include them here. Just don’t go overboard as your page needs to load quickly. Then publish it.
Recap
By now you have a targeted landing page which suggests to anyone who lands on it that you’ve shot a wedding in your target country. It may even suggest that you’re from that country, depending on the text you’ve used.
The next step is to send some targeted traffic to it, and for this we require good old Facebook ads.
#2 The Facebook Ad
Facebook Page owners who lament the bygone days of strong organic reach are missing the bigger picture. Thanks to Facebook Ads, everyone now has access to the most powerful (and affordable) advertising medium of the 21st century.
As wedding photographers, we are missing out on a huge market if we choose to ignore paid Facebook advertising.
Step 7
Click on the small downward pointing triangle in the top right hand corner of your Facebook screen and select ‘Create Ads’.
Step 8
Select ‘Send people to your website’ and choose a campaign name.
Step 9
In the ‘Locations’ drop down, select ‘People who live in this location’ and start typing the destination you’d like to work in.
Step 10
Choose the ‘Age’, ‘Gender’ and ‘Languages’ of the audience you want to target. I chose 25-35 year-old women who speak English.
Step 11
Next comes the ‘Detailed Targeting’ section, an incredibly powerful feature which controls the reach of your ad. You can experiment with various different metrics, but the first to try should be ‘Demographics – Life Events – Newly Engaged’.
Just start typing ‘Newly Engaged’ in the search box for the various options to start appearing.
Step 12
Ignore ‘Connections’ and move on to ‘Placements’, which refers to where you’d like your ad to appear.
I tend to get the most success from the Desktop News Feed placement since it allows for more text, but again, this is one to experiment.
Step 13
In ‘Budget & Schedule’, set your daily ad budget to $10, and set a start and end date 10 days apart.
Leave all the other settings as they are.
Step 14
Under ‘Format’, select ‘Multiple images in one ad’. This image carousel tends to be the most eye-catching, and allows you to show off a variety of work for the same cost as a single image.
Then you’ll need to upload up to 5 portfolio-worthy images. Remember that your ad will often be displayed quite small, so avoid any image when the couple is too small.
Step 15
Under ‘Page & Links’, you’ll need to write your Ad’s text with a focus on your target country. For example, Candid New Zealand Wedding Photography – Secure your date today.
I wouldn’t worry too much about crafting amazing ad copy for the additional text in the ‘Headline’ and ‘Description’ of each image in the carousel. With so many other distractions in the newsfeed, it’s arguable as to whether Facebook users will even read these tiny sections.
Under ‘Destination URL’ and ‘See More URL’, enter the URL of your new Landing Page.
Step 16
Choose your ‘Call To Action’ Button. I suggest using ‘Learn More’, but feel free to experiment here too.
On the right hand side of your screen, you can see a preview of how your ad will look in the various locations.
If you’ve chosen to advertise to mobile users, make sure your text still makes sense when it’s truncated.
Leave all other options alone for now, then click the green Place Order button. Congratulations – you’ve just created your first targeted Facebook ad!
Recap
Setting up a landing page and Facebook Ad campaign may take you a few hours to get right, but once you have them set up, with just a few small tweaks you’ll be able to run other campaigns to target completely different locations. I currently have landing pages set up for 3 different continents.
Notice how in the example above I didn’t include any pricing in my content. This is important and I suggest you do the same. With this technique, you’re casting your net wide to try and attract as many potential leads as possible. By leaving off your pricing, it allows you some room to negotiate.
If after 10 days you haven’t received a single lead, look at the results of your Facebook ad campaign. You’ll be able to see whether users were clicking on your ad or not, and should be able to ascertain whether the problem was with your ad design (image/text) or on the landing page itself.
If you have Google Analytics installed on your landing page, you’ll be able to examine metrics such as the time visitors spent on your site, which should give you some indication as to their actions after clicking the ad. For even more detail, you could install a heat mapping software to track the users’ movements on your landing page (my recommendation of a free heat mapping tool is described in this post).
The above process isn’t an exact science, but the benefit of having it all set up is that it’ll be easy for you to make adjustments to either your landing page and/or the ad campaign and test your changes immediately. Then it’s a case of making small adjustments until you get your first lead.
Once you get your first lead, you’ve won the first half of the battle. Now the challenge is to convert the lead into a client.
#3 The Booking (closing the sale)
Everyone has different methods for booking the client, but the one key thing is that you need to get your lead on the phone – don’t email her your pricing. Just email her to thank her immediately, and let her know that you will be phoning her the next day to hear more about the wedding.
If your lead doesn’t answer, phone back the next day, then the next. Then give up and move on.
If your lead answers, keep the conversation as much about her and her wedding as possible. Then explain that whilst you haven’t shot in her home country, you have had a lot of experience shooting locally.
Don’t lie to your lead about having shot a wedding in her country, however tempting it may be at this point.
You should have researched where she’s getting married, so be sure to ask a few questions specific to the location to show your interest.
At this point I usually explain to the lead that it’s my dream to shoot in her country, and for this reason, I’m happy to work as closely to her budget as possible. A little honesty goes a long way, and saying something like this shows your enthusiasm. After all, what local wedding photographer would say it’s their dream to shoot her wedding?!
After the phone call, I write an email with a link to my regular wedding photography prices. In the email I make it clear that I’m including my local pricing just to show what’s included in each package, and that I’m willing to try and meet her budget.
You need to swallow your pride at this point, and keep in mind your goal – booking your first destination wedding. Forget about making money and focus on the huge opportunity this one new client could provide to your business.
Don’t worry that discounting your pricing will harm your brand like it could do normally. You’re targeting a completely different market to your usual one, so you can afford to experiment a little.
Including your regular wedding photography prices serves to elevate your perceived value. In this way, when you offer to shoot her wedding at a reduced price, your lead will feel she’s made a real saving and should be more likely to make the booking.
You’ve booked a Destination Wedding! Now what?
If you’re fortunate enough to book the client using this method, be sure to make the most of the wedding. For want of a better phrase, you need to shoot the sh*t out of it!
Think of your whole time in the new location as an opportunity to grow your destination wedding portfolio. You need to return home with tons of great photos not only of the wedding, but also photos that highlight the country in question.
Take your camera out the days before the wedding. Take photos of the town, the locals, your hotel – anything that shows the local flavour.
On the day of the wedding, shoot twice the number of images you’d normally shoot. At the end of the day, ask the clients if they’d like a complimentary day-after session. Or, working backwards here, ask them before the wedding if they’d like a complimentary engagement session.
Keep in mind that with every photo you take while abroad, you’re building up marketing material which will help you to book your next destination wedding.
Final Words
Even if you decide destination wedding photography isn’t for you, having a destination wedding on your website definitely adds value to your services, and can set you apart from local photographers.
I booked my first ever destination wedding in just 7 days using the exact steps outlined above and a Facebook Ad budget of only $50. Within a week of publishing the photos, (and posting the sh*t out of it!) I’d booked my second wedding in the same location.
If you’d like to discover many more time-saving techniques to book more wedding clients, grab your copy of More Brides today.
About Mark Condon
Mark Condon is a British wedding photographer living in Sydney shooting weddings worldwide. Mark gives photography enthusiasts a peek at the camera gear of some of the world’s best photographers over at Shotkit.
To save 10% on your copy of More Brides, use discount code capturemag. Valdi until 31 October 2016.This is a little off-brand for me, but for some reason I can’t stop thinking about how much I love a really specific (unnamed?) style of Mario game box art, and it’d be stupid to start a whole different account for one post.
Look how awesome Super Mario Bros. 3 is! It’s like the whole game in a nutshell! Funny heroes, evil villains, goofy mooks, and a whole world to fly through. It’s pure magic.
Super Mario Land is no slouch either! This one breaks the formula a bit, depicting not just a mini-version of the entire world and its inhabitants, but all the different awesome things Mario can do!
Now here’s the game changer. It’s kind of cheating because this is the Japanese box art rather than the minimalist North American version, but look how fucking rad it is! The whole “micro version of the entire game world in one exciting image” concept is taken to the next level by depicting it as an entire mini-planet bursting with adventure! I am crazy about this idea and love whenever it pops up. Is there a name for this? I love this crap so much here’s another piece that I assume is from the Japanese instruction manual:
Look how gangster that Yoshi is! I really miss this more dinosaurish posture and build. This piece also gives us a different, albeit less detailed view of Dinosaur Land. It’s magic, guys.
That “whole planet of adventure” idea from World’s box art? Super Mario Land 2 takes it and flips it inside-out like it’s no big deal. Fucking awesome. Look how weird and interesting Land baddies are!
My boy Wario is kind of taking a step back for Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land’s art, but it doesn’t even matter because his world and frenemies are so delightfully weird.
OH MY GOOOOOOOOD. I think this is the one that got me thinking about all this in the first place. It helps that the game was practically a religious experience for me. The box art is great, but the real champion is this slightly different piece, which I think was in the game manual somewhere:
MARIO TAKE ME AWAY WITH YOU TO YOUR WORLD OF WACKY ADVENTURE AND DIVERSE BIOMES
2000′s Wario Land 3 is a little different: more mysterious and even kind of lonely, which fittingly reflects the odd story of the game. The clay visuals from (some of) Wario Land 2′s promo art makes a comeback, which really makes Wario’s snowglobe/music-box world pop.
Holy shit SPAAAAAACE! Released in 2007, it had been a long time since we last saw some kick-ass Mario art in this style. Like the game itself, Galaxy’s art takes ideas from Mario 64 and launches them into beautiful, star-splattered orbit. These games aren’t a cohesive world in a box, they’re an entire galaxy.
3 years later, Galaxy 2 put Yoshi back in the equation (albeit the big-nosed, baby-bodied version of him that Nintendo insists on), and presents a sunnier, livelier universe than its predecessor. Galaxy 1′s box is prettier and more striking, but Galaxy 2′s is more in line with the earlier examples that I love so much.
The Mario games before and since have charming box art too (in particular the colorful cartoon chaos of the original Super Mario Bros.), but they don’t quite capture that feeling of a living, breathing, cartoon world full of adventure being magically contained in the cartridge like these do. The combo of exaggeratedly large hero art and exaggeratedly tiny enemy and world art seems to be the secret, and it’s a super potent one. With digital distribution changing how we buy games and Nintendo’s push for homogeneity in Mario’s art design, we probably won’t see promo art like this again any time soon. Bummer.The ticket for Interstellar at the Point cinema in Dublin last week was €12. Good value, I thought – about a third less than I pay in London. But I’d got it wrong. Twelve euros was the price for two tickets, so the cost was just £4.80 each. Admittedly this was a midweek night, not a Friday or Saturday, but for the same film on the same day at my local in south London, the Clapham Picturehouse, it would have been £13.10, or nearly three times as much.
Are we in Britain being ripped off by the cinema chains? After my Dublin experience I researched what it might cost to see The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, the latest episode of the blockbuster series simultaneously opening in screens worldwide this weekend. The results were depressing, with Brits expected to pay the highest prices for tickets – yet the ushers checking the tickets and trying to sell overpriced popcorn on top are probably on minimum wages and zero-hour contracts.
Maybe you want the big screen, city centre experience. In Paris, about the most central you can get is the Gaumont on the Champs-Élysées. Sure enough, it’s showing The Hunger Games, and with the booking fee included the price is €11.80 per person – or just over £9.40 in sterling. Unlike most British cinemas, it also gives discounts to the under-26s, who pay €7.20 – or just £5.75.
Now let’s take two 25-year-olds out for a Saturday night in the West End of London. The Odeon West End is showing the same film, but (take a deep breath) the price is £17.90 a ticket, with no discounts for under-26s. So our couple would pay £35.80 in central London but £11.50 in central Paris.
Perhaps we’re being unfair. Leicester Square in London has probably some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. “The economics of running a cinema in Leicester Square – as opposed to Leicester – are very different. Business rates, staff and supplier costs all vary hugely,” said a spokesman for the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association when I asked him to explain why we are paying so much.
So my next comparison was with New York. I don’t imagine the rates, the staff costs, or the property costs can be any lower in Times Square than in Leicester |
, Spectrum Bridge, Google, Amdocs, Commsearch to which your base stations (what Wi-Fi users might call “Aps”) will connect in the cloud and then it’s done. The SAS will do the work to keep operators off incumbent protected users. If you are not using a PAL, feel free to use 20 MHz channels. If you are using PALs, then use 10 MHz or do carrier aggregation of two PALs, for example, and off you go. You can even combine GAA and PAL use. No problem.
This the general framework within which providers will work. There is much to like and little to complain about overall. We expect wide availability of PALs at extremely low cost (in the hundreds of dollars), since the big carriers want the band mostly for small cell in dense urban corridors to “densify” their LTE networks and alleviate demand pressure on their precious multi-billion dollar traditional spectrum by users doing so much streaming content. In deep rural, these pressures are not acute, and even non-existent so there is little motivation to invest in PALs by carriers in rural markets. And, even if they do, they are limited to 4 PALs, so even non PAL GAA users will be able to compete. There are subtleties about total power output, and that can change to as much a 47 dB EIRP in select rural areas and there are categories of devices called “CBSDs” (Citizen Broadband Service Devices) aka CPEs that have different power rules, but what’s above is the outline of the band.
The last thing to say is that the entire spectrum won’t come online until the auction process is set and occurs. The work to build the SASes is largely done and many vendors, including Baicells, is currently running FCC STA trials with select SAS vendors and rural service providers to iron out any kinks in the system. So right now the gating issue is back in the FCC’s court. Hopefully once the presidential transition is complete the process will continue without disruption because the current model is one that favors the small rural operators immensely. Any disruption would likely mean the rules would be scrapped or made more favorable to the major carriers, by doing things like changing the auction plans to a typical multi-billion dollar carrier auction, eliminating census tract sizing and using traditional spectrum regional allocations, increasing the 3 year term to 10, and preventing any GAA use at all the lower 100 MHz. These are things the huge operators would prefer so WISPs and other interested rural parties should be vigilant and stay vocal with their congressmen and senators about keeping the current plans as is.
If you questions or would like more information, please contact me directly via email at [email protected], or my colleague Rick Harnish at [email protected] — Lost in the debate over Donald J. Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns is the story of where the custom of disclosure comes from — and why it can be so valuable as a measure of character. It’s a tale of presidential tax shenanigans, political scandal and one of the most famous quotations in American history: Richard M. Nixon’s “I am not a crook.”
The story begins in July 1969, when Congress eliminated a provision of the tax code that had allowed a sitting or former president to donate his papers to a public or nonprofit archive in exchange for a very large tax deduction. Congress’s rationale was that a president’s papers already belonged to the public.
In his taxes for 1969, President Nixon indicated that four months before Congress acted, he had donated more than 1,000 boxes of documents to the National Archives. He claimed a deduction of more than $500,000.
The write-off didn’t become public until 1973, when it was mentioned in passing during a lawsuit related to the Watergate break-in. Although the deed formally giving the papers to the National Archives was dated March 27, 1969, it turned out not to have been signed until April 1970, nine months after presidential document donations lost nearly all their tax benefits. (A thorough account of Nixon’s tax dodge is contained in a paper written for the United States Capitol Historical Society by the Northwestern University law professor Joseph J. Thorndike.)The October issue of Kodansha's Afternoon magazine is announcing on Monday that Riichi Ueshiba's Nazo no Kanojo X (Mysterious Girlfriend X) manga will end in the next issue, which will be released on September 25.
The "unidentifiable love" manga revolves around Akira Tsubaki, who one day notices the anti-social transfer student Mikoto Urabe drooling on her desk while she is sleeping, and he tastes it. Eventually the two begin to date and get to know each other better.
Ueshiba began the manga in the magazine in 2006, and Kodansha shipped the 11th compiled volume of the series in February. The manga inspired a television anime adaptation in 2012. Crunchyroll streamed the anime as it aired in Japan, and Sentai Filmworks licensed and released the series in North America. Crunchyroll distributes the manga in English digitally.
[Via Yaraon!]Former Officer Aaron McNamara (Fairview Park Police Department)
An auxiliary officer with the Fairview Park Police Department, who had written that black people should be “exterminated,” resigned from the force last week.
The Cleveland Scene first reported that Aaron McNamara had a position as a volunteer officer as he finished his college degree and prepared for a full-time job on the force. But those plans were derailed when comments he had made on the Internet over the last two years came to light.
According to the Scene, McNamara like to hang out in the YouTube comment area, where he was caught “regularly dropping racial and gay slurs, unambiguously expressing hatred towards minorities and anyone who dare not comply with what police say.”
For example, “jungle monkeys” and “spooks” were some of the milder slurs the officer used for African-Americans.
“Abolishing slavery was the worst thing we could have done,” McNamara opined. “These people should be exterminated.. Unbelievable.”
On a video of a man on a bicycle being tackled by officers, McNamara wrote that the suspect deserved it “BECAUSE THE FEMININE FAGGOT WAS ELUDING THE POLICE AND FAILING TO STOP! DUMB ASS GENERATION!”
In late November, the auxiliary cop argued that it was “absolutely ridiculous that the police are criticized” for killing Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was holding a toy gun.
When the Scene initially confronted McNamara about the social media message, he insisted that it must have been another person with the same name.
“I’m not the only Aaron McNamara in this world,” he asserted.
But minutes later, McNamara had made his Twitter account private, he shut down his Instagram account, and deactivated his YouTube and Google+ pages.
In a statement, Fairview Park Police Chief Erich Upperman said that the city “does not tolerate this type of conduct from any person working or volunteering for this city.”
“This is the first we are hearing of this and it will be immediately and appropriately investigated. During his brief tenure with our agency, the volunteer never displayed any prejudicial leanings, nor did any arise during his background check,” the chief noted.
On Friday, WEWS published McNamara’s letter of resignation.
“The comments I made in those particular videos were a product of my youth and immaturity; by no means am I a prejudice [SIC] individual,” he declared. “I am an advocate for equality, and I am highly disappointed in myself for the statements I had previously made. I cannot recollect the most recent comment I was accused of making in February 2014, but I am not denying the claim.”
Watch the video from WEWS, broadcast Dec. 20, 2014.State and major urban area fusion centers (fusion centers) and the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) help protect our nation by serving as valuable conduits for sharing vital homeland security information and countering domestic terrorism.
However, these field-based information sharing organizations each play a unique yet complimentary role in securing the Homeland. Fusion centers lawfully gather, analyze, and share comprehensive crimes, hazards, and terrorism information to inform local, regional, and national threat analysis and prevention efforts. In contrast, JTTFs primarily focus on providing investigative support to open FBI counterterrorism investigations.
Fusion Centers vs. Joint Terrorism Task Forces
Fusion Centers vs. Joint Terrorism Task Forces Fusion Centers Joint Terrorism Task Forces Focus on terrorism, criminal, and public safety matters in support of securing communities and enhancing the national threat picture. Focus primarily on terrorism and other criminal matters related to various aspects of the counterterrorism mission. Receive, analyze, gather, produce, and disseminate a broad array of threat-related information and actionable intelligence to appropriate law enforcement and homeland security agencies. Conduct counter-terrorism investigations and provide information for assessments and intelligence products that are shared, when appropriate, with law enforcement and homeland security agencies. Owned and operated by state and local authorities and include federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT), and private sector partners from multiple disciplines (including law enforcement, public safety, fire service, emergency response, public health, and critical infrastructure). Multi-jurisdictional task forces managed by the FBI, and include other federal and SLTT law enforcement partners which together act as an integrated force to combat terrorism on a national and international scale.
Collaborative Efforts of Fusion Centers and Joint Terrorism Task Forces
Fusion centers and JTTFs collaboratively leverage their analytic and investigative capabilities to safeguard our homeland and prevent criminal and terrorist activities.
The following success stories highlight instances where fusion centers exchanged information with JTTFs, including providing important terrorism-related tips and leads to JTTFs for investigation:In Texas, we have a lot of towns with cool names. There is actually a town named Cool. And Cut and Shoot. And Valentine. Yes, Valentine. How cool is that? Especially if it’s February.
The story goes that a railroad crew, in 1882, had finished laying the tracks to the point where a water and fuel depot would be needed. It was Valentine’s Day. So they named the depot Valentine. It also was the name of one of their superiors, so the name has dual origins. Valentine, to give you coordinates, is halfway between L.A. and New Orleans, almost exactly 1000 miles from each. Or, if you want something local, halfway between Marfa and Van Horn. Deep in the Heart of West Texas.
Valentine never got very big. It says 217 on the city limits sign, but the mayor there, Jesus Calderon (who goes by Chuy), says that it is likely about 180 these days. Chuy has been mayor there for 40 years, likely a record of some kind for mayoral longevity in Texas. In addition to being mayor, he taught in the Valentine Independent School District for over decades and even worked part-time for many years as the local Fed Ex delivery man. Nobody knows Valentine like Chuy. He says there is no gas station, no ATM, and no crime.
The school, K-12, has about 40 students. Some years they only graduate five or six from high school. One year, not too long ago, they graduated two. Think about that. If you’re the poorer student of the two, you are simultaneously in the bottom 50 percent of your class and the salutatorian. Lisa Morton, who grew up there and is managing editor of the Van Horn Advocate, says that her sister graduated alone. I said that must have been a lonely event and she said, “Oh, no, the whole town came out to celebrate her big day.” Gotta love small towns.
Well, the town isn’t so small that it doesn’t have a post office. And in February they are busier than Santa’s elves on Christmas Eve. This time of year they receive thousands of cards to be re-mailed bearing the Valentine postage stamp. The cards come from all over the U.S. and as many as 30 foreign countries. One year they sent one to the White House, to Chelsea Clinton. Each year there is a design contest at the school and the winner has their “love logo” chosen as that year’s stamp. Imagine that. You can send your Valentine a Valentine from Valentine. Can’t get much more romantic than that!
Unless you take your Valentine to Valentine on the 14th. Chuy says they have a big party each year, underwritten by Big Bend Brewing Company from nearby Alpine. Last year, Jerry Jeff Walker played. Two years ago, Joe Ely was there playing his famous song, Saint Valentine. This year, Little Joe y La Familia will headline the event. Since Valentine’s Day falls on a Tuesday, there was pressure to move it to the weekend, but Mahala Guevara, vice president of Big Bend Brewing, explains in the official brochure: “West Texas was never known for convenience; to enjoy the best the region has to offer, you have to be willing to work for it. And your hard work will be rewarded with great Texas music… “
Gotta love it. A work ethic embedded in leisure. A very Texas concept.
Big Bend Brewing is even brewing a special ale for the event called Total Commitment. On the back of this limited edition brew it says, in part, “The owner of this…came all the way to Valentine, Texas, on a Tuesday night…what Total Commitment do you have to make.” At 14.2 percent proof, it is appropriately named. Makes my eyes a little misty thinking about it.
The most romantic Texas couple I know is Coach Taylor and his wife Tami, from Friday Night Lights. They are fictional, but they’re also authentically romantic. I could see them taking an impromptu road trip to Valentine for Valentine’s – just 200 miles from Dillon.
Coach Taylor always told his team: “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” It’s good advice for football. Probably good advice for love, too.
W.F. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell ice cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.There's a new, if unofficial, lap record around the Nurburgring, and it's been set by a resident British biker called Andy Carlile. Lapping the Nordschleife in just 7min 10sec bridge to gantry during public hours, he's nearly 20 seconds under the previous records set by Tim Roethig and Helmut Daehne. That translates to about 7min 28sec for a full flying lap or just 7min 24sec for an 'industry' or 'SportAuto' lap (that's a full lap minus the T13 straight).
Comes across as quite sensible... and then Comes across as quite sensible... and then
Riding his own modified Yamaha YZF-R1, Andy set the lap only a few days ago during a quiet public session. His bike is road-legal, shod with Dunlop road-legal trackday tyres and lightweight carbon wheels. Brit suspension experts Nitron helped Andy set up the suspension.
"It's taken nearly five years to get to this point," says Andy. "Some years there was practically no progress whatsoever, but I kept plugging away, optimising, learning and trying again."
Asked if he could go any faster he says, "What you're all thinking, and what I'm trying to ignore, is the number '6'. Yes the bike will go a little bit faster, but we're plumbing the deepest depths of diminishing returns."
For more on how Andy did it check out the interview on BridgeToGantry.com.
Track pic: Frozenspeed
Watch the (utterly terrifying) lap video here:Sainz crashed heavily into Felipe Massa and then into the wall at Turn 3 after losing control of his Toro Rosso when he made contact with the Haas of Grosjean on the exit of Turn 2.
The Spaniard appeared not to see Grosjean on his side and touched wheels with the Frenchman.
Both men have been summoned by the race stewards, who are investigating the accident.
"There's not much to say. I was on the inside, Carlos was on the outside and then he turned twice to the right," Grosjean told Motorsport.com. "First I went on the grass, and I managed to come back on track and he hit me a second time.
"It's pretty dangerous to me. Luckily there wasn't much more happening in Turn 3 because it could have been pretty bad."
Sainz argued that Grosjean was in his blind spot and insisted he had no idea the Haas car was there.
"I got a decent start. I went around the outside of Fernando [Alonso] in Turn 2," Sainz explained. "I was just trying to find a way past into Turn 3.
"I never realised a Haas was in my dead angle in the mirror and we collided and I was simply a passenger into Felipe, probably the most unfortunate guy out there today apart from Romain and myself.
"Exiting Turn 2 I checked the mirrors, I saw the Renault and another guy two or three car lengths behind and I didn't [take] them in consideration when I was attacking Fernando and suddenly I had Romain there."
The Toro Rosso driver said that, even in hindsight, there was no way he could have avoided the incident.
"It's unfortunate because it's an incident that, if I look back now, there's actually nothing I could have done differently because when I checked my mirrors I never saw Romain on the right side," he said.
While Sainz retired on the spot, Grosjean went on to score a point by finishing 10th, having done almost the entire race with a set of supersoft tyres he'd switched to when he pitted after the crash
"It was doing 69 laps on the same set of tyres, which is pretty strange for a supersoft," Grosjean added. "We made it. I wasn't sure at the beginning but it was actually fine in the end."Looking back on my Top 8 Beer Trends for 2016 — some rang true (dry-hopped everything, session ales), others not-a-so-much (single malt beers?! WTF was I thinking?) and others are waiting for the Canadian beer market to grow up (fine dining with beer, can we get a Canadian Luksus PLEASE).
For our 2017 trends, I’m feeling more confident. That’s because I’m not the only one predicting these bad boys — my sister, Tara Luxmore, joined me at Experience Beer this year, and we now write and travel together — hurray! Two is always better than one. And because we’ve travelled a lot this year, going to the Craft Brewer’s Conference in Philly, judging cider at GLINTCAP, tasting beer at GABS in Sydney, Australia, and attending our very first GABF. And we believe that tasting beer widely (especially in the U.S.) is key to seeing what is next on the horizon.
So this year, we expect to see deeper local partnerships between neighbourhood brewers and culinary businesses, from foragers to coffee roasters, and these will lead to new flavours in our brews. We know brewers will go deeper into beer’s third family of yeasts — the wild ones. And we predict a return to crisp lagers made the old-fashioned way, a continued downward focus on lower ABV’s in most styles, and some zany trends bubbling up from homebrewer’s basements, like chilli beers.
Here are our Top 9 Beer Trends for 2017 and where you can taste them from coast to coast
1. Wild and Sour Breweries
Not everyone is content to just kettle sour—more and more breweries in the US are going the way of Denver’s Crooked Stave and dedicating their entire production to wild and sour beers. Like Black Project, which started as the “wild beer” side-project for Former Future Brewery, but the brewer/owner loved making these styles so much, he shuttered the first brewery, rebranding to a funk house. These breweries are making beer with the “third family of yeast” Lacto, Pedio, Brett and spontaneous fermentation via coolships. (Hot tip: Go to Birreria Volo where Crooked Stave is pouring).
Nickel Brook’s “The Funk Lab,” became the first all-wild/sour brewery in the country when it opened this month.
Half Hours on Earth, a nano-brewery in Seaforth, Ontario deals mainly in sour and Brett strains too, but doesn’t like to be pinned down by style definitions.
Folly Brewpub, Toronto, a small, brett-focused brewpub on College Street. Try Inkhorn, dark with a touch of tart cranberry.
Must-Drink Wild Import — Rodenbach Vintage Ale, a hot LCBO pick, this Flanders Red is case-load worthy. Read about it in our six-pack.
2. The rise of the LagerHAUS
A reaction to the big, bitter IPAs that have dominated the American scene, breweries are producing more and more easy-drinking lagers, recreating the traditional pilsners and helles lagers imbibed by early German settlers. We’ve seen lagerhouses employing open fermentation and old world techniques popping up in a few cities in the U.S., (like Chicago’s Baderbraü) and a resurgence of pioneering German-style breweries like Denver Colorado’s Tivoli, so it’s only a matter of time before more follow here
Thornbury Brewing — the former King Brewery is still an all-lager house.
Moon Brewery & Pub, Victoria, B.C., focuses on German lagers with a West Coast twist
3. The Crowler
A portable jumbo-canning machine that will change the way we transport fresh beer? Yes, please. Growler, meet can. Yup. It’s the crowler. And it’s a damn fine thing. These 32-ounce jumbo can is be filled-to-order with fresh brew at a brewery or tap room. Pioneered by Ball Canning and Oskar Blues, they’re are all over the US and we predict they’ll start to replace brown jug growlers at brewpubs and breweries across Canada too. No more unwashed growlers, or flat beer. (Check out Tooth & Nail’s co-founder, Dayna Guy filling crowlers in this “Sight Glass” video).
So cuddle up with a crowler this fall. Get your fill at these Canuck breweries:
Frank Brewing Co,, Tecumseh, ON
Tooth and Nail Brewing Company, Ottawa, ON
Redline Brewhouse, Barrie, ON
Banded Peak Brewing, Calgary, AB
Tree Brewing, Kelowna, BC
Moody Ales, Port Moody BC
4. Golden Coffee Beers
Move over stouts and porters, this year we’ll see coffee is appearing in everything from golden pilsners to barleywines. And we’re not talking Nescafe. After all, any hipster neighbourhood worth its effortless cool will have an artianal coffee roaster no more than a bean’s throw away from a craft brewery. You can think of these beers as their love children, designed around the terroir of the artisanal roaster’s blend. To showcase the bean’s complexity, brewers are using pale malts and dubbing these brews “white stouts.”
Another bubbling trend? Coffee pouring from nitro taps at craft breweries (it’s coming…).
Collabrrrewnaut, Beau’s All-Natural Brewing, in the Best of Beau’s 2016 mix pack
Bricks and Mortar, Left Field Brewery
Morningside Blonde Ale, Dominion City Brewing Company, Ottawa, ON
5. Foraged Beer
Brewers are venturing beyond local malts and hops, and partnering up with local foragers to head into the woods and pick ingredients such as juniper berries, heather tips, mushrooms, and wild ginger root to toss into their brews.
Pengo Pally, Bush Pilot Brewing
Polaris Ale, Beau’s Brewing Co.
6. Pucker Up – Kettle Sours
Breweries are finding a quick way to satiate our growing thirst for sour beer. They simply add Lactobacillus bacteria (that zippy, tangy bacteria that ferments yogurt) to cooled wort, before it’s boiled and fermented. Known as kettle souring this process is a shortcut to making sours; It doesn’t require the time, money and risk of infection, which introducing wild yeast strains into a brewery does. Sprinkle in some salt and coriander afterwards, and you’ve got yourself a gose, which also falls into this family. But some sours are better than others—our favourites contain mind-blowing blends of fruit, herbs and hops — like orange juice and mosaic hops, cucumber and lime, hibiscus, and passion fruit. With very few year-round offerings of sours and goses on our country’s shelves—it’s fair to say we’ll be seeing a lot more of them soon.
De Witte, Dageraad Brewing, Burnaby, BC
Hors Série Gose, Les Trois Mousquetaires, QC
Hacky Sack Kettle Sour, Northwinds Brewery, Collingwood, ON
Sour Pumpkin Saison, Collective Arts Brewing Company, Hamilton, ON
Ceres Cucumber Lime Gose, Nickel Brook Funk Lab
7. Juicy IPAs
Think of orange juice in a glass, then add alcohol. Dry, pithy and uber-juicy, so called “Juicy IPAs” are pouring everywhere in the U.S. and Canada is catching up fast. Born of the Vermont-style IPA fame (Heady Topper, Sip of Sunshine) trying to nail down the style description of this nascent category is nearly as hazy as the cloudy, sunset-orange beers themselves. Often made with a Vermont ale yeast, and “juicy” hop varietals like Mandarina Bavaria, these brews are also deliberately cloudy thanks in part to brewers hammering them with wheat, oats or even flour. The next iteration? Adding actual juice to the beer, like Samuel Adam’s new “Rebel Juiced” made with Zeus, Mosaic, Mandarina hops and — yes, mango juice. Who knows if the Boston brewery’s juiced-up IPA will take off or jump the shark? But in the meantime we’ve found some naturally juicy ones made here in Canada, for you to try:
Side Cut IPA, Bridge Brewing Company, Vancouver BC
Flagship IPA, Steamworks Brewing, Vancouver BC
Sawdust City Juicin’ IPA, Gravenhurst, ON
Double Orange Ale, and RSMAUnfiltered Brewing, Halifax, NS
Green Out, Barncat Artisan Ales, Cambridge ON
Flying Monkeys Juicy Ass IPA, Barrie, ON
8. Chili Beers
Jalapeno Cream Ale? Chilli Saison? Yes please. This hot trend has bubbled up from home brewers who think it’s a brilliant idea to chuck mounds of homegrown hot peppers into their beers. The worst examples taste like a Dad’s home-made hot sauce—but with alcohol. Most chilli beers used to be stouts or porters, for a mole-like effect. But these days, brewers are adding heat to a range of golden styles. The best begin with a really great beer and integrate the chilis for a surprising, fiery warmth in the back of the throat.
Honey Habanero, Frank Brewing Company, Tecumseh, ON
Jalapeno Ale, Garrison Brewing Co., Halifax, NS
Red Racer Habanero Stout, Vancouver, BC
9. Sibling Celebs will Rule the Beer Universe
Move over Handsome. I mean Hanson. We’re super pumped to rebrand our business as “The Beer Sisters.” Watch for it mid-2017!Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Roads were left waterlogged in Grimsby
Heavy rain has caused flooding and disruption to travel across parts of England.
A number of areas in East Yorkshire and North East Lincolnshire have been worst affected by the flooding.
A yellow weather warning is in place for London and south-east England, where downpours have caused localised flooding and some disruption to travel.
The worst of the weather is expected to clear towards the south east, with drier conditions forecast for Thursday.
Image copyright Sussex Police Special Branch Port Unit Image caption Planes had to contend with surface water at Gatwick Airport
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption London and the south east of England were affected by the rain
The Met Office said heavy rain would "sink slowly southwards across the east and south east of England" during Wednesday, slowly dying out by Thursday morning.
Some travel routes in the south east of England have been affected, with flooding in Kidbrooke and Greenwich, both in south-east London, disrupting trains between London and Dartford.
Essex County Fire and Rescue Service reported a number of calls from residents about flooding in the area.
Image caption A number of homes have been flooded in Immingham
The worst-affected parts of England overnight were Immingham, in Lincolnshire, and Grimsby, with some homes flooded and many roads waterlogged.
In some places there were reports of standing water up to 3ft (1m) deep.
In Immingham, Lisa said her 68-year-old mother had phoned her at 04:00 BST to say water was coming in.
"When I got here it had flooded the whole bottom of the house right through to the back garden," she said.
"We can't get rid of the water in the house until the water outside has cleared.
"Its just devastating."
Image caption The heavy rain left deep water standing on roads in Immingham
Allen Cunningham, from Humberside Fire and Rescue Service, said the flooding had been very localised.
"That doesn't negate on the impact it has on those people who have been affected by flooding.
"We have had pumps working throughout the night."
He said he expected water levels to drop quickly throughout the day as the weather improves.
The MP for Great Grimsby, Melanie Onn, posted on Twitter some roads in her constituency were "like a river" and that the water was "over my ankles".Oh yeah, baby! It’s me, Lumpz the Clown, here to regale you folks with yet another retrogaming infographic, this one centered around one of the most notoriously difficult games ever created: Ghosts ‘n Goblins! My first time playing this game was on my trusty Nintendo Entertainment System, and even though I spent countless hours in the arcade every Sunday growing up, I never even laid eyes on the original arcade cabinet.
However, it was due to the arcade game’s enormous popularity that I was even able to play it on my NES. The result of its success spawned a number of spin-off franchises and multiple ports to various home computers. Some of these ports are laughable when compared to the epicness of its arcade predecessor, but regardless, Arthur’s quest to save Princess Prin-Prin has left an indelible mark on our industry that won’t be going away any time soon!
What Tokuro Fujiwara created that one fateful day wasn’t just another game that fell in the cracks, but rather a rage quit-inducing juggernaut that continues to make even the steeliest of gamers humble. Thanks for stopping by, and Lumpz the Clown OUT!Theresa May pulled the big rabbit out of her hat today as she took the major step of personally launching the Tory Party Conference in Birmingham.
For the latest news from Monday at Conservative Party Conference, visit our live coverage of Day Two.
The PM tried to end infighting on Day One by unveiling a Great Repeal Bill and announcing Article 50 will be triggered before the end of March 2017.
In a rare first-day speech to delegates she attacked MPs who want to vote on Brexit in Parliament as "insulting the intelligence of the British people".
Mind you, it took her a while to get going, and nobody seems sure why.
“They're not standing up for democracy, they’re trying to subvert it," she said.
She was followed by Brexiteer ministers David Davis and Priti Patel.
The main hall programme rounded off with a rousing (if rambling) speech from Boris Johnson, where he made an unfortunate boo-boo about Africa.
Meanwhile, we took a tour around the facilities to find the most quintessentially Tory things at Tory Conference.
And outside the high-security fence, a huge anti-austerity protest raged on the streets of Birmingham.
Here's how it happened.WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The U.S. gained 120,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate fell to 8.6% from 9.0%, the Labor Department said Friday. The government also revised jobs data for October and September to show that 72,000 additional jobs were created. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast a 125,000 increase in employment in November and no change in the jobless rate. About half of the drop in the unemployment rate stemmed from a decline in the number of workers in the labor force. Hiring in October was revised up to 100,000 from 80,000 and the job gains in September were revised up to 210,00 from 158,000. In November, companies in the private sector hired 140,000 workers, with retailers adding 50,000. Government cut 20,000 jobs, the Labor Department said. Average hourly earnings fell 0.1% last month to $23.18 and the workweek was unchanged at 34.3 hours. The broader U6 unemployment rate dropped to 15.6% from 16.2% in October.
Have breaking news sent to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Bulletin emails. Sign up here.On Tuesday, President Barack Obama officially announced the five men in charge of reviewing the secretive and powerful US intelligence apparatus: Richard A. Clarke, Michael Morell, Cass Sunstein, Geoffrey Stone, and Peter Swire. The group — which includes three former White House advisors and one former CIA deputy director — will be given the task of restoring public trust in a much-maligned program, using what Obama has called "new thinking for a new era." But how much new thinking can be done in a few months, and how motivated are the panelists to make real changes?
An interim briefing is due in 60 days, a full report by December
The panel was created in response to leaks by Edward Snowden, particularly regarding the PRISM internet surveillance program and a database that pulls in huge amounts of telephone metadata. But its actual scope is broad and nonspecific. Obama announced in early August that the panel would "review our entire intelligence and communications technologies," a wording that could mean anything from examining precisely how the NSA stores phone and email records to taking a high-level look at virtually every agency that deals in surveillance. This work must be done quickly: an interim briefing is due in a mere 60 days and a full report by the end of the year. The former will be submitted to the president through his director of national intelligence, James Clapper, despite promises that the man who gave Congress false information would be minimally involved in the process.
In this week’s announcement, the White House said it hoped the group would give advice on using technology "in a way that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while respecting our commitment to privacy and civil liberties, recognizing our need to maintain the public trust, and reducing the risk of unauthorized disclosure." The panel’s composition and its vast purview, however, could suggest that it’s more focused on public relations than actually making change.
Peter Swire, center, on a 2009 antitrust policy panel. (Image credit: Center for American Progress)
Since all but one of the panel names were leaked last week, public response has ranged from a tepid shrug to infuriation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation called the committee "illusory," saying that "a task force led by General Clapper full of insiders — and not directed to look at the extensive abuse — will never get at the bottom of the unconstitutional spying."
"It's a distinguished group of people to be sure, but I don't know if it satisfies the test of being independent and objective," Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) tells The Verge. "I'm not going to quite bash it as a group of Washington insiders … but I think the White House could have done a better job in getting fresh eyes to look at some of the problems." Some critics have also pointed out that none of the members have technical expertise. "Lawyers argue about surveillance law, while a technologist demolishes the ‘it's not sensitive, just phone numbers’ argument. We need both," writes Christopher Soghoian of the ACLU on Twitter. The White House did not respond to questions about the makeup of the panel.
"The fact is the claim that they're unconstitutional and illegal is wildly premature."
Almost all of the members raise red flags to people who want a rigorous review of privacy issues. Michael Morell has spent almost his entire career at the CIA; he stepped down as deputy director only a few months ago. Former Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein has drawn some of the greatest outrage because of a 2008 paper called "Conspiracy Theories," in which he and co-author Adrian Vermeule suggested that government officials quietly enter conspiracy chatrooms or forums and attempt to undermine users’ arguments. Richard A. Clarke, previously the National Security Council’s counterterrorism advisor, has demonstrated a willingness to improve cybersecurity by any means necessary, suggesting that Obama allow the Department of Homeland security to "inspect what enters and exits the United States in cyberspace" and scan web traffic outside the US to stop industrial espionage.
Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor whose name was not leaked before the announcement, sits on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union, and he harshly criticized the Bush administration’s wiretapping program. But he believes that collecting phone metadata is entirely different. "There is, so far as I can tell from everything that's been revealed, absolutely nothing illegal or criminal about these programs," he says in an interview with Democracy Now. "They may be terrible public policy — I'm not sure I approve of it at all — but the fact is the claim that they're unconstitutional and illegal is wildly premature." Edward Snowden, he says, is "most certainly a criminal who deserves serious punishment."
Michael Morell, left, and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at the CIA. (Image credit: Chuck Hagel)
Of all the members, Peter Swire seems most likely to push for greater transparency and limits on NSA spying, although he’s also a |
times but there is little sign of his having got bored of the topic yet. Indeed, as the conversation goes on, perhaps helped by the fact that he's still in his black get-up, a thin plaster running across his cheek, I get the distinct impression I'm talking not to Cranston but to White, or rather Heisenberg himself.
"This type of character has never been depicted before," he enthuses. "Nowhere in the history of television – think about this – have we seen a character go through this metamorphosis. When we look at our favourite television shows, they've all stayed the same; stasis is part of television lore. What drew people to television, was: 'Every week I'm going to see the same guy and I'm grateful for that.'
"But with Breaking Bad we were looking to do something that would upset people. Week after week they're watching, going, 'Ooh, what's he doing now?' and 'I used to like him, now I hate him – he was a good guy, now he's a bad guy and I'm confused and, grrrr, I'm pacing and …'"
He pauses, letting the heat out of his voice: "The passion and the vitriol that this show creates, it's unprecedented."
Bad Company: Bryan Cranston (centre), Dean Norris (third right) and the cast of Breaking Bad. Photograph: Allstar/HBO/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
Part of the alchemy of Breaking Bad lies in the way Walter's transition from hero to (nigh-on) villain is executed. A suspension of disbelief is rarely required, so consistently applied are the rules of cause and effect. Professional pride and technical skill leads Walter to craft the finest meth in the southwestern states of America, but that attracts the attention of genuinely criminal individuals. Walter in turn is forced to defend himself, but the only effective options are those that make him increasingly indistinguishable from those he is confronting.
"The thing that feels the most telling, really, is the very first decision when Walter chose to become someone he's not," says Cranston. "The first time he decided, 'I'm going to cook crystal meth and make money.' That's not him. He's not in his element.
"For a smart man, it was a stupid, very shortsighted decision. He soon realises he doesn't have the skills for it, but by now it's rolling, and it's rolling away from him. It's like an avalanche: he's constantly just ahead and he's got to keep moving. So when it comes to later in the seasons and he calls for the execution and murder of nine people in jail it actually makes sense to him."
So, yeah, it's fair to say that Walter does change a bit over time. The jail massacre is one of Season Five's major scenes, alongside a breathtaking railway robbery (performed on a speeding train) and a crucial discovery made on the toilet. It's this bathroom revelation that sets up the final eight episodes (Season Six or 5B depending on your preference), which – in a rare moment of synchronisation for a programme that has largely been ignored by UK broadcasters – are to air over here just 24 hours after US transmission, on Netflix.
"It's a very odd business when you have to talk to your director about how to take a shit," notes Dean Norris, who plays Walter's nemesis and brother-in-law Hank Schrader. "I think what Breaking Bad does first of all is put comedy and drama together. Then it does the small, intimate scenes brilliantly. But we also have these operatic scenes that no other show, including The Wire, really does. We don't limit ourselves to naturalism and realism; sometimes we're surreal."
Hank is a blowhard man's man but also a DEA agent, whose path is inextricably, unavoidably drawn towards that of the mysterious Heisenberg. He's had his fair share of operatic moments: from encountering an informant whose severed head had been placed on top of a tortoise, to combatting twin Mexican assassins in a Shoe Dept car park. Now, after his toilet revelation – he finds a book that contains an inscription linking Walter to Heisenberg – there is a showdown coming and not many are anticipating it will end in a hug.
That it is going to end, however, is guaranteed. Creator Vince Gilligan has built towards an ending from day one, even if its precise form has not always been clear ("I can't even remember what my original ending was," he admitted recently). Breaking Bad will not be cancelled mid-run or allowed to run on until its vital juices have been fully drained. Neither will it end with a black screen. That, however, almost heaps more pressure on these final eight episodes.
Breaking point: Dean Norris as Hank Schrader and Bryan Cranston as Walter/Heisenberg. Photograph: Frank Ockenfels
Over the two days that we are allowed on to the set of the show, everyone is looking for clues. We hear snatches of dialogue and wonder what it means (Walter and Jesse nearly killed each other the last time they saw each other, so why are they speaking again?). We get a tour of the massive sound stage on which interior scenes are filmed and speculate as to why a photograph of Season Five newcomer Todd is placed so prominently on a wall; why Walter's car – the Pontiac Aztek that he sold on in Season Five – is sitting in the car park with its front panels smashed in; why a capsule of ricin (manufactured by Walter in Season Four and surely Breaking Bad's equivalent of Chekhov's loaded gun) is sitting in a props trolley on the side of Civic Plaza.
In that sense, at least, everyone is in the same boat. "I don't know the ending, I haven't asked," says Cranston. "Truthfully, I want this series to end exactly as Vince Gilligan wants it to end. I have no designs. I only read the scripts one week ahead of time. I'm along for the ride as well as the audience."
Whatever the outcome, Breaking Bad has left its mark. This is because, however unlikely the scenario, we can all relate to the show's core issues. What lengths would we go to to protect our families? For what price would we compromise our morals? What does it mean to be alive?
"In my initial research for a role, I always try to find the emotional core of a character," says Cranston. "For Hal in Malcolm In The Middle it was fear. He was afraid of everything and there's a lot of comedy to be mined from fear. With Walt, I had a difficult time. I was trying to get in there and I was getting frustrated.
"Then I realised: 'Oh, I know what it is.' In the beginning, his emotional core was so introverted from looking at apathetic students and his own missed opportunities that he imploded. He loved his family but for the most part it was just about getting by. Then this thing happened, this diagnosis, and a volcano erupted. Now his emotions spewed, they shot out: fear, anxiety, worry, power, thirst, hunger, lust, avarice, hubris … He's feeling everything and he's alive. He hasn't been alive for most of his adult life but now he is, it's just for two years but he's fucking alive. He's ready to go and, in some ways, I don't know if he would trade it."
Soon, we'll find out just how expensive that trade might be.
Breaking Bad will be available to Netflix members in the UK and Ireland starting on 12 Aug, with new episodes available every MondayWhen Chief Bill Blair leaves his top Toronto cop post next April, he will not go empty handed.
He’ll receive a full year’s salary — $367,719, plus $3,006 in benefits — as provided by his contract with the Toronto Police Services Board.
A clause states that if he were to ask for an extension — and refused — he is due the year’s worth of pay. The police services board recently turned down his request for a contract extension.
Board Chairman Alok Mukherjee would not comment directly on Blair’s contract, but acknowledged the extra year does kick in since Blair asked for a third term.
“Had he decided to retire at the end of the term, that would have been the end of the contract.”
Mukherjee agreed the reality of the wording put the chief in a position where he had no choice but to ask for the extension and no option for the board, but to pay it.
Salary and the contract for the next chief, he said, will be part of a new way of thinking moving forward.
In addition to the payout, Blair will also be compensated for outstanding vacation time.
“In recent years we have insisted he take his vacation time but for seven or eight years he worked so hard and didn’t take any,” said Mukherjee. “He was healthy and was always working. Never took a sick day.”
Sources say with six weeks eligibility a year, Blair’s pay backlog could add up to almost another full year’s pay at the end of this contract.
There is enough time owning that Blair could conceivably go into retirement well before his final day in April as other senior officers have done.
An acting chief could be named if he were to chose to do this.Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.
Test-Riding Peloton's Pricey (and Excellent) At-Home Spin Bike
Exclusive: All About Hem, Fab's New Home Store
North Korea's Kim Jong-un has been absent from official duties throughout the month of September, reportedly due to ankle injuries caused by wearing Cuban heels to his public events. (Cuban heels are basically high-heeled shoes designed for men.) Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo reported that Kim Jong-un is being treated for fractured ankles due to the stress caused by the shoes, coupled with his noticeable cheese-induced weight gain.
· Kim Jong-un 'Had Surgery on Fractured Ankles' [The Chosun Ilbo]
· The 10 Most Infamous Footwear Lawsuits in High-Heeled History [Racked]
· Here Are All of the Ways High Heels Are Ruining Your Body [Racked]
Racked Video Archives: How Instagram Changed New York Fashion WeekGlenn Beck is returning to television after a little over a year of being away from it.
Beck's company announced Wednesday that it has signed a deal with Dish Network, the satellite operator, to bring his online television network, TheBlazeTV, to the airwaves. The move completes a kind of circle for Beck, who left his Fox News show in June of 2011.
The New York Times was the first to report the deal. The channel will launch at 5 PM on Wednesday, when Beck's eponymous program airs. In a blog post, Chris Balfe, CEO of The Blaze, signaled that the Dish deal will be followed by others, on cable and on satellite. He wrote that a year of Web TV has allowed the company to take the steps needed to return to the terrestrial platform:
But now, a year later, everything has changed. Our subscribers' enthusiasm and support has allowed us to make the necessary investments in programming and infrastructure, and we're now in a position to launch a cable and satellite channel without losing control. We have the best staff, the best talent, world-class facilities and great distribution partners lined up, and we've done it all while ensuring that we answer to no one except our own audience.
The big question, of course, is whether Beck can replicate the heights of influence he reached with Fox News. He told the Times that, across his various platforms, he is being seen and heard by more people than ever before. More than 300,000 people had subscribed to his Web network as of March, and Beck's radio show is still one of the biggest in the nation. But he has not been able to penetrate popular discourse in the same way he did when he had millions of Fox News viewers -- as well as eagle-eyed "Daily Show" staffers -- watching his every move.StarCraft II patch 2.0.4 is on the horizon and it’s bringing a number of changes to your StarCraft II experience, including an all new user interface, Clans and Groups, new Replay features, and more.
For a more detailed guide about what’s in the patch, read the Coming Soon: StarCraft II 2.0.4 blog. In the meantime, since all these big changes are coming, we wanted to provide a little guidance so everyone is prepared and able to get into the game quickly!
Getting the Patch
The patching process for patch 2.0.4 will be a bit different from many previous StarCraft II patches, and will occur in two stages. First, a box will appear asking you to optimize your build of StarCraft II.
Once you click ‘Begin’, the StarCraft II streaming launcher will appear and ask you to wait while it reconfigures game files. That’s a process that will take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so, but whatever the wait is, it’s important to stick it out and not cancel the process, since that can cause issues with patch installation.
Then, once your game client optimization is done, Patch 2.0.4 will begin downloading and being applied simultaneously. The progress bar at the bottom of the patching window will you know when enough data has been downloaded to allow you to play the game.
Please keep in mind that if the progress bar isn’t full when you begin playing, then that means that the patch hasn’t been fully applied and there may be some gameplay hiccups. That’s normal, and you can wait for the progress bar to fill completely if you’re concerned about performance. If you’ve generally experienced no issues downloading StarCraft II patches through the launcher in the past, then this process should go well.
Patching Smoothly
There are some steps you can take before you start downloading the patch to help make sure that patching proceeds without any issues. It’s important to make sure that your computer is configured to allow for downloads or changes to existing programs. Your firewall, antivirus, security programs, and/or router may be blocking downloads, and it might be necessary to ensure that they’re configured to allow downloads. Also, your operating system and your antivirus or other security programs may try to protect StarCraft II from changes. It might be necessary to temporarily disable or alter settings to allow these changes. It’s also important to make sure that you’re configured to patch properly, since, with the advent of streaming patches, standalone patches are no longer available.
These links cover some of the details regarding how to prepare your computer for patching, as well as trouble-shooting steps for common issues:
As always, if you’re still experiencing issues, you can get in touch with Technical Support.
GL HF and we’ll see you on Battle.net!Pin 6K Shares
(ZHE) As Zero Hedge reported a few days ago, Bill and Hillary Clinton spent Friday night in Martha’s Vineyard celebrating Bill’s 70th birthday (posted here). We’re sure it was a grand affair, well worth the heat Obama had to take from Louisiana flood victims to attend.
Turns out the following morning, Hillary, not one to be bothered with traditional peasant forms of travel, awoke and took her private jet just 20 miles over to Nantucket where the Rothschilds will be hosting a fundraiser. The event is open to all…well anyone who can afford the $100,000 per person price tag. Hopefully this is a sign that the whole global warming thing has been solved and we can all rest comfortably at night knowing that we’re safe from sudden, violent attacks at the hands of ManBearPig.
But we can’t really blame her, it’s exhausting running around the country to places like Cleveland, Ohio letting factory workers know how “hard” you’re working to make the “rich” pay their fair share.
But not ones to let facts get in the way of a good narrative, we’ll just ignore that pesky little post where we recently pointed out how the Rothschilds are using Nevada as a tax haven for wealthy international investors to avoid taxes (see “Rothschild Humiliates Obama, Reveals That “America Is The Biggest Tax Haven In The World””):
Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial institution, has opened a trust company in Reno, Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah’s and Eldorado casinos. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, subject to the new international disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt. * * *
For financial advisers, the current state of play is simply a good business opportunity. In a draft of his San Francisco presentation, Rothschild’s Penney wrote that the U.S. “is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world.” The U.S., he added in language later excised from his prepared remarks, lacks “the resources to enforce foreign tax laws and has little appetite to do so.”
We’re sure this fundraiser was just a convenient opportunity for Clinton to discuss with the Rothschilds how to eliminate the many tax protections afforded to her Billionaire friends.
This article (Hillary Just Took A Private Jet For 20 Mile Ride to Rothschild Fundraiser) by Tyler Durden originally appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was used with permission. Tune in! Anti-Media Radio airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: [email protected].
Pin 6K SharesImagine being able to examine anything you want, at the atomic level, in your living room. If Sacha De'Angeli gets his way, a scanning tunneling electron microscope -- currently just the domain of research labs -- will be something you can order off the Web, as an easy-to-assemble, open-source kit, for about $1000.
Scanning tunneling electron microscopes -- or STMs, for short -- are sophisticated imaging tools used in nanoscience and nanotechnology. The heart of the device is a conductive tip, which is guided over the surface to be observed, at a very tiny distance. An applied voltage means that a current flows between the tip and the surface, and the variation of the current reveals clues about the structure of the surface. A computer hooked to the STM processes the data, generating an image of the sample.
De'Angeli, a 34-year-old tinkerer living in Chicago who runs a website called Chemhacker, came up with the idea for the open-source STM while experimenting with creating nanoparticles in his house. He began building the STM in October, at his home and at a nearby hack space called Pumping Station: One, with the assistance of his friends Jordan Bunker and Tim Saylor. "I was trying to make a ferrofluid, and I sort of built a cool recipe to do it, but I wasn't exactly sure if I made the actual nanoparticles," De'Angeli says. "You can't tell what they look like without an electron microscope. Obviously a $30,000 machine isn't something I can afford for a hobby. I found these projects where people had built scanning tunneling electron microscopes for really not very much money. I started this project I found, that dates back to 2003 by John Alexander, and I started to modernize it a bit."
Several homegrown recipes abound for building scanning tunneling electron microscopes. One such project, from a research group at the University of Muenster in Germany, is called the SXM; through their website, you can buy a construction kit for 985 euros. But many of these projects, designed by academics, rely on pricey external hardware -- like signal generators and oscilloscopes -- that the average person might not have. They also don't always use the most up-to-date technology, and while some have released schematics, none of them are open source. De'Angeli's project is designed to stand alone, and it is entirely open source, relying on the Arduino, the popular open-source microcontroller board, which is in active use for thousands of projects around the globe. A Python script takes the raw data and pulls it into an image file. D'Angeli's hope is that average folks -- people not affiliated with science departments at all -- will start making and using their own STMs at home.
De'Angeli is presenting his project this week at the Open Science Summit in Berkeley. He is careful to note that the open-source STM is still a work in progress, and its first images should be forthcoming within the next few months. "There's probably some big scary problem that I haven't been able to think about yet, that's probably going to come up and bite me," he says. Considering his tremendous progress so far, it should be finished any time now. "I don't know the limits of it," he says. "It's kind of exciting to see what people will make with it."Wolfram|Alpha launched its first Computational knowledge engine app back in 2009. Before this week, the app was available just for mobile and tablet products like the iPad and Android devices. Now the company has branched out and released a version of the app for Windows 7. The app is now available for $2.99 and can be purchased and downloaded via Intel's AppUp online store. The app is made primarily for notebooks and ultrabooks but it can be used by any 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 PC.
The announcement about the new app states:
The Wolfram|Alpha App for PCs & Ultrabooks features an optimized user interface that takes advantage of the full PC screen. The app also features a specialized keyboard, easy resizing of results, and extended copy and paste of query results and graphics. Students and professionals use Wolfram|Alpha in a variety of subject areas. Students can enter their specific homework problems and get immediate answers, including a "Show steps" feature for math-related queries.
The plan is for the company to release even more of these kinds of apps for Windows 7 users. These Course Assistant Apps will offer help in studying and finding answers for users in subjects like calculus, astronomy, physics, and chemistry.
Image via Wolfram|AlphaMeetings of September 3rd and 4th, 2015
The existence of a secret space program has been meticulously and carefully hidden from the American public, and the world at large, for well over 75 years.
As you know if you have read this site or watched our weekly Cosmic Disclosure series on Gaiam TV, I grew up in a world that is so far beyond the limits of most people’s imagination that they would immediately write my experiences off as fiction.
Most UFO enthusiasts believe the US government acquired working ET spacecraft from the Roswell crash of 1947 – almost 70 years ago. Many also believe these craft were successfully “reverse engineered,” giving them the ability to effortlessly travel throughout our solar system – and beyond.
Even with the crude rocket technology of the 1960s, we were able to send people to the moon, land craft there and drive rovers around on the surface.
However, people still hit a severe mental roadblock in imagining that our own reverse-engineered craft were flown to the Moon, Mars and elsewhere, and were used to build bases there out of local materials.
Is it possible that a secret space program could have existed without us knowing about it? Absolutely.
The Manhattan Project developed the nuclear bomb. It was in operation for seven years, employed well over 120,000 people, conscripted multiple secret facilities all over the US, and hardly any of its own employees knew what they were working on until the bombs detonated.
Remember: not one person in the Manhattan Project squealed. Not one. Not ever. The penalty for speaking out was terrifying enough to ensure complete compliance. Therefore it is absolutely possible that an even more advanced program could have been generated, on a much larger scale, and still exist to this day -- without any public awareness.
Let me assure you: the Secret Space Program [SSP] is an absolute fact. The bases are out there. They are vast in size, scope and technology. Our planet is now crumbling in a Greater Depression because a majority of our wealth has been siphoned off to build this vast, interplanetary infrastructure.
Did it really cost NASA 209 billion dollars to launch the Space Shuttle a few times a year? No. Did the Stealth bombers really cost 2 billion dollars apiece to build? No. Did the Pentagon really “lose” 2.1 trillion dollars, as Donald Rumsfeld announced the day before 9/11? No.
I have seen the vast, glittering facilities our money has built with my own eyes -- through the windows and transparent panels of advanced spacecraft. I have landed in those craft and walked in those bases. I have met the people who live and work there. I have seen their faces and spoken to them just like I am speaking to you now.
There are millions of other people, originally born here on Earth, who have shared my experiences. Regrettably, hardly any of them have spoken out thus far – since the threat of doing so can very easily be lethal, and it is nearly impossible to return to Earth once you enter into this world.
Many have been a part of this world only to be “blank slated”, have screen memories implanted then returned to live out rather mundane lives. Some of the people who have been robbed of these amazing memories and experiences are some of the strongest skeptics of these topics.
We quickly discovered that our own solar system is literally teeming with intelligent civilizations -- from many different points of origin. Some of them are extremely benevolent, some are extremely negative and others are just visiting, without really picking a side.
The reason so many different types of UFOs have been seen is that there are many, many different civilizations operating in our airspace – with a tremendous diversity of technologies available to them.
The SSP has been owned and controlled by a very dark aspect of our planet for some time – an intergenerational cult dating back to at least the Roman Empire. Many have called these “Secret Earth Government Syndicates” the Illuminati or Cabal.
Their main business is building hyper-advanced technology – and they have gotten quite good at it. As impossible as this may seem, I was told they are now engaging in regular trade with over 900 different intelligent civilizations.
If anyone shows up who has something newer and better than the old stuff, they will quickly find a way to acquire it and mass-produce it – no matter how unethical or brutal the methods required.
Since these secret earth government syndicates have very negative spiritual beliefs, they ended up allying with the most evil and powerful ET group of all – a confederacy of reptilian humanoid races collectively known as the Draco.
It is a sad but accurate fact that the vast majority of those who have joined the SSP are made to take part in brutal and terrifying situations intended to ensure they can never escape, and will never speak out even if they did. I was personally forced into many situations that were deeply traumatic and have forever altered my perspective on reality.
Several years ago, an alliance formed within this group to restore peace and freedom to our planet, and release the marvelous technologies that are being held back – but they faced towering obstacles.
For many years, Hollywood movies, financed by these same corporate interests, inundated us with film after film of an “alien invasion.” Any and all such visitors were portrayed as brutal, terrifying villains who must be destroyed at all costs.
These films were intended to seed our collective consciousness with fear and terror – a xenophobic hatred of all intelligent civilizations other than our own.
The plan was to eventually strike us in a mass “Alien 9/11,” with huge armadas of reverse-engineered craft. In this event they could wipe out any opposing areas or countries they wanted – just level them flat. The phoenix they hoped to rise from these ashes would be a global “New World Order” to fight this so-called “alien” menace.
Of course, they would own and control the whole thing themselves. That was the plan. However, they failed to realize that benevolent ET civilizations held them on a very tight leash, and they would never be permitted to carry through with these plans.
A giant, Neptune-sized sphere visited the outer planets of our solar system in the 1980s. It was confronted by our people and asked to leave, which it did willingly. Many more spheres began appearing in the late 1990s into the early 2000s.
Then, in approximately the year 2012, another 100-plus spheres arrived. These spheres were of colossal size – with three approximate size categories corresponding to the Moon, Neptune and Jupiter in circumference.
The beings associated with these spheres were very highly advanced. They do not require technology to travel throughout the universe or accomplish any of their goals. Even to the most advanced ETs in contact with our SSP, these new folks are on an entirely different level – and far more advanced.
The SSP believed that the benevolent ETs were bound by a “Prime Directive” that forced them not to interfere. For many years, that was true. As it turns out, the Prime Directive was always intended for our own protection – so these negative groups would never actually be able to completely conquer and overthrow our planet.
David Wilcock worked since the mid-1990s to spread the word about the greater reality we live in, and along the way came in contact with many high-level insiders with a surprisingly deep knowledge of these classified subjects.
After I began disclosing my knowledge to him, and finding countless connections with what other insiders told him, a wild rollercoaster of unforeseen events led to me coming forward and revealing my true name and identity to the world – at great personal cost.
Only a few months after this was done, the beings within these spheres contacted the SSP and asked for me by name. I had not worked for them for many years and this was the most profoundly life-altering event I have ever been through since I was first contacted by the Blue Avians a little over four 4 years prior.
Protocol and paperwork was thrown to the side as I was brought back into a world I had only had seldom, brief contact with since the 1980s.
Suddenly, I was being asked to speak on behalf of these beings – the Sphere Alliance – as their delegate. This included addressing the SSP as well as a group of over 40 different intelligent civilizations known as the Super-Federation, who have been running 22 different genetic programs on humanity for thousands and thousands of years.
Again… I understand that this story seems extremely farfetched. Let me remind you that I had everything to lose – including a six-figure-a-year salary – and nothing to gain by coming forward.
The Gaiam TV job does not pay enough to support my family. It has only been through your conscientious donations that I have been able to continue doing this at all.
The people in the SSP Alliance had a team member who we are calling Lt. Col. Gonzales, who had been in contact with the Sphere Alliance for about four years – roughly the same length of time as I had been.
Gonzales was the SSP’s choice for a delegate. I was an outsider – a has-been who lacked the training and expertise to be brought into such a role. That was their feeling. As a result, I was ridiculed and harassed when I was brought back into their world.
Tensions mounted as they continued to look for flaws and see me as unworthy of the role I was given. I suppose it is human nature to look for character defects in others, particularly if they have been given some position of authority – whether they wanted the job or not.
In order to fully understand the background of all my experiences, it is necessary to read previous articles on this site and / or to watch the Cosmic Disclosure series.
I had found myself in an awkward position in recent weeks after I had some meetings with the SSP Alliance Council that became very heated and personal.
They told me, flat out, that they did not want me to be involved in future delegation meetings -- and that Gonzales had proved to be far more adept as a diplomat than I had.
Furthermore, I had upset some of the Super Federation members by providing detailed information about some of them at our most recent Gaiam TV recording of Cosmic Disclosure, which hasn’t even aired yet. It was made pretty clear that they were trying to force me out of the position I was in, and have Gonzales take my place.
Recently, the Sphere Being Alliance indicated that they would not honor the SSP Alliance Council and the Super Federation Council’s requests that I be replaced. This led to a meeting with explosive tension where I really lost my cool, as did they. There was yelling, aggression and cursing. I am by no means spiritually superior, and this has been as stressful on me as it has on them.
We had a couple of meetings after this first explosive one where things settled down, and we exchanged mutual apologies. Ultimately we all want the same thing – to free humanity, and our entire solar system, from the rule of these corrupt secret earth government syndicates, and the highly evil groups that have been controlling them.
As a group, the SSP has now been sharing ideas and guidance to help shape my own future, as well as that of humanity as a whole, in a more constructive manner. I am simply the first of many insiders who will be coming forward and revealing the full scope of what has gone on for so long.
As I have said before, the NSA held a vast treasure-trove of SSP documents for blackmail purposes. Snowden captured all of this data in his epic hack. The encryption was only very recently broken.
Once the public is aware and angry enough to hear the truth, such as in the aftermath of a highly upsetting economic collapse, this documentation will be released in a vast data dump. And it will utterly transform reality as we know it in a matter of days.
The AD or “After Disclosure” society will be so radically different that every film, every TV show, every blog, every YouTube video, every book, every article, everything from before the event will be as antique and quaint as a black-and-white silent film with a scratchy, bouncy piano soundtrack.
We will realize the awesome scope of deception that worked against us for not hundreds, but literally thousands of years. It will be a time of grief and healing as we are forced to accept the truth of our past, and direct our attention towards co-creating a much bigger and brighter future.
In these same meetings, I found out that Gonzales had attended a couple of Super Federation conferences without my knowledge. He had also attended a newly formed council of Ancient Earth Breakaway Civilizations.
I was aware that advanced civilizations had come and gone from Earth’s surface in our distant past. They used their own advanced technology to terraform vast pockets inside the earth with all the comforts of home. This provided them with a protective barrier against whatever enemies, both natural and extraterrestrial, threatened them on the surface – including cataclysmic natural disasters.
In my time at the SSP, I had access to “smart-glass pads” that were similar to an Ipad, which revealed some of the civilizations living and warring inside the earth. Some of them were more humanlike and familiar, whereas certain others were reptilian. One particularly nasty race was called the Raptors, and had hideous reptilian features as well as a scrawny plume of feathers running down their backs.
This Ancient Earth council, by comparison, was comprised of the more humanlike groups. They were aware of some of the other opposing factions, but were not in alliance with them. The humanlike groups decided to sort out their differences with one another out of necessity after a rise in conflicts with various other subterranean groups.
I was informed that I would be attending meetings with this Ancient Earth council in the near future. This very much excited and intrigued my curiosity. At the same time, these meetings have brought me face to face with highly negative groups, including the Draco “White Royal”, so I always have a certain sense of dread when facing any new experiences of this type.
Not long after I found out I would be meeting this unforeseen new group, I was contacted and given a date and time for when it would happen. I was given no other information about the groups I would meet or what to expect, which I have started to become accustomed to.
On the date of the meeting I expected to travel via a blue orb, as I would normally do for any meeting. This is not how SSP people usually travel by any means. It is a portal system used by the Sphere Alliance that seems to involve the use of a living, conscious being – the blue orb – as the facilitator of a nearly instantaneous journey to wherever I need to go.
I made sure I was up and out of bed at the proper time, in the middle of the night. I expected to experience the travel procedure that has now become a normal occurrence. Ten minutes passed and nothing had happened. I walked into my living room.
I stood in the living room for a few more minutes and nothing happened. There have been times in the past where meetings were scheduled and they just never occurred, and only later would I find out there had been interference or problems that necessitated their delay.
I decided that since I was already awake, and the meeting was not going to happen, I would get on the computer and catch up on emails and Facebook posts.
I was standing at the foot of my couch when there was a bright flash of light. I felt a strange static electrical sensation for a moment and then noticed I was not in my house any longer. My eyes were a bit blurry, both from it being very early morning and from the unexpected flash of light.
I found myself in a very large and perfectly polished granite room that was round, with a domed ceiling.
There were two men in beautiful silk robes and silk fabric sandals standing there. They were standing on either side of an arched doorway. There were similar doorways on all four sides of the room with two men standing sentry. Each of the two men looked slightly different in ethnicity and build. Each man was also wearing a large gold pendant with a different symbol on it.
I stood there and looked from door to door. None of the men acknowledged me or acted as if they even noticed that I had just appeared out of nowhere in the room with them.
I stood there silently, not knowing whether to call out to them and ask any questions. I once again found myself in a situation with no preparation or intelligence on what to expect or how to engage those that I encountered.
Soon afterwards, I heard the sounds of people coming down what sounded like a corridor in the direction of one of the doors. I then saw five figures emerge from the doorway and head in my direction. They all removed their hoods at the same time as they approached me.
I immediately saw Gonzales walking behind a rather tall and beautiful woman with white hair. She had narrow facial features and large blue eyes. She appeared to be around thirty years of age.
Gonzales had a smirk on his face. I immediately knew it was because the roles were reversed and |
at birth, even before I knew the words freedom or human rights.'
She added: 'No humans deserve to be oppressed just because of their birth place.'
Kim Jong-il leader of North Korea from 1994 to 2011 - the year of his death
'No humans deserve to be oppressed just because of their birth place' - The escapee called for action against such human rights violators
Freedom of speech: Yeonmi spoke at the One Young World Summit 2014 in Dublin on Saturday
Yeonmi revealed that only one channel is aired on TV in the closed-off country which, like films, can only be used there as a tool for propaganda.
'North Koreans are being terrorised today. When I was growing up, I never saw anything about love stories between men and women...there is no Romeo and Juliet.'
At 9 years old, she recalls being invited to watch the mother of her friend be publicly shot for a freedom exercised everyday in the Western world:
'Her crime? Watching a Hollywood movie.'
'North Koreans are being terrorised today' - She tried to hold it together as she relived some horrific past experiences
'We were prepared to kill ourselves' - While escaping with her parents, Yeonmi recalls they would have committed suicide before returning to North Korea
Learning a vital life lesson at the age of four - to not even dare to whisper - the brave escapee recalls a childhood of paranoia as she feared the regime could ‘read my mind’.
She goes on to explain that the repercussions of criticising the dictatorship could result in three generations of a family being locked up in prison, tortured or even killed.
Meanwhile, her road to freedom was equally traumatising, as she describes escaping through the Gobi Desert by following a compass and then ‘the stars to freedom’ when it broke.
Thankful: Yeomni expressed gratitude for the opportunity to raise awareness and tell the story about the closed-off country where all forms of communication are controlled to the highest degree
'We were prepared to kill ourselves,' Yeonmi explained in relation to what would happen if her family were caught escaping and sent back to North Korea. 'We wanted to leave as humans.'
North Korea exposed: In 1948, the country emerged amid the chaos following the end of World War II A family dynasty leads North Korea's secretive, communist regime and tolerates no dissent Kim Jong-un is currently the supreme leader, following the death of his father Kim Jong-il, who ruled North Korea for 17 years, in 2011 Every element of everyday life is controlled, including what people can say, do, read, wear, style their hair and pursue as a career Anyone attempting to assert their rights faces brutal punishment including torture or public execution 100,000 people, including children, are detained in political prison camps and other detention facilities North Korea is also suffering from a food crisis and there is mass malnourishment and reports of people starving to death are common. Source: Amnesty International
At one point, she recalled her father dying and how she was forced to bury him in secret at 3am: 'I couldn't even cry, I was so afraid I'd be sent back to North Korea.'
She also remembers the horror of watching her mother allowing herself to be raped instead of her, when she was just 13 years old.
As she walked through the desert'scared of dying', Yeonmi burst into tears remembering how alone she felt: 'I thought no body in this world cared and only the stars were with me.'
Appearing alongside figures including Kofi Annan, Sir Bob Geldof, the former Mexican president Vicente Fox, and Dame Ellen MacArthur, the world record-breaking sailor, Yeonmi expressed her sincere gratitude for the opportunity to use the stage to finally share her story.
'But you have now listened to my story and you have cared. Thank you very much.
'We need to focus less on the regime and more on the people who are being forgotten... we are the ones who can make them visible.'SUMMARY: In 2016, Switzerland is going to vote on a popular initiative that asks for the introduction of an unconditional Basic Income. Daniel Häni, one of the promoters of the initiative, wrote this book with Philip Kovce in order to gather support for the initiative. It is made for a lay audience rather than a scientific publication with some succinct arguments against popular criticisms of basic income, for instance that it would be killing personal initiative, promoting idleness, etc. The title gives an indication that the authors do not see the Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) primarily as a mechanism or institution to combat poverty. On the contrary: the UBI prepares for abundance which is the reality of modern societies (even if their actual structures do not yet correspond to this reality and still produce precariousness—but this is not the issue of Häni’s and Kovce’s book). By discussing these items as well as focussing on (paid) labour which our economic system is revolving around, they give several tips to rectify a number of current systemic prejudices: namely that within a society based on the division of labor, people do not work for themselves anymore, contrarily to all appearances; instead, all the others are working for oneself. Above all, the core questions of freedom and democracy are discussed: what are people going to do if they aren’t constricted to paid employment anymore? How will they materially realize this freedom? The main quality of the basic income scheme as discussed in this book is to raise these and other crucial questions for our present and our future.
Most of the arguments are known already from earlier publications and interviews of Daniel Häni, often in collaboration with Enno Schmidt, and in particular from the 2008 movie “Grundeinkommen – ein Kulturimpuls” [Basic Income—A Cultural Impulse]. As a matter of fact, the authors do integrate today more of the topics generally discussed in the context of the BI, above all in Germany, than they did some years ago. On the other hand side, they abstain completely from any discussion of the financing of the BI introduction, in Switzerland and in general.
Language: German
Daniel Häni, Philip Kovce: “Was fehlt, wenn alles da ist?” [What’s missing if everything is there?] orell füssli verlag, Zurich, October 2015, 189 pp., paperback, ISBN 978 3 280 05592 2Congresswoman Jacky Rosen (D), a former computer programmer and synagogue president, officially announces her candidacy for U.S. Senate
A statewide poll released last week found Rosen (D) leading Heller (R) in a head-to-head poll.
Here is Rosen's statement regarding her decision to run:
I became a computer programmer all those years ago because I liked being able to see a problem, work together, and find smart solutions. We can find smart solutions in Washington, too, but self-serving career politicians are perpetuating a system that’s broken by partisan gridlock and dysfunction. I understand the frustration Nevadans feel towards Washington, and that’s why I’m running for Senate: to fight for the families I talk to every day who have been let down and are ready for change. Now more than ever, Nevadans deserve a Senator they can trust to be an independent voice standing up to President Trump, not his enabler. Senator Heller might not sound like President Trump, but his voting record shows he supported Trump’s agenda 100% of the time in his first 100 days.
“I never thought I’d run for office, but I stepped up because I wanted to make a difference for my community. As people too often forget in Washington, behind every problem there are people back home who are suffering. This Senate seat couldn’t be more important — already this year, Senator Heller has been a deciding vote to confirm Trump’s deeply unqualified Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood clinics, and to let internet providers sell your data to the highest bidder without your consent. For years, Senator Heller has been voting over and over again to slash Medicaid funding and repeal the Affordable Care Act instead of working to fix it. Our voices aren’t being represented.
“As your next Senator, I will work tirelessly to strengthen the ladder of economic opportunity for the next generation, whether it’s expanding our clean energy economy, improving our education system for the jobs of the future, raising incomes for working families, or fighting tooth and nail to protect your access to affordable health care. As a woman who worked my way through college and came up through the ranks as a computer programmer, as a leader in my faith-based community, as a caregiver for my aging parents and in-laws and now a mother to my daughter, I can’t stand by and watch while President Trump and Senator Heller leave middle class families stranded. I want to be a champion for all Nevadans, and this is a critical opportunity to make an even bigger difference for the state I’ve called home for nearly 40 years.
Rosen has lived in Nevada for nearly 40 years. As the first member of her family to graduate from college, Jacky worked two jobs and took out student loans to make ends meet. Over summers, she waitresses in Las Vegas and was a proud member of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226.
She broke barriers as a successful computer programmer in the male-dominated tech industry, working for major companies in Nevada including Summa Corporation, Citibank and Southwest Gas. As the former President of Congregation Ner Tamid, the state’s largest synagogue, Jacky led a team to construct one of the largest solar arrays in Henderson through a public-private partnership, cutting the synagogue’s energy bills by 70% and allowing more money to go into serving the community, like senior tax services and programs that provide meals and housing for the homeless.
In 2016, Jacky decided to run for Congress in Nevada’s highly competitive 3rd District, a seat that Trump carried and Democrats hadn’t won since 2008. Jacky lives in Henderson with her husband Larry, a radiologist at the Southern Nevada VA Hospital. Her daughter Miranda is a college student and a product of Nevada’s public schools.A newborn infant can see its parents' expressions at a distance of 30 cm. For the first time researchers have managed to reconstruct infants visual perception of the world.
By combining technology, mathematics and previous knowledge of the visual perception of infants, researchers have finally succeeded in showing to an adult audience how much of its environment a newborn baby can actually see. The results tell us that an infant of 2 to 3 days old can perceive faces, and perhaps also emotional facial expressions, at a distance of 30 centimeters -- which corresponds to the distance between a mother and her nursing baby. If the distance is increased to 60 centimeters, the visual image gets too blurred for the baby to perceive faces and expressions.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Institute of psychology at The University of Oslo in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Uppsala and Eclipse Optics in Stockholm, Sweden.
Live pictures
The study plugs a gap in our knowledge about infants' visual world, which was left open for several decades. It may also help explain claims that newborn babies can imitate facial expressions in adults during the first days and weeks of their lives, long before their vision is sufficiently developed to perceive details in their environments. The key word is motion.
"Previously, when researchers have tried to estimate exactly what a newborn baby sees, they have invariably used still photos. But the real world is dynamic. Our idea was to use images in motion," says professor emeritus Svein Magnussen from the Institute of Psychology.
Testing an old idea
Early in his career, Magnussen conducted research into the visual perception of humans. One day, about 15 years ago, he found himself discussing with colleagues the problem of testing whether newborn infants are really able to perceive facial expressions in people around them. The researchers agreed that if it were true that babies could see and imitate facial expressions, the reason might be that the faces were moving.
"Back then we had neither the equipment nor the technical competence to test our idea. We dug it out again only a year ago. So, our results are based on an old idea which nobody had tested in the meantime," he says.
What makes facial expressions intelligible? In order to carry out the test, the researchers had to combine modern simulation techniques with previous insight into how infants' vision works. We have a great deal of information about young infants' contrast sensitivity and spatial resolution from behavioural studies conducted, for the most part, in the 80s. At that time, it was discovered that presenting an infant with a figure against a uniformly grey background, caused the infant to direct its gaze towards the figure.
"Figures made up of black and white stripes were used. By choosing a certain stripe width and frequency, the field would appear uniformly grey, and the child would not direct its gaze towards it. Changing the width and frequency to make up figures, made it possible to determine the exact level of contrast and spatial resolution needed to make the infant direct its gaze towards the figure," Magnussen says.
In other words, the researchers had access to quite accurate information about newborn infants' vision. What was unknown to them, was the practical consequences of this information. Does it, for instance, mean that a newborn baby can see the expression in the face of an adult bending over the baby?
Movement is easier to see
It's easier to recognise something that moves, than a blurry still photo. The researchers made video recordings of faces that changed between several emotional expressions, and subsequently filtered out the information which we know is unavailable to newborn infants. Then they let adult participants see the videos. The idea was that if the adults were unable to identify a facial expression, then we can certainly assume that a newborn would also be unable to do so.
The adult participants correctly identified facial expressions in three out of four cases when viewing the video at a distance of 30 centimeters. When the distance was increased to 120 centimeters, the participants' rate of identification were about what one could expect from random responding. This means that the ability to identify facial expressions based on the visual information available to a newborn baby, reaches its limit at a distance of about 30 centimeters.
Filling a gap in the foundation wall
"It's important to remember that we have only investigated what the newborn infant can actually see, not whether they are able to make sense of it," Magnussen points out.
Previous attempts to recreate the newborn baby's visual reality, for instance in students' textbooks, have usually relied on taking a normal photograph and blur it. Magnussen confesses himself surprised that nobody before them have made use of the detailed information we possess about infants' visual perception. Hence this is the first time that we have a concrete estimate of the visual information available to the newborn baby.
Magnussen and his colleagues are happy to finally have been able to carry out an idea that had been on the back burner for fifteen years. But as for developing their results further, they will leave that to others.
"All of us behind this study are really involved in different fields of research now. Our position is: Now a piece of the foundation is in place. If anyone else wants to follow up, that's up to them," says Magnussen.Sony
Sony has been hit by another hack -- the PlayStation Network and store has been targeted and taken offline.
Although the online store for games, films and TV shows seems to be back up and running once again, visitors to the site were brought to a halt on Sunday night with a message reading, "Page Not Found! It's not you. It's the Internet's fault." Gamers have also reported difficulties while trying to play online games.
Sony says only, "We are currently investigating the root cause for the issue."
An anonymous individual or group calling itself Lizard Squad has claimed responsibility with a tweet late on Sunday reading "PSN Login #offline #LizardSquad".
The latest hack comes less than a week after Sony celebrated the 20th birthday of the PlayStation games console. As well as building games consoles and selling games, Sony has a movie studio, which fell prey to hackers last month. The hackers claim to have stolen around 100 terabytes of internal Sony files and films in that attack.
The information included customer passwords, Sony employees' Social Security numbers, and contracts with celebrities. A number of forthcoming Sony movies including "Annie", "Mr. Turner" and "To Write Love On Her Arms" were also leaked.
Some had speculated that the North Korean government may have been motivated to hack Sony in retaliation for the forthcoming comedy film "The Interview," about a plot to assassinate the country's leader, Kim Jong-Un. The North Korean government on Sunday denied responsibility for the attack.
On Monday, the hacktivist group which claimed responsibility for the hack, "Guardians of Peace," issued a new threat on GitHub demanding Sony stop "immediately showing the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War!" The threat is an allusion to "The Interview," although they did not mention it by name. The group also leaked around 2.7 gigabytes of new files containing emails from Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman Amy Pascal and Sony Pictures Television president Stephen Mosko.
Update, December 8 at 2:35 p.m. PT: Adds details on the latest threat from Sony Pictures hackers.
Now playing: Watch this: PS2: Gaming's greatest sequelAwesomium windowless web framework and engine has been ported to Linux. Awesomium can be used for web page capture, site scrapping, in-app advertising, in-app browsing, web automation, rendering custom in-game web browser and creating HTML UIs for 3D games.
windowless web framework and engine has been ported to Linux. Awesomium can be used for web page capture, site scrapping, in-app advertising, in-app browsing, web automation, rendering custom in-game web browser and creating HTML UIs for 3D games.
What is Awesomium?
Awesomium is a software library that makes it easy to put the web in applications. Whether that means embedded web browsing, rendering pages as images, streaming pages over the net, or manipulating web content live for some other purpose.
used to render UI for upcoming Linux game Overgrowth. Awesomium supports latest web standards: HTML5 semantics, JavaScript, and CSS3, as well as Flash and Silverlight plugins and is a branch of Chromium. The project is already beingto render UI for upcoming Linux game
Awesomium Features
Ability to render web-pages to any graphics surface, 3D texture, or otherwise. Perfect for use in games, multi-touch simulations, and more.
Custom web-pages can be created that integrate with applications and games. Pass data to/from a page via JavaScript, register callbacks, or send custom HTTP headers to your web-server.
Uses a multi-process architecture for crash isolation, security sandboxing, and premium load-balancing across multiple CPU cores.
Flexible resource Interceptor system makes it easy to monitor HTTP requests and/or use your own custom resource-loader.
Clean API (C, C++,.Net and C#) with proper documentation
The Linux porting work is done by Adam Simmons from Awesomium development team. Users have requested for Linux port for quite some time and the developers have been quick in responding.
reported that Linux port has come a long way and a new experimental build will be posted soon enough. One week back Adam Simmonsthat Linux port has come a long way and a new experimental build will be posted soon enough.
I've finished porting Awesomium to Linux-- still a couple smaller glitches to work out but the majority is complete.Thank you all for your patience and your well-written rationales concerning Linux support in Awesomium; we hear you loud and clear. I'll be posting an experimental build for you guys to test out next week.
UPDATE: Experimental build for Linux SDk is already available, thanks to Adam Simmons. You can download the SDK from here (32bit pre-compiled binary). It also includes a pre-compiled copy of the WebFlow sample. Experimental build for Linux SDk is, thanks to Adam Simmons. You can download the SDK from(32bit pre-compiled binary). It also includes a pre-compiled copy of the WebFlow sample.
This is great news as this brings in new possibilities, specially for Games. Check out some awesome Awesomium videos:PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans widely endorse the use of profiling to single out airline passengers for more intensive security searches before they board U.S. flights, based on their age, ethnicity, or gender. Seventy-one percent are in favor of this practice and 27% are opposed.
These results are based on a Jan. 8-10 USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted in the weeks after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight headed for Detroit. The incident sparked renewed discussion of ways to tighten security measures at airports, ranging from expanding the government's "no fly" list to more widespread use of body scan machines at airports.
"Eighty-three percent of self-identified conservatives favor the use of profiling, compared with 47% of liberals."
The attempt has renewed debate over the use of profiling on the basis that terrorists generally have certain shared characteristics. The practice is used in Israel, a country noted for its tight airport security, but not in the United States. Two common objections to its use in the U.S. are the potential violation of individual civil liberties and unequal treatment for members of certain groups.
The poll results suggest that Americans seem to give greater weight to protecting citizens against possible terrorism than to protecting against potential violations of individual liberties.
The largest difference in support for profiling among key attitudinal or demographic subgroups is seen by political ideology. Eighty-three percent of self-identified conservatives favor the use of profiling, compared with 47% of liberals. At 70%, moderates are much closer to conservatives than to liberals in their views.
Apart from liberals, other subgroups show majority support for profiling, although the level of that support does vary. For example, 87% of senior citizens (those aged 65 and older) favor the use of profiling, compared with 56% of young adults (aged 18 to 29).
Non-Hispanic whites (74%) are more supportive than nonwhites (63%), and men (77%) are more supportive than women (65%).
The results by political party are generally similar to those for political ideology, though a majority of Democrats (59%) say they are in favor of profiling air passengers.
Bottom Line
Each attempted terrorist attack seems to bring a renewed call for heightened security measures. It is not certain that the U.S. government would ever seriously consider adopting profiling of air passengers based on their personal characteristics as a means of preventing terrorism. But despite concerns about the practice, most Americans seem inclined to favor it.
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Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,023 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Jan. 8-10, 2010. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.Formula RaceRoom Junior Announced
The Formula RaceRoom Junior Announced for sector 3 studios sim RaceRoom!
This adds another open wheel vehicle to RaceRooms content offering, but this time at the entry level. It’s the type of vehicle that levels the playing field putting an emphasis on driver skill as it offers no downforce.
Car data
545kg including driver
1.8 Liter inline 4
145hp @ 6200 rpm
170Nm @ 5700 rpm
4 speed manual
Redline @ 7200
40 liter fuel cell
The Sector 3 team have said that these vehicles have offered some of the best multiplayer races they have ever had in their office while fine tuning the vehicle model and dynamics.
We at pitlanes.com cannot wait to have a go in this!
For more information, pop over to the sector 3 forums hereMusical chameleon Mike Patton has announced that he's working on a score for the Netflix adaptation of the Stephen King novella 1922. In November of last year, it was announced that Netflix would be making a movie based on King's short story. Zak Hilditch will direct the movie based off of the screenplay that he wrote. The story is told through the narration of the main character who confesses to murdering his wife and later believes that she is haunting him. Not much else has been revealed about the movie, but we have learned that Mike Patton has already composed the score.
Mike Patton, who is probably best known as the lead singer of the experimental rock band Faith No More, recently spoke to Rolling Stone about his new black metal project Dead Cross with ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo. At the end of the article, Patton casually mentions that he has composed the score for 1922, based on the literature of Stephen King. Here's how the music legend described the impending soundtrack.
"It's more haunting and Hitchcock-y than you might think."
This is exciting news for fans of King and Patton, especially when one thinks of Patton channeling Hitchcock. Patton started scoring work in 2005 when he was approached to compose the score of an independent movie called Pinion. However, the movie has never been released. Patton went on to score the short movie A Perfect Place, which is notable because the score took longer than the movie to make. In 2009 Patton composed the score for Crank: High Voltage and in 2014 he composed the eerie score for The Place Beyond the Pines, which has been his biggest score to date. Director Derek Cianfrance gave Patton total artistic freedom to do what he wanted with the score for The Place Beyond the Pines, a process that Patton took by the reigns and came out with beautiful, unsettling pieces of music.
He also voiced the vampire-like creatures in Will Smith's I Am Legend and provided the narration for the futuristic thriller Bunraku starring Josh Hartnett. He also collaborated on the theme song to Ridley Scott's Body of Lies with System of a Down's Serj Tankian, with both parties singing on the single titled Bird's Eye, which turned out to be a bigger hit than that action thriller itself. On the acting side, Mike Patton headlined the little seen 2005 thriller Firecracker, where he played dual roles.
Related: Stephen King's 1922 Trailer Teases Mike Patton's Spooky Score
Patton is a huge fan of movies, particularly horror and noir. One of his many musical projects, Fantomas, made a record of all movie and TV show scores, entitled The Final Cut. The band puts their sonic touches on these classic scores and turns them into something completely new that is still recognizable. For instance, the "Theme of the Godfather" is turned into a thrash metal song with bizarre guttural vocal noises added from Patton. It's an interesting album to say the least. Patton is always pushing the boundaries of his creativity and always has from his days in Mr. Bungle all the way up to his more "conventional" work with Tomahawk. Though, he's quick to note in the Rolling Stone article that more Faith No More music could be on the way, as that band has become an 'open book', and his next record, taking the front man choirs in Dead Cross, will be available this August.
1922 does not yet have a release date, but it is on the 2017 slate and it is currently in post-production. The movie will star Thomas Jane (Hung) and Molly Parker (House of Cards). If the score of The Place Beyond the Pines is any indication of where the 1922 score can go, viewers will be in for a treat. Patton is an artist who does things the way he wants and the results are always fearless and unique.Democratic Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton Eleanor Holmes NortonDems push to include contractor back pay in any shutdown deal Dem bill would let essential workers collect unemployment during shutdown DC and Puerto Rico share the long-ignored dream of statehood MORE, the District of Columbia’s representative in Congress, wants to ensure that Capitol Hill staffers have the same legal protections against sexual harassment that apply in other workplaces.
Norton, the first woman to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), has introduced legislation to subject Congress to the same civil rights, health and safety standards that already apply to federal agencies and the private sector.
The Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 established workplace safety laws for the legislative branch, but doesn’t require Capitol Hill offices to adhere to certain notice and training requirements.
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Norton’s bill would, among other provisions, authorize subpoena authority for the Office of Compliance, which was established by the 1995 law to administer workplace and accessibility laws in Congress. Her legislation would also require training and posting of employees’ rights.
“Congress must facilitate a workplace culture where employees feel protected and know their rights are protected,” Norton said in a statement.
“Particularly in a work environment such as Congress, where powerful figures often play an outsized role with a sense of their own importance, sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination must be met head on, especially by Members of Congress, who have compelled other institutions to observe strict standards."
After becoming chairwoman of the EEOC in the late 1970s, Norton authored new regulations to explicitly forbid sexual harassment in the workplace.
Before that, Norton represented female employees at Newsweek who filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the magazine’s leadership engaged in gender discrimination.
That case was documented by the book “The Good Girls Revolt,” which was later turned into an Amazon web TV series.
Norton’s bill is one of a number of proposals being offered by lawmakers to combat sexual harassment on Capitol Hill.
Revelations of sexual harassment by Hollywood mogul and Democratic donor Harvey Weinstein and other prominent media figures led to discussion among lawmakers on Capitol Hill about preventing such behavior in their own quarters.
Sexual harassment awareness training is currently not mandatory for congressional staff, unlike in the executive branch. Multiple entities on Capitol Hill, including the Office of Compliance, Office of House Employment Counsel and the Office of the House Chief Administrative Officer, offer such training that is only optional.
Norton said Wednesday that she has moved to have her own office staff undergo a 30-minute online sexual harassment training session.
Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.) introduced a bill last week to require sexual harassment awareness training for congressional offices.
And Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) is planning to unveil legislation in the coming days to similarly require sexual harassment training for members and staff, as well as overhaul the process available for staff to file harassment complaints.
The House Administration Committee is currently conducting a review of current sexual harassment training policies.The female student on the other end of the phone line said, “I’ll just shoot for the best school I can get into.”
She had already explained how successful she was at her high school. She would be graduating in May 2013 in the top 10% of her class. She was playing a varsity sport, and was earning a well-deserved athletic reputation.
Her parents sent her my way, ironically because she was too sure of what she wanted to do in college.
When I asked her about her initial plans, she said: ‘I’m going to go to Harvard and I’m going to be a doctor!’ Now there’s a powerful one-two punch. Case closed! No anxiety here.
I wasn’t fooled by her quick answer, and deep down she wasn’t either. As we talked over the course of weeks, she expressed her anxiety and uncertainty about the upcoming college choosing season. She had created a story about her life goals, but was completely uncertain about how she would get there.
Fact: In the ‘real world’ – that place out there after college – people get ahead fastest, are most successful, and are happiest when they know clearly how to state what their highest and best contribution can be. The key ingredient in knowing how you can contribute is self-knowledge.
The point: If a student’s only goal is to get into the most prestigious university (or that slight variant – the college that Dad went to) the student is overlooking the most important piece of the puzzle: herself.
Students rarely find out about themselves from taking a college course. They learn how successful they are at mastering the course material, but not necessarily about who they are.
Return on Investment
Families spend a lot of time calculating and saving for the outlay of money that college requires. Few parents realize how little it can cost to “figure out” your college major, or to discover how your talents and personality can match your career goals.
In the following article, when one considers tuition and fees by themselves, the average class at a public college is costing: $721 for a 3-unit course. At the average private college, that same course would be $2,421.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/24/pf/college/public-college-tuition/index.html
That money is wasted if a student is unaware of himself or herself. A complete assessment of personality, interests, and the Highlands Ability Battery costs a bit more than one class at the average state college: just $800.
For peace of mind about your college tuition bill, pay attention to your return on investment.Hillary Clinton is playing the woman card. But maybe Donald Trump is playing the man card.
"[I]f Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5 percent of the vote," Trump responded to a question from Vox's Liz Plank. "The only thing she's got going is the woman's card, and the beautiful thing is, women don't like her."
The press was swift to embrace it as a scandal of the day. The Washington Post's Alexandra Petri cleverly used the "woman card" to point out all the subtle sexism women face in everyday life, and Bloomberg pointed out it was a preview of what's to come in the general election.
But as tempting as it is to chalk this whole thing up to a silly campaign moment, there are real questions about whether this "gender card" debate will help or hurt either candidate in the general election moving forward.
Research, at least all of the research before Donald Trump arrived on the scene, seemed to indicate a candidate's gender doesn't really matter— but it's more complicated than voters' decisions at the ballot box.
The flap reveals a lot not just about how Clinton is playing the woman card, but also about how Trump is playing the man card. If he plays the card wrong and loses, that could signal a big shift in how we think about women in power in US politics.
What do we talk about when we talk about the "gender card"?
The subtle implication Trump was making was that Clinton somehow has an unfair advantage because she's a woman.
Writing in the New York Times about the topic, Jill Filipovic reminded us that the gender and race cards are "broadly seen as cynical tactics."
"What more people probably have in their mind is a woman candidate relying on her sex as sort of a major criteria on which we should support her," said Kathy Dolan, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. "I think some people might be trying to suggest that she’s trying to do something that’s politically correct or trying to bully people into being politically correct and voting for her because she’d be the first woman."
This is what Trump means when he says Clinton wouldn't even be in the race if it weren't for her gender — that her gender has given her a leg up in what would otherwise be a résumé of someone who is unqualified. This is bound to rub some women the wrong way.
Victoria Budson, the founder and executive director of the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, put it this way: "Trump doesn’t seem to be looking at the history. Every election since 1964, more women than men have voted. Trump’s unfavorability rating is 70 percent among women."
She says there's a reason Trump's remarks might resonate with women voters, perhaps even Republican women. "Most women have had experiences that they would identify as sexist. I think this activates those memories and reflections," she said.
But will any of this really matter in the general election?
The reality is that most people don't actually vote based on gender. Or at least, they say that they don't.
A few polls have asked about the question of a woman president. According to a March CNN/ORC international poll, 80 percent of Americans think the country is ready for a woman president (up from 60 percent in 2006). But only 25 percent of men and 35 percent of women said it was extremely or very important a woman be elected president in their lifetimes.
Kelly Dittmar, an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University Camden and scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics, points out there's a lot that shapes the race before people make that final decision. "Gender is at play in lots of ways well before voters cast their ballots," she says.
In her 2015 book, Navigating Gendered Terrain: Stereotypes and Strategy in Political Campaigns, she spoke with many campaign consultants who talked about the dramatically different strategies they employed with female candidates.
"Voters, [consultants] say, are more likely to view female candidates as emotional and compassionate and male candidates as assertive," she wrote in a summary of her book's research. "Consultants also presume that voters see female candidates as experts on social programs, education, health care, and family policies, while expecting male candidates to know more about national security and defense."
So even if most voters don't think of themselves as voting for a woman just because she's a woman, Dittmar argues, plenty of decisions about how she runs are made before voters decide.
Furthermore, a candidate's gender can play heavily into how consultants calculate attack ads. "Male candidates can attack female contenders, but to avoid perceptions of bullying or sexism they tend to be cautious about the settings, style, and substance of such attacks," Dittmar says.
Still, at the end of the day, partisanship is strong. "All of the evidence we actually have from elections in which women candidates run against men is that people vote for the candidate of their political party," UW Milwaukee's Dolan said. Men, even if they have less than feminist ideas about women's equality, will come around.
"If he’s a Democrat, come November he’s still going to vote for Hillary Clinton if she’s the nominee. He’s certainly not going to vote for Donald Trump," she said. The idea that men might switch over Clinton's gender is "absurd on its face."
Still, she pauses to acknowledge that Trump has caused many political scientists to question what were formerly thought to be fundamentals about politics.
"We have not had candidates polling this poorly among women across the board in quite a long time. I don’t know that there’s a precedent for it. He’s unpopular among women of all races, and of all age groups, and all socioeconomic categories, and |
are "heavy". Pear shaped? I dunno. More of whatever I should be calling that sort of morph.
The hairstyle I chose for furry Tedd was the result of me saying "darn it, I want more diverse hairstyles" and searching for popular hairstyles. I didn't find an exact match for what I drew, but I found bangs like that and spikey hair going up like that on separate hairstlyes. I didn't see pigtails anywhere, but I felt the hair should fill up more space, and pigtails were the easiest way to pull that off.
Zap and Repeat
The answer to "can Ellen transform, scan, paste, and repeat to stack effects beyond what is normally possible" (such as shrinking beyond 1/2 size) was always going to be "nope", but it took me a bit to settle on exactly why it doesn't work.
This answer might seem simple, and it is. "The enchantments that are already there cause wibbliness and wobbliness, and Ellen can at best get the default form".
Thing is, this is a pretty darn significant thing to allow to be canon, because Ellen now has a way to covertly find out someone's default form. That is not a small thing. Granted, the spells that allow her to do that are relatively short range, but it's still a signifcant thing to establish.
Someone did point out a loophole of my own making on this very question of stacking copied forms, however, and I'm not sure if I'm going to answer it before this is over (I intend for four more comics). This answer soundly prevents Ellen from transforming, scanning, pasting, and repeating that action in most cases, and it accomplishes this by enchantments getting in the way.
Grace is never actually enchanted by any of Ellen's spells.
Whoops.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One of the Marines shown in a famous World War II photograph raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima was posthumously awarded a certificate of U.S. citizenship on Tuesday.
The Marine Corps War Memorial in Virginia depicts Strank and five others raising a flag on Iwo Jima.
Sgt. Michael Strank, who was born in Czechoslovakia and came to the United States when he was 3, derived U.S. citizenship when his father was naturalized in 1935. However, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently discovered that Strank never was given citizenship papers.
At a ceremony Tuesday at the Marine Corps Memorial -- which depicts the flag-raising -- in Arlington, Virginia, a certificate of citizenship was presented to Strank's younger sister, Mary Pero.
Strank and five other men became national icons when an Associated Press photographer captured the image of them planting an American flag on top of Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945.
Strank was killed in action on the island on March 1, 1945, less than a month before the battle between Japanese and U.S. forces there ended.
Jonathan Scharfen, the acting director of CIS, presented the citizenship certificate Tuesday.
He hailed Strank as "a true American hero and a wonderful example of the remarkable contribution and sacrifices that immigrants have made to our great republic throughout its history."
All About Iwo Jima • World War II • U.S. Marine CorpsI Got 64 Problems But A Flaoc Ain't One
#2: The Maddening
Well, well, well... What have we here, boys and girls? Last time, at A&C World, we ran an experimental tournament... an experiment gone extremely right. A revival of sorts, the first of a local series, an event to smash down the barriers of mismatched controllers, an event to gauge interest for an assumedly small community that was truly anything but. 3 events, 9 hours, fierce competition, the start of something amazing...
Smash 64, if our numbers stay as good as they did at our launch, will attempt to join the ranks of Melee, Brawl, and Project M with Saturday tournaments, longer hours, monthly events, and bigger payouts.
It's time to step up our game. It's time to up the ante. It's time to put on a Maddening show.
Information
You!
What: SMASH 64!
Where: A&C World, 702A Spadina Ave (west side of Spadina, south of Bloor St)
http://acgamesonline.com/world/
When: Saturday June 28, 2014 12:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Why: 27 entrants at our first event. That was awesome. And we hope to do even better. Here's 2 months to plan ahead, set the date aside, bust out your controllers and practice up.
How: by giving us your money again
Venue fee: $5
Smash 64 Singles: $10 (60-30-10 payout)
Smash 64 Doubles: $5 per person ($10 per team) (60-30-10 payout)
Side Event: $2 per person (Winner Takes All) Who:What:Where:(west side of Spadina, south of Bloor St)When:Why: 27 entrants at our first event. That was awesome. And we hope to do even better. Here's 2 months to plan ahead, set the date aside, bust out your controllers and practice up.How: by giving us your money againVenue fee: $5Smash 64 Singles: $10 (60-30-10 payout)Smash 64 Doubles: $5 per person ($10 per team) (60-30-10 payout)Side Event: $2 per person (Winner Takes All)
Schedule (TENTATIVE)
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Registration + Friendlies (DO NOT BE LATE!)
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM All Events Begin
3:00 PM - 3:45 PM Scheduled Lunch Break (DQ-free grace period)
3:45 PM - 10:00 PM All Events Continue
This schedule WILL CHANGE if we get more than 32 entrants, in which case we will be doing ROUND ROBIN POOLS for singles, as well as an AMATEUR BRACKET.
Setup Info
multiple N64 setups (NTSC console + cart)
two USB-to-N64 adapters for USB-powered controllers for USB-powered controllers two Raphnet Gamecube-to-USB adapters (works laglessly with the USB-to-N64 device) two Raphnet Classic-Controller-to-USB adapters (works laglessly with the USB-to-N64 device)
Netplay keyboard warriors and VC recruits are encouraged to come out! No matter how you like to play, we got you covered.
Please bring cartridges.
Current count:
Gameplay Rules
~~~~~~~~PLEASE VOTE ON YOUR PREFERRED STAGELIST!~~~~~~~~
(Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/244938389023701/ We will have:CRT TVs and N64s are provided by the venue (is that awesome or what, am i right?).In our hyper-polarized era, calls to “keep politics out of the classroom” are routine. But public school classrooms are precisely the place where students should be learning how to discuss and debate contentious topics, according to a new book, The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools, by Jonathan Zimmerman and Emily Robertson.
Since Donald Trump was elected, UPenn professor Zimmerman has been doing his part to argue for making controversy a part of the school day. In the latest episode of the Have You Heard podcast, AlterNet education editor Jennifer Berkshire and co-host Jack Schneider talk to Zimmerman about why bringing politics into the classroom has never been more urgent. The following is an edited transcript.
Have You Heard: We spend a lot of time these days bemoaning the state of free speech on college campuses. You argue that students basically arrive at college having no idea how to discuss and debate controversial topics because they never experienced it as K-12 students.
Jonathan Zimmerman: The skills that we're talking about here are skills of dialogue of liberation for reason of tolerance. They're not natural. Nobody comes out of the womb saying ‘I'm going to listen to you.’ In fact they come out saying ‘me me me.’ What we need to do as as parents as educators as citizens is teach them a certain set of skills about the way that politics and democracy is supposed to work. These are not natural skills. And it is clear from our current moment that we have a deficit of them. We're living in an incredibly polarized moment, a moment of mutual vilification, a moment where shouting is replacing talking and name calling is replacing discussion. And we will never be able to budge from that moment, we will not be able to move the needle unless our educational institutions step up to this challenge.
Have You Heard: Your book is also a history of how public schools have dealt with controversial issues. And it turns out that keeping politics out of the classroom was baked right into the original recipe.
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JZ: Horace Mann himself wrote several articles and speeches insisting that schools should never address controversial issues. And the reason was that he was trying to build a system of free public schools, and more specifically, trying to get taxpayers to pay for the system. And his fear was that if they see what he called a controverted opinion—we would call it controversial opinion—especially one they did not share, they wouldn’t pay for his reform. And it's ironic. Schools themselves were born in controversy. The creation and the funding of schools was always controversial but they were not formed to discuss controversy inside their walls. Quite the contrary. The people who created them wanted to insulate them from controversy so that taxpayers would support them.
Have You Heard: You document how teachers have had periods of relative freedom to bring hot-button topics into the classroom vs. times where they’re essentially silenced—like during the build-up to a war. But all of the emphasis on standardized testing has taken a toll too.
JZ: There's no question that the whole accountability movement has played a constraining role, in part because the high stakes tests. It's not just that they increased teaching to the test, often they encourage teaching to a single right answer, which questions like ‘should we invade Iraq?’ often don't have. The other thing we've learned that's really important is that when you interview teachers about their professional preparation, learning how to address controversial issues is often not a part of their preparation at all. But controversial issues are part of democracy, and if our goal is for students to be able to agree to disagree, then teachers have to be prepared to lead those kinds of discussions.
Have You Heard: Since Trump was elected, you’ve undertaken a one-professor crusade to get students at UPenn to engage with other students across political lines. How’s it going?
JZ: I began organizing dialogues between college students from around the Delaware Valley after Trump was elected. I was really really upset by frankly the low quality discussion at UPenn, and by the frame of trauma that many people use to describe this which I think is kind of a rhetorical cul de sac, and something that inhibits discussion. And I decided that the only way we could really have discussion was by bringing in people from other places especially places with a different political profile than UPenn. So I got in touch with people at Cairn University, formerly Philadelphia Bible College and we organized a series of discussions between Penn students and students. Now we've expanded it to include students from Drexel, Villanova, Saint Joseph’s. One Penn student said in his evaluation that, "we're so afraid to talk to somebody of a different perspective and it turned out that it wasn't that hard."
Have You Heard: What do you think the students were so afraid of?
JZ: I think what they felt was a mixture of angry and scared. They understand that the political waters have in many ways been poisoned. But you can get people around a table from different positions and they can learn how to speak in simple and mutually respectful ways but they've got to do it and you've got to start somewhere. And I think that's the challenge right now. All of us are grappling with this I think in our own ways trying to make sense of that and trying to do little things that hopefully can not just promote dialogue but make a case for it.You may have to reconsider eating sushi made with eel after watching this video.
In the early 1970’s, Valerie Taylor and her husband (Australian ocean experts and cinematographers) began scuba diving and exploring the sea life underwater. Along the way, they documented their discoveries on film. In 1974, while diving near Banda Island, Indonesia, Taylor says she first met “Honey” the eel. She began feeding the curious fish other fish and over time the two developed a bond. Valerie says that After visiting on a regular basis for several years, as soon as Honey spotted her diver pal, she would swim out of her cave to greet her, and the two would cuddle.
This video was shot years ago and Valerie rarely dives anymore. Thanks to YouTube, this incredible footage was recently reposted on Youtube attracting tens of thousands of new viewers.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sorenga's Barcode Project was built when Norway's economy was doing well thanks to high oil prices
Looking out across the Oslo fjord, with its islands and sandy beaches, it is easy to forget that the Norwegian economy is in difficulty.
As oil prices have collapsed, it's become clear that Norway has caught what used to be called the Dutch disease - an overreliance on one industry, in this case the oil and gas sector.
With its upmarket waterfront restaurants and the Barcode office blocks, the Sorenga dockside development serves as a poignant reminder of how prosperous Norway had become while the going was still good.
"Where once there was a container port, there is now housing," says Vibecke Lyse Augdal, managing director of property rentals company Utleiemegleren, as she takes in the view from a luxury flat at this natural extension to the east of Oslo's Fjord City development.
"We're just a few yards from the central station and the opera quarter, and soon we'll have the Munch museum and the Oslo public library here too."
As the Norwegian economy bounced back following the 2008 financial crisis, the Norwegian people enjoyed enviable prosperity.
Hence, at a time when much of the rest of the world was undergoing a prolonged period of painful economic austerity, Norway had money to burn on prestigious waterfront developments such as Sorenga.
Unbalanced economy
Buoyed by its all-important oil and gas sector, Norway seemed invincible during the boom years, as Brent crude oil prices surged from less than $40 a barrel in late 2008 to a peak of more than $120 in early 2011.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption "We will not go back to the high investment level that we had three to four years ago." says Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg
In the years that followed, Brent continued to trade between $100 and $120 a barrel, and Norway was repeatedly crowned as the world's most prosperous nation by the Prosperity Index.
Then, as oil prices started to fall in 2013, it became apparent that beyond the glitz, the Norwegian economy had become incredibly unbalanced.
"The oil and gas industry became too strong in our economy, especially during the last four or five years, reflects Prime Minister Erna Solberg in an interview with the BBC News website.
"Most of the growth came from that sector, and our strong currency left some of our traditional industries behind."
Wake-up call
In the last couple of years, the price of oil has tumbled to around $30. During this period, the Norwegian energy giant Statoil, along with others in the industry, has axed thousands of jobs and scaled back contracts with suppliers.
In 2015 Statoil's earnings plunged, and it recorded a net loss of 37bn kroner ($4.3bn; £2.98bn).
The pain has spread. Economic growth has slowed dramatically, and this "has led to an increase in the rate of unemployment, which went above 4% of the labour force in early 2015", according to a recent OECD report.
Investment levels throughout the economy have fallen too, by about a third since oil prices collapsed.
"This will be a long-term situation", laments Mrs Solberg. "We will not go back to the high investment level that we had three to four years ago."
Well-oiled exuberance
Some regions, especially Stavanger where Statoil is based, have been hit harder than others, such as Oslo.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Norway's oil capital of Stavanger has seen jobless numbers soar as oil prices have plunged
But even here, there is a growing realisation that the prosperity enjoyed in recent years may have been temporary.
Three years ago, the Norwegian krone peaked at a 13-year high against key currencies, as the strong oil-fuelled economy provided a safe port for investors fleeing an international economic storm.
It made many Norwegians feel very wealthy indeed. Both holidays abroad and imported consumer goods seemed cheap, especially for the many dual-income households in this egalitarian nation, where salaries rose at a rate of 3-4% per year to reach an average of $33,492 in 2014, well above the OECD average of $25,492.
Both consumer spending and lending exploded during the boom years. House prices rose by about a third during the last six years.
Household debts have reached more than 200% of annual disposable income, making the Norwegians one of the most indebted people in Europe.
Much of this was fuelled by favourable tax rules for mortgages and historically low interest rates. But with most mortgages being floating rate, that could have a "significant macroeconomic" impact once interest rates start rising, the OECD has warned.
Diversification needed
The recent reversal in the Norwegian people's fortunes has already resulted in consumer sentiment weakening. House prices have all but stalled.
As yet there is little evidence of this in Oslo. House prices are holding up, as mortgage payments remain affordable thanks to historically low interest rates.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Investment levels throughout Norway have fallen by about a third since oil prices collapsed
And on the High Street, most people are still spending - even those who have lost their jobs remain solvent thanks to generous benefits, and spending by the wealthy remains strong.
"Demand remains strong, so we haven't seen an impact yet," says one of the partners in an upmarket clothing and accessories shop. "It's worse on the purchasing side, as everything's become much more expensive because of the weak krone."
Ordinary people are also responding to a fall in the mighty krone to levels not seen in four decades, by taking holidays at home rather than going abroad.
Nevertheless, it is clear that Norway can no longer rely on oil to fuel growth in its economy.
"None of us can be sure where the oil price will go," Mrs Solberg says.
"The Norwegian economy has to diversify."
Broad consensus
At last month's Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise conference in Oslo, participants were left in no doubt about the seriousness of the situation.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption With a weaker energy sector, Norway is now aiming to diversify its economy
The confederation's director general, Kristin Skogen Lund, broke with tradition and invited the leader of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, Gerd Kristiansen, to join her on stage.
"We have the highest unemployment levels since 1995, and many of those out of work are young," observed Mrs Skogen Lund.
"We agree that we must face the challenges together," Mr Kristiansen said.
The government and the central bank are also doing their bit to prevent a hard landing for the Norwegian economy.
Norges Bank reduced its key interest rate three times last year to just 0.75%, with further cuts on the horizon, and the government raided the country's seven trillion kroner ($820bn; £560bn) oil fund to pump cash into the economy.
"With growing unemployment, we need to use stimulus from the oil fund," Norway's prime minister tells the BBC, justifying the decision to fund investment and tax cuts by taking more money from the oil fund than it will put in from oil revenues, for the first time since the sovereign wealth fund's birth in 1998.
Economic stimulus
With business and labour on side, and Norges Bank committed to low interest rates, the government is orchestrating a transformation of the economy.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The hope is that Norway's weaker currency should eventually drive growth in its export sector
"Through the oil and gas sector, we have built a large services sector that can be used to support other sectors in the future," Mrs Solberg says,
She predicts growth in the aluminium industry, the healthcare sector and, not least, in fish farming and fisheries, at a time when a 4.5kg salmon, once packaged and processed, is worth more than a barrel of oil.
"In the long-term, Norway will have an economy that is more diversified, and that is greener," she says.Key Highlights
ETH price remained in a narrow range for a few sessions above $205 against the US Dollar, and currently looking for a break.
The ETH/USD pair is about to break the range resistance at $2258 on the 4-hours chart (data feed via SimpleFX).
Once there is a close above $230, the pair could head higher towards $245-250.
Ethereum price is breaking higher against the US Dollar and Bitcoin, and ETH/USD looks set for more gains above $228 in the near term.
Ethereum Price Nasty Gains
In the last analysis, we saw a few swing moves in ETH price above $205 against the US Dollar. The price traded in a range with a crucial resistance at $228. Recently, the price dipped towards $203 where it found strong bids and started moving higher. During the upside move, the price broke an intermediate resistance at $212, which opened the doors for more gains.
There was even a break above a bearish trend line at $210 on the 4-hours chart of ETH/USD, which is a good sign for buyers. At the moment, the price is attempting to break $228. It also represents the 1.236 extension of the last drop from the $203 high to $98 low. So, a break above it could open the doors for a test of $245-250. On the downside, there is a bullish trend line formed on the same chart with support at $212.
If the price fails to close above $228 in this leg, then any dip towards $212 can be seen as buying opportunity. In the weekly bias, there is a chance of ETH/USD breaking higher towards $250 very easily. On the downside the $205-200 levels remain a strong support and buy zone.
4-hours MACD – The MACD is still in the bullish zone.
4-hours RSI – The RSI is well above the 50 level, and heading higher towards 65.
Major Support Level – $205.00
Major Resistance Level – $228.00
Charts courtesy – SimpleFXAll of the attackers from Friday’s massacre in Paris so far have been identified as European Union nationals, according to a top EU official. The announcement further casts doubt on the validity of a Syrian passport found near the bodies of a slain attacker.
“Let me underline, the profile of the terrorists so far identified tells us this is an internal threat,” Federica Mogherini, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission, said after a meeting with EU foreign ministers. “It is all EU citizens so far. This can change with the hours, but so far it is quite clear it is an issue of internal domestic security.”
The majority of attackers were identified as French or Belgian nationals. An Egyptian passport was also found, but the Egyptian Ambassador to France said it belonged to a critically wounded victim and not a perpetrator. The Syrian passport caused a ruckus, with some politicians in Europe and the U.S. calling for a halt to Syrian refugee resettlement. An increasing number of state governors are trying to defund the settlement program. American officials told CBS News that the passport might be fake, while British-daily the Independent reported that a man was arrested in Serbia while carrying a Syrian passport with matching details to the one found in Paris.
@2005-2015 CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ACTION FUNDWhy Obama’s Surge in
Afghanistan
?
By Shamus Cooke
December 02, 2009 " Information Clearing House " - Tuesday’s announcement that President Obama will send an additional 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan — while begging his foreign allies to send an extra 10,000 — will have dramatic effects throughout the American and world society.
The hope that Obama’s election would drastically change U.S. foreign policy has been destroyed. The effects of his troop surge will change the minds of millions of Americans, who, until this point, were giving Obama the benefit of the doubt.
Such moments in history are capable of instantly removing piles of dust from the collective eyeball — just as the bank bailouts did.
The announcement will also send tremors throughout the military: many soldiers and their families remained silent about fighting with hopes that Obama would bring them home. They see little point in dying in a pointless war. Thus, morale is likely to continue deteriorating, while more brazen acts of defiance will surely increase.
The reasons behind the surge — Al Qaeda, “rooting out terrorism,” etc. — are unlikely to fool many people, with the exception of the media. This “war on terror” propaganda is based on the same illogical catch-phrases that Bush’s limited intelligence tripped over. Coming from Obama, such stupid reasoning sounds especially bizarre, akin to an evolutionary biologist forced to argue in favor of creationism.
Obama is compelled to tell the really big lie because the truth is too damning. If he remotely approached the real motives behind the war, the public would be pushed into total defiance — Obama’s new $660 billion military budget for 2010 would have caused mass demonstrations.
In reality, the war in Afghanistan was a convenient way for U.S. corporations — who dominate U.S. politics — to get a firmer hold in the resource-rich Middle East. For example, soon after Afghanistan was invaded, we were told that Iraq was a “ticking time bomb,” while now Obama assures us that Pakistan is the real threat — and don’t forget Iran! When considering the above military budget, these countries are threats to the U.S in the same way that a flea is a threat to an elephant.
Who really benefits from war in the Middle East? So far, U.S. weapons manufacturers have (Boeing, etc.), U.S. oil companies (Exxon, etc.), and the big banks that help move the spoils around (Citigroup, etc.) who also dominate the finances of the conquered country. Corporations that deal with “reconstruction” contracts love war (Halliburton, etc.), while also the multitude of “private contractors” that specialize in everything from cooking (Halliburton again) to mercenary fighting (Blackwater, etc.).
The many U.S. corporations that export abroad also benefit from the war, since a dominated country offers them a monopoly market to sell their goods in, or the ability to set up shop where none existed before. It is these collective interests that are driving Obama’s foreign policy; they would rather see the U.S. and Afghani people bled dry than allow a foreign competitor — China, Russia, etc. — to dominate Afghanistan ’s resources and markets.
The U.S. is certainly not fighting terrorists in Afghanistan — the Al Qaeda bogey men and the “evil genius” Osama Bin Laden are not directing military operations from a cave. The vast majority of people fighting U.S. troops are not “Islamic extremists” (another catchphrase), but average citizens enraged by foreign troops rummaging around in their homes, patting them down at check points, indiscriminately detaining them at torture centers (U.S. Bagram Air base), and killing their family members.
Yes, many Afghanis are deeply religious, but the presence of U.S. troops is the motor force behind their “radicalism,” i.e. resistance to military occupation. Islam is not inherently violent, but a military occupation unquestionably is.
Those wishing to end these wars must end their reliance on the corporate-bought two-party system, and begin organizing independently. The anti-war movement was strong while Bush was President, based not only on mass outrage, but the cynical maneuvering of those sitting atop of Democratic Party front groups like MoveOn and others — who helped organize and fund anti-war (Bush) demonstrations.
When Obama became President, the leaders of these groups played a thoroughly destructive role in the anti-war movement, shifting away from the effective measures used against Bush, or abandoning the struggle altogether, taking their funding with them. This disruption in organization, plus the mass-effect of the Obama illusion, had a temporary derailing effect on organizing.
But Obama’s troop surge may very well breathe new life into the deflated movement. Demonstrations are being organized for the spring, and there is plenty of time to join local groups/coalitions to help with the planning.
Mass demonstrations are a very effective tool, since they educate about the undemocratic nature of the state, while showing demonstration participants that there is power in collective action. More importantly, large marches prove to U.S. soldiers that they will have public support if they collectively choose to publicly oppose the war (by marching in a demonstration), or individually opt not to fight in these illegal wars. The Vietnam War was ended largely because so many soldiers opposed the war, demonstrated against it, or refused to fight; a courage they found by the massive public support felt at home.
Mass demonstrations do not organize themselves. It will take ordinary people working together to make it happen, while collectively demanding:
BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
END THE U.S. WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST!
Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at [email protected] VEGAS (AP) — A British man arrested at a weekend Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas tried to grab a police officer’s gun so he could kill the presidential candidate after planning an assassination for about a year, according to authorities.
U.S. Secret Service agents said Michael Steven Sandford approached a Las Vegas police officer at the campaign stop to say he wanted Trump’s autograph, but that he then tried to take the weapon.
A complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Nevada charges Sandford, 20, with an act of violence on restricted grounds. He was denied bail during a court appearance later in the day. His court-appointed attorney said he was living out of his car and in the country illegally after overstaying a visa.
Sanford has not entered a plea.
The arrest happened relatively quietly at a campaign stop seen as peaceful compared to the mayhem at the presumptive Republican nominee’s recent events in San Jose, California, and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Gregg Donovan was among about 1,500 gathered Saturday to see Trump at the Treasure Island casino on the Las Vegas Strip. For the event, he donned the top hat and red jacket that made him recognizable in his former job as swanky Beverly Hills’ official greeter for more than a decade.
Donovan said he didn’t know about the charge against Sanford until he saw news reports. But he recognized him because the two had stood in line together for nine hours waiting to get into the Trump event. Sanford even held Donovan’s spot in line for a bathroom break.
“I was No. 5, and he was No. 4,” Donovan said.
They spoke, Donovan said, though Sanford didn’t say much and seemed “strange.” Donovan didn’t elaborate on what made Sanford seem odd.
After waiting, they passed through metal detectors manned by Secret Service, police and casino security officials.
Federal Magistrate Judge George Foley said in court Monday that Sandford was a potential danger to the community and a flight risk. Sandford wore leg irons and appeared to tremble during the hearing.
Heather Fraley, his assigned public defender, said Sandford appeared to be competent. She said he hadn’t been diagnosed with a mental illness but that he has autism and previously attempted suicide. He doesn’t have a job.
Sanford’s mother told court researchers that he was treated for obsessive compulsive disorder and anorexia when he was younger, and that he once ran away from a hospital in England, according to the public defender.
Fraley argued that Sandford should go to a halfway house because he didn’t have a criminal history, but the judge said he should stay in detention ahead of a July 5 court date.
Agents said Sandford told them he had been in the U.S. for about a year and a half, lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, and drove to the San Bernardino, California, area before coming to Las Vegas on June 16.
Sandford told officers he was convinced he would die in the assassination attempt. He said he also reserved a ticket for a Trump rally in Phoenix, scheduled for later Saturday, as a backup plan.
The criminal complaint said Sandford was arrested after grabbing the handle of an officer’s gun while trying to remove it from a holster.
Sanford told authorities that he went to the Battlefield Vegas shooting range the day before the rally and fired 20 rounds from a 9mm Glock pistol to learn how to use it. Police detectives who visited the range spoke with an employee who confirmed that he provided Sandford shooting lessons, according to the complaint signed by Secret Service Special Agent Joseph Hall.David Dow/Getty Images
Houston Rockets rookie point guard Gary Payton II is reportedly set to have surgery for a sports hernia in the near future.
Continue for updates.
Payton's Status Uncertain With Surgery Looming
Tuesday, July 12
Calvin Watkins of ESPN.com reported Tuesday the undrafted free-agent addition is expected to undergo a procedure to repair the problem within the "next couple of days."
Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle noted the ailment will prevent Payton from taking part in any more NBA Summer League action.
It's unclear at this stage when Payton could return to the floor or if the injury could impact his availability for the start of Houston's training camp. No official timetable was announced.
The Oregon State product appeared in two summer-league games before the setback. He averaged 4.0 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists while logging 17 minutes per contest. He also made two of his four attempts from beyond the arc.
He told Watkins he was already starting to feel more comfortable after Sunday's game, a victory over the Sacramento Kings: "In the first game, I had to get it under my belt, get a feel for it and know I got to run a team. I was more focused on running the team, making sure guys were in spots and came out aggressive and take early shots penetrate and look for mine, and that’s what I did in the second game."
The Rockets will likely split his minutes among several players during the remaining portion of the summer league. Isaiah Taylor, Trey Freeman and Kenny Gaines could all see a minor uptick in playing time running the offense.
As for Payton, the timing of the injury is unfortunate since he was trying to prove he could handle a key reserve role behind Patrick Beverley. Now, his outlook heading into the season is a bit murky as he prepares for surgery and the recovery process that follows.A Northern Virginia sports bar owner will no longer show NFL games at his establishment following many NFL players’ decision to protest the national anthem.
R.L. Butler, who owns Fat Tuesday’s in Fairfax, said he is pulling the plug on NFL games at his restaurant in protest of the NFL players who “took a knee,” Fox 5 DC reports.
Butler said his decision to ban the showing of NFL games was motivated in part by his daughter, who served a one-year tour of duty in Afghanistan.
“After the football players were doing their protests, I realized this weekend that this is getting to a point where it’s pretty serious and also to a point where it’s very foolish,” Butler said, adding:
So after the Sunday game and the Monday night game, I woke up Tuesday morning thinking this is wrong and I started thinking about my daughter, and I said, “Well, what would have happened if my daughter comes home or would have came home in a box or a body bag or a wheelchair or something?”
The restaurant owner discussed it with his wife, and she agreed to make a flyer stating that Fat Tuesday’s would no longer air NFL games until the players, coaches, and owners stop their protests.
The flyer went viral after it was posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page, but the couple took the Facebook page down after receiving personal threats. Butler said that despite the personal attacks, the feedback was “95 percent positive.”
Butler said he would lift the ban if “the NFL gets their grips and [has] their players respect the flag and our national anthem.”
Other sports bars and eateries have opted not to show NFL games in light of the protests, including one sports bar in Louisiana and a California pizzeria.
Fans are also protesting their NFL teams for partaking in the protests by posting videos online of themselves burning their gear. Green Bay Packers fans ignited their Packers paraphernalia, and Pittsburgh Steelers fans torched their Steelers accessories.Advanced engineering of a mini-intronic plasmid (MIP) system designed to carry a therapeutic gene can significantly enhance the expression of the transgene delivered using an adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector. The ability to increase transgene expression by up to 40 to 100-fold, which would reduce the cost of manufacturing and perhaps also lessen the immune response of AAV/MIP-based gene therapy, is reported in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Human Gene Therapy website until February 28, 2017.
Authors Jiamiao Lu, Feijie Zhang, and Mark Kay, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, and James Williams and Jeremy Luke, Nature Technology Corp., Lincoln, NE, describe the modified MIP expression system in the article entitled "A 5' Non-coding Exon Containing Engineered Intron Enhances Transgene Expression from Recombinant AAV Vectors in vivo." The researchers discuss the potential implications of enhanced transgene expression on the doses needed to achieve a therapeutic response and the flexibility the small intronic sequences offer, allowing them to be used in both DNA plasmids and viral delivery vectors.
"Careful observation of the expression characteristics of different vector designs sometimes leads to unexpected findings," says Editor-in-Chief Terence R. Flotte, MD, Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor of Medical Education and Dean, Provost, and Executive Deputy Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA. "In this case, the authors found that a very substantial increase in the amount of transgene expression (up to 100-fold) could be achieved from r |
to be because Falkirk have got good players and have started the season really well
"It was about us tonight. The way we went about it, we didn't give them a minute. We were in their faces and got the goals at good times.
"We spoke before the game and said that there will be a shock somewhere and let's make sure it's not us and make sure we play with that intensity.
"We took control of the game and played with a real confidence.
Falkirk's Peter Houston: "It was an embarrassing night. We let a lot of Falkirk supporters down. I've never seen the team so less committed to try and win football match.
"I don't think we had any players, not one player, who got anywhere near the required level of commitment and desire.
"You've got to show hunger, fight, desire. I don't want to take anything away from Ross County who are a good side but they shouldn't be seven goals better than Falkirk but we've nobody to blame but ourselves."John Campbell at the Auckland Marathon starting line, November 3, 2013. Photographed by Stephen Langdon.A couple of years ago I rang up John Campbell and asked him to come out with me at dawn for a photo shoot. He said, “Yes, of course.” I don’t think he quite managed to add, “I’d love to,” but he was prepared, without any grumbling, to do it. As most people surely know, he’s like that.It was the day of the Auckland Marathon and we were putting together our Best of Auckland issue. I wanted a twin-concept shot: the marathon was one of the “best things about Auckland” and John was another. He was our Aucklander of the Year, in fact, in the wake of his advocacy journalism for Christchurch earthquake survivors, low-decile kids and so much more.We caught the ferry to Devonport, he in his suit and tie and polished shoes, with everyone else on the boat dressed in their running gear. They loved him on that boat. They glowed from their proximity to his approachable, cheery, engaging celebrity self, and took turns to make jokes about the suitability of his running gear.Who else on television – anywhere on television – is admired and liked and loved in that way? Who else can point to a record of advocacy like his? Paul Holmes was the last, it used to be said, but actually John Campbell is the last. Mike Hosking and Paul Henry? The comparisons are laughable. No one likes Hosking and he doesn’t like anyone. Many people do love Paul Henry, but just as many really, really don’t. As for either of them doing advocacy journalism – the kind of thing Holmes placed at the heart of his show and Campbell has always had at the heart of his – it wouldn’t occur to them. Why stand for something when it’s easier to sneer?As a mark of how unique Campbell is, think about Rachel Smalley’s really good work on the Pacific and on Afghanistan and the Middle East. By which I mean, her feature writing in the Herald. No way has Rachel, a terrific broadcast journalist, been allowed substantial access to television with that stuff.Alas for John, uniqueness is also isolation. John and his dedicated Campbell Live team are out on their own.And now, it seems, he is to be taken from us, through some diabolically motivated mashup of trash TV and right-wing sabotage, all wrapped up in the person of the Rasputinish Julie Christie and her czar, TV3 CEO Mark Weldon.Hmm. It’s quite fun to blame Julie Christie for the threat to Campbell Live, and god knows the evidence isn’t hard to find. TV3 has already trashed most of its prime time and now it’s gearing up to destroy one of the few quality shows it has left. Thank goodness we have a state-owned alternative to show us it doesn’t have to be this way. No, wait.There’s an absurd, awful irony in all this. We wallow in a muddy swamp of bad TV even though all around us are bright shining peaks of quality. TV – the good stuff – has never been better. In fact, there’s so much good TV, who can even keep up? Of course, you can’t watch it on TV3 or TVNZ. You have to pay for it, assuming you don’t already steal it.So with the audience for good television fleeing to ever-wider choices of pay TV, the free-to-air channels now cater for those who either can’t or don’t want to watch those programmes in that way. And guess what? The remaining good free-to-air shows, on the whole, don’t rate.We (“we” being the people who watch free-to-air television at all) don’t watch them. This is a simple fact, and it’s no good bleating about the tyranny of ratings, or the lack of better measures of viewership. Campbell Live is in a precarious state because far too many of the people who value it in the abstract do not actually value it in their lives. They don’t watch it.Maybe it can get its audience back. But it’s a rock and a hard place when one option means becoming a bit trashier, alienating those who want quality, and the other means sticking with quality even though the people who value that don’t watch anyway.I know about this, because it’s the same pressure we face at the quality end of print media. (Just going to eschew modesty for a moment and say that.) What’s true for us at Metro is also true for our colleagues at the Listener and North & South, and for the many people who write for and run the Herald and want to be proud of what they do, and often should be. We all search for ways to keep our work good and relevant, when we know our audiences are seriously distracted by the best versions of everything the media can offer, from anywhere in the world.That’s the reality of a world full of tablets and smartphones. Whatever you, our potential audience, like, however you want to get your intellectual stimulation, your entertainment, your connectedness to the people who like what you do – however you get your jollies – you can find it all, easily, quite possibly for free or cheaply, from anywhere in the world, on that thing you’re holding in your hand.That’s the reality we in the media here confront every day. That’s what we compete with.It’s tough. And it’s also doable. Metro has an operating surplus and in print media we are not alone. And the great challenge is exciting: we have to reinvent how we make it all work.But if you’re running Campbell Live, there’s a pressure we don’t face here. The question you face is: how do we ensure 7pm has the biggest (non-news) viewing numbers of the night? Because if that happens, we can deliver a strong audience for the rest of the evening. And if it doesn’t, we will jeopardise the entire network’s ability to spend money on quality.The problem for Campbell Live, for all quality free-to-air TV, runs very deep. It’s not just that pay TV is a goldmine. It’s also the case that we live at a time when access to news, commentary and pictures about important (and fascinating) events has never been greater, so the raw material for a good magazine current affairs TV show should be greater too. But television hasn’t worked out yet how to use that to good advantage.We have direct, fast, unfiltered, democratic creation of news, commentary and entertainment. All the time. How does a nightly show trump that, and remain proud of what it does? TV3 doesn’t know. Campbell Live doesn’t know. TVNZ certainly doesn’t know. None of us do.If we lose Campbell Live we will lose a good magazine programme at 7pm, one that mixes current affairs with entertaining slices of local life. Would that be the worst that could happen? It would be a big loss of cultural value. But most other countries have already lost it – and the very worst example of it is the UK. All those reality freakshows we now see littering prime time here? Most of them come from Britain.The failure of Campbell Live to hold and build an audience is not Julie Christie’s fault. But what almost certainly can be laid at her door, and that of Mark Weldon, is this: they show no sign of wanting to axe Campbell Live in order to reinvent the possibilities of the 7pm slot in any kind of culturally valuable way. On the contrary, they give every impression of simply wanting to further trash the network.I don’t admire everything Campbell Live has done. The show has been susceptible to populist tub-thumping, just like every other magazine show in that 7pm slot. Haranguing the police for trying to enforce the speed limit is just one recent example. But so what? It would be anodyne entertainment if no one took offence at anything they did.Is it just that nice guys finish last? Not really. John has carried a candle for 10 years now on his show. He stands for enthusiasm where it’s warranted, for critical thinking where it’s due, for the marginalised and also for the talented, for everyone who gets knocked down and everyone who gets back up again. He’s a man who models kindness, and curiosity, and a moral code that can distinguish right from wrong, and intelligence. He is, as I said before, unique.The question isn’t really whether Campbell Live should stay. If the ratings have fallen too low, something has to be done. But most of the reasons for the fall probably have very little to do with John himself. The question is: how do we (because it is “we”, with the collective responsibility for a culture we like to think we are proud of, and want to make better) make best use of one of our finest?Because that’s what John Campbell is. A cultural treasure. And TV3, like all major media organisations, is an important guardian of our culture. What’s the best thing he could be doing?Are we going to aim high, or just give in?"Bad things happen to good robots," the two self-described hitchBOT family members said in unison when the Toronto Star reached them in their homes Saturday night.
"R2D2 has a bad outcome in one of the Star Wars," Harris reflected.
The co-creators hope to foster a second version of hitchBOT, or at least sire a child in the near future.
HitchBOT seemed to speak from beyond the grave Saturday.
"My trip must come to an end for now, but my love for humans will never fade. Thanks friends," tweeted the robotic hitchhiker.
HitchBOT, having conquered Canada and parts of Germany and the Netherlands, took off for a coast-to-coast adventure in the U.S., beginning in Salem, Mass., to weeks ago.
It was photographed enjoying box seats at Fenway Park in Boston and staring wide-eyed at the mortal mayhem of Times Square shortly after.
Friday night, it was picked up by two males who live in Philadelphia, according to their Twitter accounts.
"Thanks Philly!!! You freaking Killed @hitchBOT I'm so mad right now," tweeted Jesse Wellens shortly after a selfie with his new robotic pal.
He and a friend tweeted they would drop it off about 1 a.m. at Elfreths Ally, a historic cobblestoned street 100 metres from the Delaware River in the heart of downtown Philadelphia. That was the last place hitchBOT was seen.
It has more than 43,000 Twitter followers, 13,000 of whom began to track it in the last two weeks.
It was designed to be a talking travel companion and could toss out factoids and carry limited conversation. A GPS in the robot tracked its location, and a camera randomly snapped photos about every 20 minutes to document its travels.
During past travels, the robot attended a comic convention and a wedding, and it had its portrait painted in the Netherlands. It once spent a week with a heavy metal band.
With files from The Associated Press
Toronto StarAll of the models created on these pages are printed on plain A4 paper. All you need is a colour printer. Heres a quick few tips that might help you with making the models 1) Cover ALL tabs with double sided sticky tape. 2) then cut out the shapes and stick them together (warning : they can get a bit fiddly but shouldnt be anything TOO complicated) 3) When you make the heads, I find it easier to stick the neck part together, and then stick the rest of the head together afterwards.
Disclaimer
The images/models on this site are FanArt and created for my own amusement in dedication to the great characters that I love, and not for any kind of commercial gain. this site is in no way affiliated with the companies that own these characters. Any use/replication of them for commercial gain would probably be frowned on by their owners, so don't do that.
Also if you do share them on forums or anywhere online, please linke back to my this site.
If you believe that I have in anyway infringed on your copyrights in anyway let me know and il try and sort out the problem ASAP.The Department of Education (DoE) has been accused of "covering up" evidence that over 1,000 pupils, reported missing at school, were actually being educated at illegal faith establishments.
The Independent, on 3 April, published an investigation in which they suggest that thousands of pupils – unaccounted for in mainstream education – had been moved to illegal Jewish schools operating in the London borough of Hackney.
The report states that more than 1,000 boys had been placed in ultra-Orthodox Jewish faith schools from as young as the age of 13, where their main education is received through studying religious texts. It claimed the pupils leave with little or no ability to speak English and few qualifications that will help them prepare for later life.
The report also says that the illegal schools – known to be linked to Haredi followers of Orthodox Judaism faith – have been able to operate in the area for over 40 years, apparently with no government intervention, despite laws making the running of a non-registered school a criminal offence. The schools have also been accused of physical violence and sexual abuse of children, alleged to have taken place inside the schools. Schools that are not registered are deemed illegal by education authorities.
A redacted 'Action of Note' of a meeting between representatives from the DoE and Hackney Learning Trust ( a private company within Hackney Council's Children and Young People's Service) reveals that both bodies had reportedly been aware for at least six years.
At a meeting in May 2010, the issue of ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools – operating illegally in Hackney as separatist 'Haredi' schools – was raised. The trust's own Action of Note' for the meeting records authorities admitting they destroyed evidence of the abuse at the request of Jewish schools.
The Independent claims, despite the meeting's Action of Note revealing both bodies being aware of the issue as far back as 2010, that no action had been successfully placed in order to protect the children.
On 21 March, the BBC reported that although the DoE is working with the schools regulatory body, Ofsted, to shut the centres down, some of the illegal schools are registered as charities, which gives them an advantaged tax status.
An unnamed ex-student of an illegal Haredi school – now in his 20s and living outside the community – told BBC's Newsnight: "I'm starting to study for my GCSEs. I'm maybe like an eight-year-old, nine-year-old [educationally]. That's my level of education."
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, chair of the Accord Coalition (a body that promotes inclusive education curriculums), told The Independent: "There has long been an open secret in the Jewish world that ultra-Orthodox schools have been operating in Hackney and are not registered with the Department of Education. In essence, they are illegal schools, but authorities appear to be turning a blind eye.
"It could be that people higher up the educational chain fear that closing the schools could be branded as anti-Semitism. There is no reason why one cannot be immersed in Jewish life, but still speak the national language or be able to gain qualifications. As a rabbi I applaud those engaged in Jewish education, but as a rabbi I also condemn those who blinker children's horizons and isolate them from wider society".
In The Independent's report, a former pupil – who was in attendance at an illegal school in Stamford Hill – told the paper how he was subjected to abuse and physically beaten by teachers, as well as being left with no qualifications and unable to speak English.
"My childhood was stolen from me. I think that sometimes the government misleadingly believes that by intervening they will be seen as intimidating minority communities, but they are doing exactly the opposite" the unnamed pupil told. "They are being discriminatory against Jewish children and anti-Semitic by not intervening. They're saying that children like me don't have the same rights as any other child because we come from the Orthodox Jewish community".
The Telegraph stated on 1 April that Ofsted has closed down seven illegal schools across the country since November 2015 – including one Haredi school.
A spokesperson for the DoE – who are investigating the aforementioned Action of Note – told The Independent: "Nothing is more important than keeping children safe. It is the local authority's responsibility to investigate allegations of abuse and neglect and they take these seriously.
"Unregistered schools are illegal and unsafe – and we are taking unprecedented and direct action against them across the board to protect children, inform parents and support teachers, putting us firmly on the front foot" the statement read.
"We have announced an escalation of Ofsted investigations into unregistered schools, with additional inspectors dedicated to rooting them out, a new tougher approach to prosecuting them and a call to local authorities to help identify any setting of concern. Anyone who has evidence that an illegal school is operating should provide it to us or Ofsted immediately."
A spokesperson from Hackney Learning Trust declined to comment.Lively Discussion At USAU’s ‘Vision Tour’ Opener In Washington D.C.
A recap of USA Ultimate's first stop on their tour of the country's biggest ultimate markets.
Disclaimer: The author is a volunteer for both USAU and WAFC, but his recap expresses views that are entirely his own.
Representatives from USA Ultimate, including CEO Tom Crawford, Board of Directors Vice President Henry Thorne, and staff, welcomed approximately 30 members of the DC-area ultimate community to a town-hall style meeting organized by the Washington Area Frisbee Club (WAFC) on Wednesday night. Advertised as an opportunity for “community conversations,” the meeting was the first stop1 on an eleven-city “Vision Tour” for USA Ultimate to gather feedback as it prepares to draft its next Strategic Plan.
The meeting was delayed by almost 20 minutes as participants had difficulty finding the location, an academic building on the campus of Trinity Washington University in northeast Washington. Julia Lee, USA Ultimate Director of Finance & Development, kicked off the meeting with a brief welcome before Thorne provided an outline of the meeting’s agenda and purpose. “You have a lot of power tonight,” Thorne said during a description of the various ways USAU receives and implements feedback from members, noting that the strategic planning process would guide the Board of Directors and USAU staff for the next five years.
Because of the delayed start, the facilitators elected to scrap a ten-minute small group session about “the ultimate community’s hopes and concerns about the future of ultimate” and instead proceeded directly to a brief and whimsical video about the history of ultimate. Photos from the last 50 years of ultimate were paired with era-appropriate music, eventually giving way to footage from championship events, children learning to throw, and appearances of ultimate on the ESPN Top 10. The video included no footage from either semi-professional league, but ultimate historians would have recognized Kenny Dobyns in many of the photos from the 80’s and 90’s.
After the video concluded, Thorne introduced Tom Crawford and his impressive resume in the world of sport. Crawford then took the opportunity to tell the audience “a teeny bit” about himself, including an anecdote about his introduction to ultimate through a nephew and niece2. He described how he had seen both “the good, the bad, and the ugly” in sports throughout his years working for the US Olympic Committee and multiple professional men’s sports leagues. He spent a few moments proselytizing to the gathered players about how sport, “when done right,” can “advance human existence in meaningful ways”–and that ultimate, because of its focus on Spirit of the Game and opportunities for mixed gender play, is particularly well-positioned to be a positive influence in the community.
Wrapping up his presentation, Crawford then took five minutes to answer questions from the audience–a reduction from the ten minute time slot listed on the original agenda, which ruffled a few feathers in the audience. Topics addressed included the fact that the Washington, DC, metro area does not quite fit into USA Ultimate’s State-Based Organization model (though neither does New England, an existing partnership with USA Ultimate); the attractiveness (or lack thereof) of the affiliate model for more mature local disc organizations such as WAFC; and Crawford’s vision for how USA Ultimate might partner with a hypothetical professional league (and whether other sports could serve as a model for that kind of relationship).
Crawford pointed to USA Hockey as a positive example that, at the same time, is currently “imploding” due to the USA Women’s national team decision to boycott the 2017 IIHF World Championships in protest of unequal pay and the NHL’s decision not to send its players to the 2018 Olympics. Crawford quipped that the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL) asked what it would take to partner with USA Ultimate, and Crawford’s response was “ten million dollars”–the annual amount paid to USA Hockey by the NHL under their previous agreement.
Attendees were then asked to self-select into six different small groups to discuss a set of topics selected by the Board of Directors, at which point several participants asked if the 40-minute time slot could be split into two 20-minute time slots in order to provide an opportunity to join more than one discussion. After an essentially unanimous vote in favor of the proposal, two rounds of facilitated discussion were conducted.
Julia Lee led a discussion on Equity & Diversity which focused largely on the concept that “you can’t be what you can’t see.” Members in the session advocated for equity to replace visibility as the top priority for USA Ultimate in the new strategic plan, arguing that visibility can support equity rather than existing in tension with it. The role of mixed-gender play was also highlighted for its relevance to the equity conversation; members therefore discussed how the mixed division has been less visible on ESPN3, and how mixed players have been underrepresented at Team USA tryouts and on the World Games roster. Participants discussed the importance of grassroots recruiting for both women and players from underrepresented backgrounds and wondered how the community might move past the “friend of a friend” model for recruiting in order to better reflect local communities.
Alex “Dutchy” Ghesquiere, coach of the World Games team and the DC women’s team Scandal, led a discussion on Elite-Level Play. Members were prompted to consider how elite-level play should support not only value for athletes but also values, such as Spirit of the Game and equity. Main points included the need to shift resources to reduce player costs, to restore some of the flexibility lost in the transition to the Triple Crown Tour, and to consider additional player concerns like non-standard work schedules or childcare. Members reached consensus on keeping the club championships in October in order to provide a season long enough to promote development and maintain schedule flexibility for teams of varying needs and responsibilities. The importance of equity in media coverage was reiterated, and a few formatting tweaks were discussed: balancing the number of games played per day, eliminating hard caps, and reducing the number and length of stoppages in elite-level play.
Thorne led a discussion on USA Ultimate’s current policy refusing to acknowledge or partner with professional leagues due to a putative misalignment in values. Members concurred with the current policy’s affirmation of USA Ultimate’s values, namely Spirit of the Game (as exemplified by self-officiation and the Observer system) and gender equity, but questioned whether the policy has any actual influence on the AUDL or its role in shaping the sport. Given how the AUDL continues to showcase its brand of ultimate, appearing on ESPN3 and introducing new players to the sport at youth clinics around the country, members wondered whether USA Ultimate actually benefits from refusing to acknowledge the professional league–particularly as its teams are starting to partner with established club teams. As one attendee put it, “the longer we wait, the further we fall behind” in controlling the conversation about what ultimate is and what its values are.
Members also challenged that USA Ultimate, while citing gender equity as a reason to refuse partnership with the pro leagues, has not always upheld its own commitment to gender equity. If we are already compromising on our values for the increased visibility of ESPN coverage, for example, how different is that from partnering with an AUDL team to host a GUM clinic? One idea that came out of the discussion was an exploratory conversation with the AUDL on gradually aligning professional play–over the course of 10+ years, perhaps–with USA Ultimate’s mission and values as part of a broader partnership agreement. Such a road map might include, for example, access to USA Ultimate’s Observer Certification Program resources in exchange for a shift toward self-officiation in AUDL games or to support significant increases in playing opportunities for women (through mixed-gender teams, e.g.) in exchange for partnership on marketing and sponsorship.
Tom Crawford led a discussion on the Olympic Dream, focusing on the potential for widespread growth made possible by inclusion in the Olympic Games. Given the constraints of housing athletes in the Olympic Village, mixed play appears to be the best way for ultimate to break into the Games–and echoes the IOC’s attitude toward ultimate as a field sport uniquely attractive for its mixed gender and self-officiated play. Members responded by asking why the mixed division has been deprioritized if it is the sport’s best chance for Olympic recognition, citing (as the equity discussion did) fewer games on ESPN3 and the lack of mixed-division representation at Team USA tryouts and on the World Games roster. Drawing parallels to the USA Ultimate policy against partnering with the pro leagues, members agreed that the NGB should not sacrifice its values in order to gain Olympic sport status.
Stacey Waldrup, USA Ultimate Manager of Communications and Publications, led a discussion of the USA Ultimate brand and how members perceive the value of membership compared to the cost of dues. Challenges discussed include the lack of incentives for league players to join USA Ultimate, low levels of engagement, negative perceptions of transparency, and the inconsistency of event experiences. Members suggested that a website overhaul and more HQ staff might improve member experience.
Josh Murphy, USA Ultimate Director of Members Services and Community Development, led a discussion of Youth Structure that emphasized prioritizing growth–especially across gender, race, and socioeconomic lines. Members talked about evaluating whether the calendar of events and current geographic divisions support growth, increasing access to fields and well-trained coaches, and increasing the number of schools that have ultimate programs.
Following the small group discussions, which the USA Ultimate representatives briefly recapped for the full group, each attendee was handed a set of stickers to place next to the topics they felt were most important. Equity was by far the most popular topic, having come up in every small group discussion in one form or another; the role of mixed-gender play was also frequently brought up in relationship to equity. Participants were also given slips of paper asking for a 1-10 rating on how well members felt like they were heard, as well as feedback on how to improve future Vision Tour sessions. A number of members stayed after the meeting to speak more with Thorne and the staff, picking up on threads of discussion not fully addressed during the meeting–such as the tension between increased structure and oversight without increased resources or support from HQ.
General consensus from members after the meeting was that they appreciated the opportunity to speak one-on-one with Crawford and the other representatives from HQ. Although some were skeptical about how much the new strategic plan would reflect their individual concerns, they described the meeting as a productive interaction with USAU and a positive step towards transparency.
Feedback to HQ at the end of the meeting stressed the importance of expanding time for Q&A with Crawford, even at the expense of small group discussion time, as direct feedback to USA Ultimate was broadly seen as the most valuable aspect of the meeting. It is not clear whether the same six small group topics will remain on the agenda for each city on the Vision Tour; suggested topics for future sessions included coaching development, organizers and volunteers, and the organization’s governance. The tour continues today with a stop in Pittsburgh; members who are not able to attend a Vision Tour meeting are encouraged to contact their representatives on the Board of Directors.ESPN Stats & Information is again ranking the FBS conferences, and the SEC -- again! -- leads the nation, with the Pac-12 fairly close behind.
The rankings will use ESPN’s new Football Power Index (FPI) instead of the BCS computers, as it did last year, but the premise of the rankings remains the same. The AP poll will measure the strength of the top schools in the conference and the FPI will measure the depth of the conference.
The Pac-12 is 6.6 points behind the SEC and nearly 15 points ahead of the ACC, which is ranked third.
Here's the chart:
Here's what Stats & Info says about the SEC-Pac-12 battle:
The SEC leads the Pac-12 by 6.6 points through six weeks of football. The biggest difference between the top conferences is the strength of the SEC’s top schools.
The SEC has six teams ranked in the top 20 of the AP Poll, compared to four top-20 teams in the Pac-12.
Many would argue that that Pac-12 has the best record in the FBS against non-conference opponents (29-4). However, 23 of their 29 wins came against opponents from non-BCS AQ conferences, including eight wins against FCS opponents.
In comparison, the SEC went 32-7 against out-of-conference opponents but played five more games against BCS-AQ conference teams than the Pac-12.
The SEC and Pac-12 have split their only two games against each other as Oregon beatTennessee 59-14 and Auburn beat Washington State 31-24.
A couple of notes on that:Continue Reading
On a recent morning in Plano, Bohlin stood beneath a chandelier made of antlers, roughly the size of a small truck, in the Hope Center — some 185,000 square feet of hunting-lodge style, rough-hewn rock façade, rustic leather furniture and exposed wooden beams. It houses more than 40 separate Christian organizations in a complex on Plano Parkway, including Bohlin's own Probe Ministries. On the second floor, Probe fights for the everlasting souls of American youth from a warren of offices, balustered by rising stacks of science textbooks and Christian literature.
Bohlin looks like a college biology professor, pale, square-jawed, peering out through glasses beneath an Indiana Jones fedora emblazoned with the words "Grand Canyon." It's actually the subject of one of his trademark lectures. He takes his audience on a virtual tour of our national testament to unfathomable geologic time and offers explanations for how the biblical flood may have created it far later than mainstream science would have them believe.
He grew up a Catholic boy on Chicago's south side, destined for the priesthood. He ended up a zoology undergrad at the University of Illinois, where he daydreamed about becoming a park ranger and living a life of solitude. That all changed when he befriended a group of evangelical Christians. Bohlin was fascinated by this passionate strain of belief. He adopted its vibrant spirituality as his own, though he wondered how he should reconcile God with the theory at the root of every life science course he enrolled in. The Catholic Church had long since come to the conclusion that evolution need not contradict faith. Many evangelicals, however, still look upon it as a repudiation of a Bible meant to be taken literally.
In the school library one day, he struck upon the answer to the questions that deviled him. He picked up a book written by Henry Morris, a Rice University civil engineering professor credited for being the "father of modern creation science." Morris opened Bohlin's eyes to what he says was the only scientific rationale he'd ever seen for the six-day creation of earth.
"That raised questions in my head," he says. "I got fascinated by it."
In 1975, he connected with Probe Ministries, a group of campus evangelists who hoped to challenge secularism on its home turf. Bohlin desperately wanted to join them, to spread the gospel of evolution's fallacies. But to take his place in that fight, he needed to understand what he hoped to disprove. "They said, 'You just have a bachelor's degree.' When I got to Probe, my education began immediately. If I'm going to be a critic of evolution, I have to make sure I understand in detail how it's supposed to work."
Bohlin invested years of his life in the graduate program at North Texas and the molecular biology doctoral program at the University of Texas at Dallas, absorbing everything he must refute. While his fellow students accepted a theory that had stood unchallenged by science for more than a century, Bohlin believed he alone was capable of assessing evolution with a critical eye. He admits, though, that his conclusions may already have been deeply entrenched. To alter his view of creation, he says, "would have required a major shift in personal and professional connections with people."
Outside the halls of academia, meanwhile, secularism was spreading before his eyes. "The Catholic and Protestant churches in Europe are museums," he says. "They gave in to that culture war for whatever reason. We can see the seeds of that same process here. These seeds are already germinating in some parts of the country."
To beat back creeping secularism, Bohlin now ministers to Christian high school students, putting on seminars to "arm" them for the godless worldview that will pervade their college education. He teaches them about "current problems with evolution" like the "sudden appearance" of species and the "gaps" in the fossil record, all better explained, he says, by the supernatural, by a "design motif." Biologists have long attested that such "gaps," where they exist, are better explained by organisms that do not readily fossilize than by the divine materialization of whole species. Paleontologists have unearthed incredible troves of transitional fossils bridging the divide.
But there were other ways for Bohlin to reach these college-bound believers — ways to affect the discussion on a scale his ministry never could. His great investment in a field he entered to debunk had led him to the Texas State Board of Education, where he was appointed to be an expert reviewer of high-school biology textbooks.
This, he believes, is where the war against secularism will be won or lost.
"If we were to interview 100 individuals who were raised in the church, believed everything and have since fallen away, I bet a majority would say at least that the things they learned in science class were a part of that pulling away," he says.
"I think there is a definite need and, in Texas, a definite opportunity to have an influence that goes beyond the people I can speak to in a lifetime."
If public high school texts identified the "gaps" he saw so clearly in the theory of evolution, it would be a victory sorely needed for a movement that had spent the last few decades backpedaling from court ruling after adverse court ruling. If, along with the other like-minded reviewers, he could add the presence of alternatives to Darwin, they would be distributed in Texas high school classrooms for a decade or more.
In pitched battles to shape the curriculum, board of education members and interest groups have attempted to filter public education through lenses both religious and ideological. Beneath the banner of science and critical thought, they've called upon well-educated ministers like Bohlin to press their personal religious beliefs on reluctant textbook publishers. And for decades, the publishers acquiesced, fearing a freeze-out from the lucrative Texas market.
But highly placed stakeholders — ranging from those in publishing to sitting board members — believe the culture warriors are losing the ability to run roughshod over state education. After years of alienating the Legislature, the state board has seen its influence weakened. A changing textbook marketplace has eroded Texas' clout, and technology is sweeping into the classroom, bringing with it the next generation of learning materials. The statewide reach of the culture warriors is ending.
The biggest test will take place when the state board considers a new high-school biology text next week. Another will follow in the ensuing months, as it takes up a new social studies text. How the state board and publishers respond to Bohlin's critiques, to his evolutionary "gaps," will determine whether the innuendo of God lingers in classroom discussions about evolution. It will determine whether the political ideology of an elected board shapes, by omission and addition, the history of America Texas students will learn for years hence.
Fighting over religion in public education is practically an American pastime. We've been doing it for more than a century, at least. Take the Nativist groups in Philadelphia. In 1844, they began spreading baseless rumors about a Catholic initiative to remove the Bible from public schools. In the midst of an economic downturn, this inflamed Protestant animus toward a growing Irish immigrant population. Riots broke out. Two Catholic churches were torched.
Nobody's burning houses of worship over education nowadays, but the fear of secularism and modernity remains as potent as ever. Yet it wasn't until the Gablers came along that this fear took shape in Texas and assumed power. To look at them, you would never have guessed that Mel and Norma Gabler inspired both respect and terror in the hearts of the country's biggest textbook publishers throughout the '60s, '70s and '80s. Mel, a retired Exxon clerk, looked like a deacon in a small-town Baptist church. And Norma, who raised their children, could have been anyone's favorite grandmother.
In their Longview home, every corner was given over to barricading walls of textbooks. A paper stop sign hung from the front window, telegraphing their intention to halt the relativist takeover of what they believed was a world of absolutes. As their well-known origin story goes, son Jim found that a printed version of the Gettysburg Address differed from the photograph of the document itself in his encyclopedia. Most troubling, the printed version omitted "under God." He showed this to his father, who began leafing through Jim's textbooks, searching for other errors. He was outraged by what he found. And he learned that he could make his voice heard through a little-used citizen textbook review process. Gabler set to ferreting out errors and dispatched Mrs. Gabler to Austin in 1962 to serve as his proxy before the state board of education.
She told Bill Martin, a University of Texas professor who |
’s design is perfectly suited for a high-performance variant.
The 4.0L twin turbo V8 has been an ongoing rumor for the better part of this year, with enough smoke that a fire is near guaranteed. Introducing such a powerful engine with the LS F would also explain the decision not to include a V8 in launch of the standard model.
So, should we expect the LS F to be revealed in Tokyo? Let’s look at the patterns:
As a bi-annual show, the Tokyo Motor Show has seen Lexus debut the LFA Nürburgring in 2011, the RC in 2013, and the LF-FC flagship concept in 2015.
Contrast this with the Detroit Auto Show, which happens just two months after Tokyo — in the past five years, Lexus has debuted the LF-FC concept, the IS sedan, the RC F followed by the GS F, then the production LC & LS models.
Taken even further, Detroit has been the home of every F brand reveal except for the LFA, which debuted at Tokyo in 2009. This is not to suggest patterns can’t be broken, but it does temper my expectations somewhat. Let’s move this to the forum for further discussion — what do you think of this new LS F information?
(Thanks Mike & SteVVT-i!)Rugby is neither a game for the faint of heart nor the weak of knee. It combines all of the physical endurance of soccer, the strength and prowess of football, and the sheer guts of being a soldier. There’s one ball on a field, a field often splattered with blood and sweat.
It is not a sport commonly regarded for its humanitarian efforts but Saskatchewan’s Karl Fix has been working to change all of that. After spending much of his life playing and coaching the great game, he decided to start up a little international competition, one that included some decidedly heart-warming spirit.
“I wanted to stay involved in rugby. I wanted to do what I liked best about rugby. What I liked about rugby wasn’t the actual game: it’s the culture around it,” he said.
He started the Dog River Howlers Rugby Club a decade ago. It’s an invitational rugby club with players and supporters from all across Canada, all of whom subscribe to the motto that ‘rugby is more than a game, but a way of life.’ Its players take trips to other lands to play the game with fellow ruggers, bringing with them not just their cameras and beach towels.
They bring lots and lots of sporting goods and clothes and personal items to donate to charity while they’re not playing too.
“The idea is to teach kids about life: first of all, working as a team – winning, losing – the friendships, the connections. Then we travel, go to different countries … to play rugby and to do what I call ‘rugby missionary work’.”
He called rugby the vehicle that builds bridges between people around the world.
Last month, some local players joined the Howlers on a trip to Medellín, the second-largest city in Colombia. Less than 10 years ago, it had a nearly 50 per cent unemployment rate, with staggering poverty and crime.
Each member of the team fund-raised and collected donations to bring with them, enough to stuff a few dozen sports bags. They also brought their enthusiasm to work with local organizations at the same time.
“What I said the Dog River Howlers were going to do, we’re going to play rugby around the world but it’s not necessarily to win championships. It’s more about learning life skills and seeing the world, getting life lessons, and we’re going to raise some money for some good causes.”
On the field, more than 500 young men and women have laced up for 70 or so tournaments in Canada and the United States, as well as places like Mexico, Cuba, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and Colombia.
Off the field, they have raised more than $2 million for sports and educational programs, efforts to help the sick and injured or the destitute, orphanages, women’s shelters, treatment programs, earthquake relief work, and other support organizations.
In Colombia, they worked with the Life by Life Foundation (which works to change the lives of vulnerable youth through activities such as education, sport, and art) and also offered assistance to victims of the Moravia barrio fire. The August fire destroyed more than 100 houses built on a mountain of garbage, injuring 12 but leaving 400 homeless.
Sarah Jeffery said that her daughter (Avery Jeffery, #52) is always keen on leadership opportunities, especially ones that serve to benefit charity or the community in some way. Last year, she joined efforts with the Edmonton Clansmen Rugby Club to start up a donation collection as a response to the Wood Buffalo/Fort McMurray wildfire.
Given the chance to help people in Colombia was an easy decision for her too, aided by the fact that “rugby is the same all around the world,” Sarah said.
“You get to meet new friends. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime. You get to help people in the process of playing rugby.”
The young woman attempted various strategies to collect donations, including making and selling St. Albert Rugby Club car decals and even made a request of the Value Village store for some items. She scored a bunch of cleats out of that. By her account, Canada’s rugby contingent had a great time handing out the stuff and playing games with the Life by Life kids, and seeing the smiles on all their faces.
“My daughter and I fell in love with the country and the people in it. She gained a lot on the field and off the field,” she continued, adding that Avery does want to join the Howlers on their next adventure.
“She’s like, ‘I would do this every year if I could.’ She said it was an eye-opener. It’s a completely different lifestyle. She said, ‘I’ve learned not to take a lot of things for granted, like running water…’ little things that we wouldn’t think of on a daily basis that she has that these children in Colombia don’t have access to.”
Kiana Krueger (#48) said that there were no words to describe how wonderful the experience was to bring strangers together in the community of sport and goodwill.
“I find it very cool how we can go to such a place that speaks a different language and in how we are two different countries and then we can come together as one and play a game we all love,” she said.
“The saying ‘it’s a way of life’ really comes to play when I went on this tour. It was amazing walking through the streets of neighbourhoods and see how everyone is happy and enjoying their day, when they only have a little. It was a huge eye-opening experience for me.”
She really appreciated the chance to meet the kids through the Life by Life Foundation. It brought tears to her eyes.
“They were playing music and the little kids were dancing around just having a fun time, helping out handing out food. And then they sang for us and one guy commented on what the song was about. He said they were singing about how they were asking God to get them away from all the harsh stuff they go through. It’s amazing to see what they go through and how they can still have a huge smile on their faces.”
Krueger, like all the others, said that she’s proud to be a Howler: one who knows the value of team effort in sports and as a citizen who cares.Much has been seen, written and spoken about the Yulin Dog Meat Festival. Graphic pictures of brutality laid down on man's best friend is as shocking as it is heart breaking. Protesters in China and across the world are fighting to abolish the festival which slaughters thousands of dogs every year.
South of China, in Nepal, there's another festival where dogs are an integral part of the celebration. No lives are taken in this one though, quite the contrary in fact. Kukur Tihar is a festival where dogs are celebrated.
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Diwali in Nepal is not just a festival of lights. There is a day during this celebration dedicated to all dogs, specifically to thank our 4-legged companions for always being our loyal friends.
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Tihar is a five-day Hindu festival where the second day is just dedicated to celebrate our loyal companions. Apart from offering garlands and tikas (a mark worn on the forehead), people also like to offer delicious treats specially prepared from them.
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Where there is one extreme in Yulin, just a few hundred kilometers away, the story is completely different. Much like life, isn't it?
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Because dogs are the best people.Getty
White sand circles picked out by the sun in sparkling blue seas are the first signs that my plane has arrived at the Maldives, a tropical paradise spread over almost 1200 islands.
Unfortunately, the nation is facing a rise in sea levels and the bleaching of its coral reefs – perils that made it a poster child for the consequences of climate change.
It gained publicity for the plan announced by former president Mohamed Nasheed in 2008 to purchase land elsewhere so the population could relocate should sea level rise make the islands uninhabitable.
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But the mood has changed here recently. The new government, under president Abdulla Yameen, no longer seeks land to buy, but is instead determined for the nation to stay put and resist the rising seas with geoengineering projects.
The key to the new strategy is renting out islands and using the money to reclaim, fortify and even build new islands. People living on smaller lower-lying islands could then be relocated to more flood-resistant islands when needed.
City of Hope
One of those is the City of Hope being built on an artificial island called Hulhumale, near the capital Male. To build it, a state-owned company is pumping sand from surrounding atolls and depositing it on shallow reefs that surround the original lagoon. It is being fortified with walls 3 metres above sea level — which is higher than the highest natural island at only 2.5 metres above the sea.
Much of the island still looks like a construction site with mountains of sand piled up, but, according to the shiny plastic model I am shown, when finished in 2023 it will be able to accommodate about 130,000 people.
Eight such islands have already been built, and three more are planned.
Reclaiming islands is the real solution to challenges thrown up by climate change, not leaving the country, says Shiham Adam, director of the Maldives Marine Research Centre.
“Development and reclaiming of islands are necessary. People must have land to live on and they must have jobs,” says Adam. “It is possible to reclaim any island. We have seen that it takes just four weeks to reclaim about 24 hectares of land.”
“All you have to do is bring the dredgers, suck sand and pump it on the low-lying land in shallow waters,” Adam says. “It takes four weeks to build the island and a couple more to put boulders around to stabilise it. To survive we just need money.”
Islands for hire
In line with this grand scheme, the Maldives government is in the final stages of negotiation with Saudi Arabia to lease Faafu Atoll, consisting of 23 islands, for development for 99 years.
It could get about $10 billion – more than three times the GDP of the Maldives – from the deal, but will need to relocate about 4000 people. Although the islands’ population has been offered homes for free in bigger towns, some are still protesting the plan. Government officials told me that no one will be relocated against their wish.
Nasheed thinks Saudi Arabia is seeking to secure its oil trade routes to China, which recently became dangerous due to widespread piracy, by establishing a big base en route in the Maldives. It is expected that the Saudis would also develop the atoll for projects in tourism and maritime commerce.
The Maldives government is also planning for 50 more tourist resorts to be opened by 2018. “Tourism with resorts acting as natural reserves can be the saviours of the Maldives,” says Adam.
Leaders of two NGOs I meet here aren’t against reclaiming islands, but they argue for a slower and more environmentally sensitive pace.
Natural growth
Hassan Ahmed of Save the Beach also points out that coral islands can grow naturally. Recent studies showed that this can happen with rising seas, he says.
A study of Funafuti Atoll in the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, published in 2014, showed that monsoon winds and storms that break up coral and deposit sand on the atolls can help the islands grow naturally.
Whether this works for coral atolls elsewhere in the world is unknown, but the study’s author, Paul Kench at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and his colleagues, say that the Maldives seem to be showing a similar effect.
“Satellite pictures and Google Earth show that some islands are growing, while others are shrinking,” Ahmed says.
One reason for shrinking is damage from shipping. “It seems that those that were damaged by explosions meant for clearing the way for boats through the reefs are losing the sand,” says Ahmed. “It is carried by storms, waves and streams to the deep waters. You can see it when diving.”
“This invasive process should be avoided as much as possible,” he says. “Paths can be cleared in much less damaging ways by chiselling, and islands should be reclaimed only when absolutely necessary.”
Coral graveyards
Another problem with reclamation is that by pumping sand onto the reefs, surrounding corals gradually become covered too and die out. This adds to the pressure they are already experiencing from warmer waters that make them bleach and sometimes die.
Last year, more than 60 per cent of the corals in this region experienced bleaching because of the effect of the El Niño weather phenomenon, and they may take a decade to recover.
When I go for a dive in the beautiful turquoise shallows I am welcomed by graveyards of pale, colourless skeletons. To my untrained eyes this looks beautiful.
New visitors don’t know how beautiful coral reefs were prior to bleaching, says Axel Jarosch, general manager of Banyan Tree hotel on Vabbinfaru Island, who is involved in an experimental programme to revive corals by seeding them with healthy polyps. “They like them even when bleached and white,” he says. “They have nothing to compare with.”
Ahmed, meanwhile, organised the relocation of some of the corals that became threatened during the reclamation of Hulhumale. He thinks this should be a standard procedure in all similar projects.
Sustainable approach
Shaahina Ali from Biodiversity Education and Awareness, which organises the cleaning of uninhabited islands, also argues for a more sustainable approach.
“We understand the need for reclamation of some islands,” Ali says. “But the government should take care that it is done with as little damage as possible in accord with strict environmentally friendly projects.”
As I leave the islands I am left overwhelmed by conflicting impressions and wondering what the future really holds for the Maldives. Stunning white beaches and colourful tropical fish, sea turtles and sharks contrast sharply with fields of dead, bleached coral, island building sites and a huge amount of plastic waste on the beaches.
“When we were young, plastic bottles on beaches were rare. We used them as toys,” says Ali. “But with the massive use of plastic and the rapid change of lifestyle, the beaches of our uninhabited islands that are not cleaned regularly began to look like dump yards.”
Whether the new policy developments and drive to reclaim the islands leave the land here even more exposed to the sea remains to be seen.
Nenad Jarić Dauenhauer’s trip was paid for by the Maldives governmentIt was great watching nearly 22,000 people show up to a Wednesday night soccer game for our national cup. I firmly believe that some of Canada's best soccer moments have come in the Amway Canadian Championship (or its previous derivatives). Montréal's 6-0 annihilation of Toronto in 2013, along with Ottawa's 2-0 upset of Vancouver last Wednesday are great moments in Canadian club soccer. This is, after all, "our" tournament. It is the money and dedication of Canadian Soccer supporters, les voyageurs, that founded and paid for this trophy. That so many people got to see it in a national broadcast is positively delightful, and great for the development of the sport nationally.
However, we have only five professional clubs, and many cities are not exposed to the tournament that they paid for. To compound this frustrating fact, the NASL cannot expand further into Canada due to constraints imposed on leagues by the USSF with regards to the amount of foreign participation that can be allowed in a US-based league. The MLS/USL partnership has no expansion plans in Canada in the future either. This means that roughly half of all Canadians are not in regions served by a professional soccer franchise, and cannot partake in the tournament that they paid for and founded.Therefore, we should expand the tournament.
I do not think that Canada is in a similar situation to the United States, where we could support an "Open Cup", where any amateur or semi-professional team could enter and compete. That may dilute the quality and content to a level that makes the contest unappealing to many spectators. That being said, there are several development leagues in Canada that could contribute teams in areas where there is a large interest in soccer. These leagues, like the Première Ligue de soccer du Québec (PLSQ) and the Pacific Coast Soccer League (PCSL) all have teams that play at a level competitive enough to build the game, or at least attract a sizable crowd, in markets not served by the five Canadian professional clubs.
For example, in the PLSQ both Dynamo de Québec and FC Gatineau are in areas with a population that can support professional soccer, and play in stadiums that can accommodate several thousand spectators. Excluding these teams is a wasted opportunity to grow both the popularity and visibility of the tournament and the Voyageurs Cup. Their exclusion also limits the exposure of fans to professional calibre soccer, and their players to elite calibre opposition.
Most of these teams, at least in the PLSQ, would be able to compete. Many PLSQ teams feature experienced veterans like Sita-Taty Matondo, Ali Gerba, Phillipe Davies and Abraham François, all veterans of the Canadian National Team program.
Now, I am not suggesting that FC Gatineau immediately start at the same level of tournament play as l'Impact de Montréal. Indeed, the tournament is already structured in such a fashion that the MLS teams only enter once one of the NASL sides has eliminated the other. This rounds the number of entrants to four. Logically, if we were to accept clubs from lower tiers of the soccer pyramid they would begin play in their own round as well, or in some form of play-off elimination. This would avoid an unnecessary humiliation by an MLS franchise, while still allowing small clubs to participate in the tournament, with a ticket to play an NASL team in the second round as the reward.
Thankfully, the Fédération de soccer du Québec (FSQ) has already commented on record that they are close to a deal with their federal counterparts that would see a team from the PLSQ compete for the Voyageurs Cup in coming seasons.
Certainly, there will be detractors and opponents. But fans of MLS teams, and Montréalais in particular, are in no position to complain. It was the second division Impact that eliminated Toronto FC in the 2008 Voyageurs Cup to book a place in the CONCACAF Champions League. If anyone here remembers, that second division Impact team defeated Liga MX giants Santos Laguna as well, in front of more than 55,000 fans. Who are we to deny the same opportunities to FC Gatineau or Dynamo de Québec?
Lastly, this is a great way to build professional soccer in non-traditional markets. This tournament is an event, and events draw crowds. Many of the cities with teams in the PLSQ, notably Gatineau, Longueuil and Québec are all urban centres with a population that could support professional sports. There is no reason to suggest that a prospective game against an NASL team wouldn't draw several thousand spectators. Against an MLS club - especially in a city with a rivalry with Montréal - perhaps they could draw more. That is growth that is good not only for the game itself, but for the clubs involved. For the professional clubs involved, it means exposure to new fan markets, and an opportunity for sales of tickets and merchandise at an event that might not come to that city again for a while.
Ultimately, the point of soccer, whether watching or playing, is to have fun. The more people having fun, the better the tournament will be, and more money it will make. 9,000 people showed up in Ottawa last Wednesday, and that franchise is only three years old. There is no reason why some of our larger cities could not muster similarly sized crowds. They should at least be given the chance to try. After all, the more the merrier.Have you heard the news? The golden age of television is over. It's true. David Cox said so himself this week, in an article listing all the different ways that film is better than TV now.
Now, I love film. As far as I'm concerned, all film – good and bad – has some level of intrinsic worth. I like David Cox, too. I've met him and he seems like a perfectly decent man. But he's catastrophically wrong here. I write about both film and television but, if I had to pick sides, I'd go with television every single time. Television, especially the television that's being produced now, is wiping the floor with film. It's kicking film's arse. Here's why.
1. Longform storytelling
Bryan Cranston as Walter White in Breaking Bad: a televisual rollercoaster.
When applied correctly, the elongated storytelling opportunities afforded by television trump cinema's frayed reliance on the drudgery of 90-minute three-act plots. Breaking Bad showed a character transforming over two years of his life in a way that could never be achieved in film. The Killing dedicated 20 hours to a single murder case. And look at The Returned or Buffy the Vampire Slayer – they both began in cinemas as easily forgettable fluff, but couldn't blossom as world-beaters until they discovered the time and space that television offered them.
2. TV is (currently) less franchise-fixated
The Walking Dead. Photograph: Gene Page/AMC
Hollywood is increasingly reliant on brand recognition, churning out endless sequels and spinoffs and reboots because it's easier than marketing an original idea. TV, meanwhile, is far more eager to take a punt on something new. Admittedly there are clouds on the horizon – we're already got an Avengers TV show, and soon we'll have spin-offs of Modern Family, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad and possibly Dexter to sift through for signs of life – but for now, TV retains the upper hand.
3. TV still has the power to surprise
At its best, a TV show can be freeform, veering from comedy to thriller to horror and back again. Films, with their desperate need to be marketed properly, tend to simplify to sell. A show such as Breaking Bad didn't have those constraints. Even though one episode made you laugh, the next could have you hyperventilating with abject fear. Every moment of that show was a rollercoaster, and a uniquely televisual one at that.
4. Word of mouth
Again, look at Breaking Bad. That show started small and, thanks to new distribution methods as well as near-rabid word-of-mouth from evangelists who'd seen it and loved it, it ended up a juggernaut. What's the last film you can say that about? Paranormal Activity? That was years ago and, given the studio's determination to suck its bones dry with endless sequels, even that wasn't such a great idea.
5. Actors do their best work on TV
The Wire, featuring Idris Elba as Stringer Bell. Photograph: BBC/HBO
Because television is increasingly becoming a writer's medium, it is attracting the best acting talent. Actors who would have run from television a decade ago are now embracing it precisely because the quality is so high. Now the letdown comes when actors move from TV to film. Michael Chiklis followed his bruising performance in The Shield by playing a turd-shaped superhero. Idris Elba followed The Wire by making a ropey thriller with Beyoncé. Aaron Paul's first role after his towering turn as Jesse Pinkman is in a movie of a computer game about some cars. No wonder everyone from Al Pacino to Kevin Spacey is returning to the small screen.
6. The British excel at TV
Downton Abbey: a global sensation. Photograph: Nick Briggs
The state of British TV is leagues ahead of British film. With a couple of notable exceptions – mainly in the form of soggy Richard Curtis romcoms – the latter is still stuck in the same old kitchen-sink/council-estate mould that it seems unable to escape. Meanwhile, Downton Abbey, Top Gear and Doctor Who are fast becoming truly global sensations, and then there all the formats that the UK has sold around the world. Remember, in Slovakia Come Dine With Me is called Without A Napkin.
7. British actors have ruled US TV for years
Damian Lewis in Homeland. Photograph: Kent Smith/Showtime
One of David's points was that Kate Winslet is often called upon to be an American in films. That's nothing – you barely watch any American TV show at all without seeing a homegrown actor elongating their vowels. Breaking Bad had Laura Fraser. Homeland has Damian Lewis (and David Harewood). The Wire had Idris Elba and Dominic West. House had Hugh Laurie. Sons of Anarchy has Charlie Hunnam. The Walking Dead has Andrew Lincoln and David Morrissey. This could be because they're brilliant actors, or it could be because they're cheaper than hiring real Americans. Either way, it still counts.
8. The bond with characters
EastEnders: the intimacy of television. Photograph: BBC/Adam Pensotti
The intimacy of television, combined with the amount of time that actors spend in specific roles, means that viewers can become far more invested in television characters than film characters. This is especially true in the case of soap operas, where characters become your extended family and announcers have to read out helpline numbers after heavy storylines.
9. The biggest film stars of tomorrow are on TV now
Bruce Willis with Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting. Photograph: =/Everett Collection/Rex Features
Bruce Willis started on TV. Alec Baldwin started on TV. Will Smith started on TV. Robin Williams and George Clooney and Eddie Murphy and Tom Hanks got their big breaks on TV. And this is how it'll always be – television's lower budgets and faster turnaround times make it a brilliant breeding ground for future movie stars. To watch TV is to watch bright young things get discovered by the world. People might see their films as the icing on the cake, but their TV breakthrough will always be the most exciting part of their careers.
10. TV made Netflix successful
Orange is the New Black: a Netflix hit.
Netflix is changing the way we consume media. But nobody subscribes for the films, unless they want to watch Jerry Maguire or The Craft for the billionth time. Instead, people use Netflix to devour TV shows in such droves that it's even started to commission its own. And, Hemlock Grove aside, they're all pretty brilliant. Netflix has become so important for TV that the makers of Breaking Bad have credited it for the show's success. In fact, if I'm being honest, another writer will beat both David and me hands down when they write: "10 reasons why Netflix trumps film and TV."There is an argument, albeit a very biased and pop oriented one, that Radiohead has been the most important band of the last 20 years. Whether it be the isolationist dissonance of Kid A or questioning societies myopic leanings in Hail to the Thief, Radiohead as actively pursued the truth through music. By exploring sonic soundscapes within a pop canopy, Radiohead is actively bringing under-appreciated musical influences to the masses, the most important of these genres being jazz. I remember the first time I heard Pyramid Song and how affected I was by the spacing of the notes within the main movement. And who can forget the Drums coming in a second shy of 2 mins. Amazing. Jazz Musicians have been playing Radiohead songs for years, actively reworking and assimilating them into other compositions. So here are our top 3 RadioHead Covers.
1 //Robert Glasper Trio // Maiden Voyage/ Everything in its right place // Bridgestone Music Festival `09
2 // Chris Potter // Morning Bell
via Grooveshark
3 // Atomic // Pyramid Song
via GrooveShark
Any other good Radiohead covers you know of?Ted Cruz has left a meeting with Mike Pence without saying whether he will endorse or even vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The Texas Republican senator and onetime rival of Trump’s have refused to endorse the billionaire. Cruz met privately with Pence in Washington and attended a lunch with the Indiana governor and a number of other Republican senators. Cruz says he had a “good and productive conversation” and a “very good meeting.” He calls Pence a “good man, a friend” and a “strong conservative.”
However, according to a source who attended the meeting, Cruz refused to endorse Trump and, instead, threw a bombshell that left most of the Republican attendees speechless: Ted Cruz plans to run against Donald Trump after all. Truth be told, he didn’t vow to do it, he merely suggested the possibility. And according to the source, the only way that would ever be possible is if it turns out the rumors are true and Hillary Clinton is prevented from running against Trump on account of her deteriorating health.
Asked to verify the allegations made by one of the attendees, who requested anonymity, Cruz initially seemed genuinely surprised, but later said, “I figured it would get out sooner or later. Might as well be sooner.” “It’s true,” the Texas Republican senator revealed, “I did make that proposition. And I made it for one simple reason – there is no way I am giving up on stopping Donald Trump from running this great country into the ground. And if I have to switch over to the Democrats to do it, then so be it.”
Cruz also went on to say that he is “very sorry” that Hillary Clinton seems to be having medical issues, as well as that that’s “one of the worst ways” for a politician to say goodbye to their career. “Still,” he added, “if I was her and I had a choice, I’d go with the health issues because she’s not strong enough to beat Trump when she’s at 100 percent, let alone now. Therefore, I’d like to make it clear: with all due respect to the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton – if anything should happen to her that prevents her from running against Donald Trump, I agree to take her place and run against him as a full-fledged Democrat.”
“And I don’t care that some people would label that as betrayal,” he added. “This country has been through too much for us to let a Donald Trump ruin it. So, if this is what has to be done and if no one else has the guts to do it, let history remember that it was Ted Cruz who sucked it up and took one for the red team. I know it’ll be painful seeing me go, but at the end of the day, we all have to make sacrifices, or else we’ll get nowhere. Besides – Heidi tells me I look dashing in blue, and a smart man always listens to his wife. Who knows, maybe blue has always been my color and I just didn’t see it,” Cruz concluded.
source http://tedcruz.trendolizer.com/It's spring break season and seems like summer's right around the corner, so for this week's Friday Freebies, we offer you great free ways to keep your kids busy - and happy! The giveaways companies offer are remarkable, if you just know where to look. We've searched and sleuthed all over the country to bring you the best free stuff for children that we could find.
Friday Freebies as seen on GMA
1. AMF Bowling Centers: 2 Free Games every day of the summer! Retail value: $904
Click here
AMF Bowling Centers are once again offering their terrific summer freebie, where children 15 and under can enjoy two free games on the house - every day of the summer! Just go to the website above to register your kids. You will be able to download a coupon, good for a week, that then replenishes every week. Shoe rental is not included. Note that this freebie doesn't start until May. We're sharing it early, so you can make your plans, because it's such a generous offer.
Available every day between May 14 and September 3, 2012. See company website for rules.
2. Just Me! Music: 3 Personalized Elmo Songs/Greetings. Retail value: $4
Click here
Just Me! Music will give your little ones a thrill, when you download these three free Elmo songs and Greetings addressed right to THEM, using their name! There are hundreds of names to choose from and Elmo says your child's name repeatedly during the recording. Use the code "elmogma" to redeem this offer.
Available until May 28, 2012. See company website for rules.
3. Ben and Jerry's: Free Ice Cream Cone. Retail value: Up to $5
Click here
Every year the fun folks at Ben and Jerry's host "Free Cone day," on which they thank their customers for their business by giving them an ice cream cone on the house. That day is coming next week, on Tuesday. This freebie is available to kids - and adults - of all ages.
Available April 3, 2012 12-8pm. See company website for rules.
4. JC Penney: Free pair of bunny ears! Retail value: $4
Redeem this offer by visiting a JC Penney store.
To celebrate spring, JC Penney department stores are giving away free bunny ears in the children's department.
Available: The giveaway starts Sunday April 1, 2012 and will continue until the bunny ears run out. See store for rules.
5. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus: Free Children's ticket. Retail value: $12
Click here
Ringling Brothers' "Baby's First Circus" program allows parents of babies under 1 year of age to register for a free ticket. You have to register before your child turns 1, but then the voucher you receive has NO EXPIRATION DATE! Your child can use it any time in the future, by redeeming it at the box office when the circus is in town.
Available: Sign up during your child's first year, then use any time. See company website for rules.
Web Exclusive Friday Freebies
6. Sears: Free Portrait Sitting and 10-by-13-inch print with special effects. Retail value: $44.97
Click here
Sears' Portrait Studio will GIVE you a photo shoot AND a large print, which in keeping with our kids theme this week, you could use to document your little munchkin's growth. Sears will even add special effects for you, such as a black and white photo with splashes of color.
Available until May 31, 2012. See company website for rules.
7. MyPublisher.com: Offer: Free 5-by-7-inch photo book. $19.99
Click here
MyPublisher.com has a great giveaway for new customers who try its service. Create your own 20-page photo book on their site and they will give it to you at no cost.
Use link above to redeem the offer. Voucher expires 14 days after you sign up. Please be aware that other deadlines may apply. Customers do have to pay for shipping. See company website for rules.Micah Hanks’ new article, on his recent visit to Aurora, Texas, and his quest for the truth about the alleged 1897 UFO crash in the area, has prompted me to make an observation on the affair. It’s an observation that doesn’t exactly place the controversial, 19th century event in a new light. It does, however, demonstrate something important: where there is one strange and unearthly mystery there is very often another.
As some of you may know, one of my biggest influences in the world of paranormal writing and research is the late John Keel, the author of such acclaimed titles as Our Haunted Planet and The Mothman Prophecies. Keel noted that certain areas and towns seem to attract far more paranormal activity than others. Perhaps the most famous example of what Keel termed “window areas” is Point Pleasant, West Virginia – the focus of a wide range of strange goings-on, in the 1960s, that Keel wrote about in the aforementioned The Mothman Prophecies.
All of this brings me back to that small Texas town to which Micah paid a visit last week. It’s a little known fact that Aurora (situated in Wise County) is home to numerous other “things” of a weird nature, some of which are far stranger than a crashed UFO and a dead alien. I have in my files three reports, from Aurora, of sightings of a certain beast that has become legendary in the fields of Fortean- and Cryptozoology-based research. It goes by the name of the “Alien Big Cat,” or the “ABC.”
For years, and throughout the world, people have reported sightings of large, anomalous, and black-colored cats prowling around and provoking fear and mayhem in the process. While most researchers of the ABC phenomenon conclude the mystery cats are wholly down-to-earth in nature, the fact is that there are more than a few reports of these creatures displaying certain supernatural overtones. Such rogue reports anger and frustrate some researchers of the ABC puzzle. But, too bad: the reports exist; like it or not, deal with it or don’t.
As a perfect example, we have to turn our attentions to Aurora. Of the three reports I have on-file of ABCs in Aurora, no less than two originated within the town’s cemetery – a cemetery where, it has been alleged, the remains of the dead “alien pilot” were buried following the 1897 incident.
One such ABC sighting occurred in 1978 and the other in 1989. In both cases, the creatures were seen prowling amongst the gravest |
The pool was last open in February 2014. The council recently revealed it would build a new 50-metre indoor pool at the Ballarat Aquatic and Lifestyle Centre and voted to close down the Black Hill pool. The new indoor pool is due to open in April. Ballarat council's chief executive Anthony Schinck says the decision to decommission the Black Hill pool was not about saving money but "reallocating investment in aquatic recreation in a different way."
He says the council needs to examine where pools are located in the region in preparation for the population trends in Ballarat's growth. Outdoor pools have become a financial burden and administrative headache for many councils. Their ageing decades-old pipes and concrete have become increasingly expensive to repair. Seasonal opening hours are another argument for their closure. But it was not always so. Outdoor pools once symbolised local progress and a "cultural pre-disposition" for the outdoors, according to RMIT academic Ian McShane. In his paper, "The past and future of local swimming pools", McShane says Victorian councils built about 200 swimming pools between 1950 and 1980. That period was a grand phase for these monuments, attesting to municipal achievement.
Australia's success in the Melbourne Olympic Games helped spur this pool building frenzy, as did concerns about drownings. Outdoor pools hosted festivals and pop concerts as their popularity flourished. And councils were good at building them, McShane says. "They knew about concrete. They knew about hydraulics," he says. He says pools became part of the "urban fabric" and remain much-loved but councils are under immense financial pressure to maintain them. "We've had them for a century or more and people are unwilling to let go of them." Campaigners hoping to save pools are now looking to impressive victories in battles throughout Melbourne and country Victoria to inspire them in their fight. Fitzroy pool is among the most famous and hardest fought campaigns. In 1994 locals succeeded in overturning a decision by the City of Yarra to close the pool, which had carved a place in broader popular culture in Helen Garner's book Monkey Grip.
Lawyer turned union leader Leigh Hubbard was among the spokespeople of that campaign. He says locals were partly motivated by a feeling that social justice had been denied. "Some people can afford to take the kids in the car and go to South Melbourne but many can't," he says. Hubbard joined a mass occupation at the pool lasting almost eight weeks. Hundreds of protesters jumped simultaneously (as he describes it) into the Clifton Hill pool forcing waves of water to overflow. The stunt aimed to prove that surrounding pools could not accommodate all the swimmers from Fitzroy. "It was a very particular time when Jeff Kennett was amalgamating councils and doing things that were very controversial." Eventually the commissioners installed by the Kennett government to run the council relented. The protesters' legacy is a popular pool with year-round operating hours. And in Chewton near Castlemaine residents won their fight against the Mount Alexander Shire. The shire had wanted to build an indoor aquatic centre a short drive from the 25-metre outdoor pool in Chewton.
The promised aquatic centre was to stay open all year but locals could not bear to give up their pool that was built in the 1950s. It held too many precious memories. Chewton Pool president Rose Darling says the former operator Jimmy Lynch was well-known for marching to the water's edge and filling up his kettle while working there from the 1970s until 1999. "He was demonstrating the quality of the pool water was so good you could drink it," she says. Chewton Pool is now run by a local community committee of management although the shire does contribute some funding. But it took a long campaign before the council handed over control in 2011. Locals raised $20,000 by hosting a competition to find Chewton's ugliest man. They drummed up $80,000 in all. Darling says protesters stared down workers who had come to demolish the pool and stayed there 24 hours a day for a fortnight. There was a mass rally and campaign organisers enlisted comedian Rod Quantock to raise their profile and help with fundraising. "I think a lot of people are pretty invested in this place," Darling says. "I think they're pretty proud."
Over in Yarrunga near Wangaratta, Jenny Hart has contacted the Chewton Pool committee in the hope of emulating their success. Hart says her nearby round "free-form" pool is also facing closure by the council. She says the council wants to build a seasonal 50- metre outdoor pool attached to an indoor centre instead of keeping the Yarrunga pool open. "It's not because I want to go and swim in that pool, it's what it represents as a family place to go," she says. "I lie there with my newspaper or book and my kids can go in the water and have fun." Hart says Yarrunga pool is set to close after this summer, but she hopes the community can find a way to keep it open. Now go back to the local pool where families are lining up at the entry window on a sultry summer afternoon.
Pass through the iron turnstiles. Girls are huddled in small groups away from their parents, testing the boundaries of independence. Occasionally one of them breaks free to execute a cartwheel down the sloping grass. Teenage boys hold boisterous conversations, unable to discuss the bus timetable without bursting into profanity. Their foul language turns parents' heads hoping their young children will not take that language home with them. But they will all keep coming back and laying down new memories. They have chosen the chlorinated water despite having the bay nearby. That's because the sea belongs to nature but pools belong to us.The mullets! The songs! The big-haired teens emoting teen angst in pastel clothes! Yes, to coincide with our rundown of the 100 best songs of the 80s, we couldn’t let our remembrance of this decade pass without looking back at the biggest things that made the decade so damn amazing.
1 Teen movies
The teen movie came of age in the 80s. From the gross-out comedies like Porkies through to John Hughes’ more thoughtful films like the epic Pretty In Pink and The Breakfast Club to dark gems like Heathers, these were resonant, beautifully realised films capturing, for the first time, the truth about being a teenager.
2 ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’
The 80s most dynamic boy band produced their best single in the form of ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’. It was a juddering new wave anthem shot through with a hint of weirdness. The video – featuring our heroes lolling about in a sunny spot- only added to the 80s glamour of the whole thing.
3 4AD
The 80s was the decade when this British record label rose from small beginnings to become synonymous with brilliant, forward looking alternative music. From first wave of bands like The Birthday Party and to Cocteau Twins to the second wave with US bands like Throwing Muses and Pixies, “4AD” became a marker of quality.
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4 Alternative comedy
The 80s saw comedy leap out of the comfy 70s into politicized, more socially aware arenas. The likes of The Comic Strip, Alexei_Sayle, The Young Ones, French And Saunders and Blackadder brought this new wave to our TV screens and our pop culture was forever changed.
5 The ‘big concept’ album
Big production values, big artists. Some of the key albums of the 80s were unified by a big concept and/or aesthetic (‘So’, ‘Hounds Of Love’, ‘Sign O’ The Times’, ‘Graceland’). It’s easy to say ‘they don’t make them like that anymore’ but they really don’t.
6 ‘Girls Just Want To Fun’
Cyndi Lauper was a musical Howitzer. Combining an cartoonish style sense with a series of bubblegum pop gems, she was Madonna before Madonna. ‘Girls…’ was her statement of intent; a cutesy slice of blistering new wave pop that was bursting with joy.
7 The Cure
Robert Smith and his smeary lipstick gang filled the 80s with single after single of bizarre, cryptic and urgently wonderful tracks. Their run of game changing songs saw them repeatedly reinventing themselves and what they did.
8 Mixtapes
Yes, we know that home taping “killed” music, but that didn’t stop us from compiling tapes for loved ones. And anyone who has read or seen High Fidelity they will understand the important, personal place that mixtapes had for a generation. Song selection, setting up the tape deck and designing the tape cover with a personal message. Making them on Spotify just isn’t really the same is it?
9 The Smiths
The Smiths’ run of singles from ‘Hand In Glove’ to ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’ was of one the greatest in popular music. Jangling riffs met intelligent lyrics with psychosexual undertones – the effects were seismic for indie and music in general.
10 New Order
From the ashes of Joy Division came one of the most important and experimental bands of the 80s. They mixed indie with dance in a manner that would change the way anyone who picked up a guitar and synthesizer would operate in the future.
11 Super Mario Bros.
Do you remember a time before computer games had an insane masochistic learning curve and a metatexual bent? They were happier, simpler times, where two badly drawn wise guys had to run away from dangerous mushrooms.
12 Ludicrous escapist TV
Soaps like Dynasty and Dallas were massive in the 80s. It was the place where beautiful billionaires boinked each other and then walked out of the shower to realize the preceding months had all been a dream.
13 Saturday mornings = music
Remember when you’d wake from your slumber, realize it’s the weekend and then spend the whole of Saturday AM monging out in your PJ’s in front of the telly? Blissing out to The Chart Show and various music-heavy morning shows, including Going Live!. And who can forget Five Star-gate?
14 Weird toys
You know what, maybe toys have always been weird. Maybe not. But the 80s was the decade of the Cabbage Patch Kid and the talking bear Teddy Ruxpin, both rather strange when you think about it. No wonder it was also the decade that birthed Child’s Play with evil toy demon Chucky at the centre of the drama.
15 Saving up to buy an album
Before we could download the entire history of music at the click of a button, there was a period of time where the goal was to amass £5.49 to get an album on cassette tape that’d you’d been wanting for ages. That was about two months’ worth of pocket money. Can you imagine?
16 Amazing comedy films
The early 80s were a golden age for comedy flicks, with the careers of the likes of Eddie Murphy and Bill Murray exploding. there were also films like Airplane! which re-booted the power of the hilarious one-liner and paved the way for The Naked Gun series.
17 Spielberg!
SS came into his own during the 80s, there was a point in the decade where you felt every blockbuster was created by him. Indiana Jones, The Goonies, Poltergeist and of course ET were works by the great cap wearer. Films that made a whole generation equate ‘popcorn’ with ‘aliens’ and an inflated sense of nostalgia.
18 ‘Billie Jean’
The moonwalk, the glove, the tightly controlled disco beat, the batshit lyrics. ‘Billie Jean’ was a defining moment in the 80s.
19 ‘Like A Virgin’
The helium-voiced strut of ‘Like A Virgin’ was a massive come-on from Madonna, who was making the transition from pop also-ran to megastar. The infamous MTV performance where she gyrated on the floor in a wedding dress was massively headline making.
20 Fan clubs
Before the advent of the internet, the special relationship between fan and artist was harder to bridge. That’s where fan clubs came in. Membership of this elite organization afforded you entry into special newsletters, merchandise and behind the scenes stuff. Following Lady Gaga on Twitter is not the same thing.
21 ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’
GNR had big hair, but they weren’t your usual LA metalheads. There was real dirt beneath Axl and Co’s fingernails. ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’ was the sweetest of their hard-rocking bunch, with a riff that would move into legend.
22 ‘When Doves Cry’
Prince leapt feet first into the double whammy of his first starring role (in Purple Rain) and its accompanying soundtrack. The first single ‘When Doves Cry’ was strange and exotic; the music chucked out the bass and the lyrics vibrated with animal magnetism.
23 ‘Walk This Way’
Sure there was Blondie’s ‘Rapture’, but white America’s first real slice of Top 40 rap was Run DMC’s duet with Aerosmith. This remake of their 70s hit saw an uptight Steven Tyler paired with a laid-back Reverend Run. It was a perfect match.
24 Power ballads
The 80s combined two great things; dry ice and mullets. Usually accompanied by a fist-in-the-air, big lunged power ballad, perhaps written by known cheesemakers Jim Steinman or Diane Warren and belted out by the likes of Meat, Whitney, Bonnie or Bon (Jovi that is).
25 Pop music’s Royal Family
This was the decade when a trio of ridiculously talented musicians (Prince, Michael Jackson and Madonna) ruled pop’s roost. Has it ever been better?The MiFi released by Virgin Mobile this week ($150) is almost exactly the same thing as the one offered by Verizon and, until recently, Sprint — but there’s a twist that makes it revolutionary all over again.
The Virgin MiFi, like its rivals, is still an amazing gizmo to have on long car rides for the family, on woodsy corporate offsite meetings, at disaster sites, at trade show booths or anywhere you can’t get Wi-Fi. If you live alone, the MiFi could even be your regular home Internet service, too — one that you can take with you when you head out the door. And it’s still insanely useful when you’re stuck on a plane on a runway.
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But three things about the Virgin MiFi are very, very different. First, Virgin’s plan is unlimited. You don’t have to sweat through the month, hoping you don’t exceed the standard 5-gigabyte data limit, as you do with the cellular-modem products from Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. (If you exceed 5 gigabytes, you pay steep per-megabyte overage charges, or in T-Mobile’s case, you get your Internet speed slowed down for the rest of the month.)
If you hadn’t noticed, unlimited-data plans are fast disappearing — but here’s Virgin, offering up an unlimited Internet plan as if it never got the memo.
Second, Virgin requires no contract. You can sign up for service only when you need it. In other words, it’s totally O.K. with Virgin if you leave the thing in your drawer all year, and activate it only for, say, the two summer months when you’ll be away. That’s a huge, huge deal in this era when every flavor of Internet service, portable or not, requires a two-year commitment.
Third, the service price for this no-commitment, unlimited, portable hot spot is — are you sitting down? — $40 a month.
That’s no typo. It’s $40 a month. Compare that with the cheapest cellular modems from AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint: $60 a month. T-Mobile also charges $40 a month for its cellular modems. But all four of those big companies require a two-year contract, and come with those scary 5-gigabyte monthly data limits.
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(There’s actually another Virgin plan available, too: you can pay $10 for a 100-megabyte chunk of Internet use that expires in 10 days. It’s intended for people who are heading out for the weekend and just want to keep in touch with e-mail without having to fork over a whole month’s worth of money — and without paying $15 or $25 for each night of overpriced hotel Wi-Fi. And speaking of options, Virgin also offers a standard U.S.B. plug-in cellular modem with exactly the same pricing details.)
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I’ve pounded my head against the fine print, grilled the product managers and researched the heck out of this, and I simply cannot find the catch.
Is it the speed? No. You’re getting exactly the same 3G speed you’d get on rival cellular modems and MiFi’s. That is, about as fast as a DSL modem. A cell modem doesn’t give you cable-modem speed, but you’ll have no problem watching online videos and, where you have a decent Sprint signal, even doing video chats.
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Is it the coverage? Not really; Virgin uses Sprint’s 3G cellular Internet network, which is excellent. You’re getting exactly the same battery life and convenience of Verizon’s MiFi — for two-thirds the monthly price.
(Why would Sprint allow Virgin to use its data network but undercut its own pricing in such a brazen way? Because Sprint is focused on promoting its 4G phones and portable hot spots — even faster Internet, available so far only in a few cities. For example, its Overdrive portable hot spot is $100 after rebate, with a two-year commitment. The service is $60 a month for 5 gigabytes of 3G data and unlimited 4G data.)
That’s not to say that there’s no fine print whatsoever.
First, the Virgin plan doesn’t include roaming off Sprint’s network; the old Sprint MiFi plans did. According to Virgin, that’s not a big deal — the regular Sprint network covers 262 million people, whereas roaming would cover 12 million more — but it means that you might be out of luck in smaller towns.
Second, the Virgin MiFi can’t plug directly into your computer’s U.S.B. port to act as a wired cellular modem, like other carriers’ MiFi units. You can connect to it only wirelessly, if you care. (You can still charge it from your computer’s U.S.B. jack, but very slowly. A wall outlet or car adapter is a much better bet.)
Finally, remember that the Virgin MiFi is still a MiFi, so it’s a bit uncommunicative. It has only a single, illuminated button that serves as the on-off switch and an indicator light that blinks cryptically in different colors. You have to press that button and wait about 20 seconds before you can get online.
But come on: $40 a month? With no commitment or contract?
I did a little survey of broadband Internet prices among my Twitter followers. Turns out $40 a month is not only a great price for cellular (portable) Internet service — it’s among the lowest broadband prices in America, period. In some areas you can pay $35 a month for DSL service. But most people pay $50 to $60 for high-speed Internet, which makes the Virgin deal seem even more incredible.
And unlike those plans, Virgin lets you turn on service only when you want it. You can buy service — as with a prepaid phone —either by calling an 800 number or visiting a Web site. Handily enough, you can get onto the Virgin Web site to re-activate your MiFi, even if you’d previously stopped paying for service.
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The MiFi’s portability has always made it an exceptionally flexible and useful little gadget — and Virgin’s prepaid model, unlimited data plan and dirt-cheap pricing just multiply that flexibility. And if Virgin can make money with a plan like this, the mind boggles at just how overpriced the similar offerings from its rivals must really be.Marcos Ambrose has always been clear about one thing – he thoroughly enjoyed his time racing in the U.S., but he has always said that his home is Australia, and that he intended to return while he was still young enough to race.
Earlier this week, his plan came together as he announced his resignation from Richard Petty Motorsports and the NASCAR Sprint Cup series, to return home to compete once again in the Australian V8 Supercars Championship.
The opportunity came when Team Penske formed a partnership with Dick Johnson Racing to begin competing in the Australian V8 Supercars Championship starting in 2015. DJR Team Penske will field Ford Falcons in the series starting next season, and Ambrose will return home the iconic No. 17 Ford after competing in NASCAR over the last nine seasons.
Late Monday, the principals -- Roger Penske, Dick Johnson, Marcos Ambrose and Tim Cindric, president of Penske Racing – held a conference call. Here’s an edited version of the more than 9,000-word conversation.
Q: Why does it make sense for the organization to team up with Dick Johnson Racing for this program and move forward with Marcos to begin competing in the V8 Supercars Championship starting in 2015?
ROGER PENSKE: When I stepped back away from this opportunity, I really look at our business that we've now been developing in Australia. We had the opportunity to race in the Gold Coast for a number of years with IndyCars. I had the opportunity to watch the V8 Supercars Series. I know a number of the drivers, and obviously have followed the series for a number of years.
When I looked at our business – and racing has been a common thread through our businesses for many years – and I saw that the V8 Supercars would connect with our customer base throughout Australia and there was no question that with our interests in racing as we know our NASCAR heritage here, IndyCar, a chance to go to Australia and take some of our people an opportunity there would be something that we wouldn't want to turn down.
Obviously when we look at the landscape coming down there by ourselves and trying to develop a team, we really said that wasn't an option, and so we took the last four to five months really to look and see what we might be able to do, partner or do something with another organization, and I found out very quickly that Dick Johnson Racing had such a great reputation. I had the opportunity to go to the shop, meet Dick and meet the key people there, and it was obvious that we could have a good fit. We need a partner. We've partnered in many businesses here in the United States and internationally, and the chance to partner with someone who had assets, who had the RECs and had the ability for us to be able to join together and go in 2015 was the first step.
Obviously with all the drivers in most cases under contracts, that made it difficult for us to make a decision on just where we might go from a driver standpoint, and having known Marcos and from time to time talked to him about Australia, he said to us – “At some time I'm thinking about going back to Australia with my family. If you ever want to run down there, let me know.” So I took the opportunity to call him up on the phone and Tim met with him, and he said, look, there's an opportunity, I'd like to be part of it.
This has taken time over the last several months to get to this point, and quite honestly we didn't really want to go forward until we finished the IndyCar season and looked at the next nine races in NASCAR. It's a business reason, we love racing, we love Australia, and I think the combination of Johnson and certainly Marcos Ambrose to set the stage and the foundation for us will be a real opportunity.
Q: Dick Johnson, your teams have experienced great success with seven Australian Touring Car and V8 Supercar championships. This new partnership with Team Penske really represents a new era for Dick Johnson Racing. Can you talk about how this relationship developed over the last several months and the opportunity to work with Team Penske and Marcos Ambrose?
DICK JOHNSON: Well, actually the first contact was made near on 12 months ago when Tim came out to Australia and certainly had a look around at the Homebush facility, et cetera, and we've been in conversation ever since, working out the finer details, but it was never, ever going to realistically come to play until such time as 2015, at the beginning of a new season.
To have Marcos as part of our team, I've known Marcos for quite some time, he was one of the few guys to win back‑to‑back championships for Ford, and to have ‑‑ as I said, to have Marcos as part of our team is a real bonus. And certainly with Roger and the Penske organization, what they can bring to our team will be second to none, I can assure you. It's one of those situations that anyone who ever had this sort of opportunity would never, ever give it up because obviously Roger is iconic not only in the U.S. but certainly throughout the world with his racing exploits and certainly his business exploits.
He has made it very clear on a number of occasions like he has done with his other teams that he does this to leverage his business in every way in every country that he's been in, and I think it's just a great way of doing things. We've had a lot of partners along the way that have done exactly the same.
And for Marcos to come home, I know a lot of speculation is that Marcos was really, really good in the early '90s ‑‑ late '90s into the 2000s, but coming into the V8 Supercars, which has changed an awful lot over the past nine or 10 years, I don't think he'll have any trouble at all finding his feet within these cars, even though they're different cars. They're not all that different, and Marcos, as you know, has a tremendous record on road courses in the NASCARs and things. I'm sure that he'll fit very well with the system.
Mind you, it's not something, if anyone thinks you're going to come straight out of the box and win races from day one, I think that would be a pie in the sky sort of attitude, but quite frankly, next year, I think from what Roger says, is going to be a learning year for all of us and we'll have a real good crack in 2016. But boy, the opportunities here are endless with the technical expertise that we can get from Penske and certainly to sort of integrate with the team we currently have here and the facility we have I think will be nothing short of spectacular.
Q: Now for Marcos, after a successful nine seasons competing in NASCAR, you'll get a chance to return home in 2015 and race in a series where you won 28 races and two series titles in five seasons. How great of an opportunity and challenge is this to come back to V8 Supercars and the legendary No. 17 Ford Falcon and race for two motorsports legends in Roger Penske and Dick Johnson?
MARCOS AMBROSE: Well, thank you for the question. It certainly is a great opportunity and it's going to be a great personal challenge for me. The point I want to get across, also, it's an honor to be able to bring to Australian racing, be part of bringing Team Penske to Australian racing. It's going to be great for Australian motorsport. To drive the No. 17 for Dick Johnson Racing is also an incredible opportunity for me and a privilege. I've watched Dick race as a kid. I've raced against his team, and now I get to drive with him, so the combination of DJR and Team Penske is an opportunity that is an incredible one for me personally. It was a no‑brainer for me to come with the conversations I've had with Roger to take this opportunity and really run with it. I can't wait to get home and get started.
It will be a challenge for me personally, there's no doubt about that. It's been nearly 10 years since I've driven a V8 Supercar. I don't take that challenge lightly. I know it's going to take some time to get integrated back into the series with the way they like to race, with the rules they have in place, and also the technical aspect of these cars, but I know what I've done in the past, and I know what I'm capable of, and it's not like I've been sitting around a beach. I've been racing 36 NASCAR Sprint Cup races every season. I've had plenty of racing miles under my belt. I'm looking forward to the change. I'm looking forward to bringing my family back to Australia, and just can't wait to get started.
Q: Tim, you made some trips to Australia to explore opportunities for the team in the V8 Supercars Championship. Can you talk a little bit about the competition in the series and the opportunities for Team Penske on the racing side and also how the organizational structure will work within DJR and Team Penske as it gears up for the 2015 season?
TIM CINDRIC: Sure, I guess at the start, my first exposure to V8 Supercars was really when we raced in Surfers Paradise with the IndyCars back in the CART Series in the early 90s. I think 1991 was the first year that I came across it, which was the first year of the Surfers event, and there was all this talk about V8 Supercars, and the IndyCars were a bit secondary to what was going on with V8 Supercars. I guess we understand at least from my perspective what was V8 Supercars, and obviously that was a long time ago, but when Roger mentioned to me that he was seriously considering some kind of involvement within the V8 Supercars Series in Australia, I didn't know to take him serious or not, but then he told me about fellow by the name of Dick Johnson that was actually going to come across to have a look at our workshop in North Carolina.
And I thought, okay, it's a typical, I guess, tour of our facility, but never did I really realize how serious Roger was about getting involved. As he asked me more questions, it was obvious that I needed to get on an airplane and go find out really what the landscape looked like, which was why I went across to Homebush, and as I was in Homebush, there was quite a bit of speculation about kind of why we were there and what our end objective was.
A couple of the media had actually mentioned to me would we consider Marcos as a driver, and that stirred up things a little bit, and Marcos a little bit later had asked, hey, I might be interested in something like that if this is something that you're seriously considering, and from then it just continued to grow. We felt like we were serious enough to try and understand a bit more about the DJR organization when I came across in June, and what I saw there and what I felt there was a very positive energy within that organization, and I spent the better part of a week there just getting to know the people and getting to understand the infrastructure.
I left there with a lot of confidence in June knowing that this group could get the job done, obviously with Marcos behind the wheel. As we looked at how do we connect that to Roger's businesses, we knew that we needed to have someone on the ground floor within Australia to do as we do here in the States, and as Roger said, the common thread throughout our businesses is the motorsport, and we needed someone there that knew the landscape to tie these things together, and I think most of you are familiar with a fellow by the name of John Crennan, and John Crennan most recently was managing director at Nissan Motorsport and was the co‑founder of HRT. He's going to come on board to help us leverage our association with the Penske commercial vehicles and our racing program.
Q. Roger, and I guess Dick is involved in this question a bit, too, the arrangement has been described in the release as a partnership. Can you talk us through how it's going to work and what the actual ownership split is going to be, please?
ROGER PENSKE: We'll have a majority ownership, but Dick will be involved on a day‑to‑day basis. He lives there. He's been part of the team and will integrate with the people that he has on the ground. I think Tim was able to give you some specific details on people that we would bring to the party, but we'll make ‑‑ we'll set up actually a separate entity which Dick and his investors will be part of, and then he'll contribute assets and we'll contribute capital into the business, and then we'll go to V‑8 Supercar for approval to transfer the RECs into that new organization.
Q. Marcos, when are you actually getting back to Australia and when do you expect to drive one of the cars for the first time?
MARCOS AMBROSE: I have nine races left in the Sprint Cup Series for Richard Petty Motorsports. I intend to honor that, and so shortly after the last race at Homestead I'll be planning to come back. We have some opportunities to get behind the wheel of a V8 Supercar which is really what I'm thinking about the most these days for some media rides and corporate rides and things like that, so I do expect to come back in November, and then the big move with the family and so forth will take place at the end of December.
Q. And where are you going to live?
MARCOS AMBROSE: I'm going to live in Tasmania, and I've kept my residence in South East Queensland that I've had when I was racing for Stone Brothers, so I'll be using both houses to do the job, but I'm going to move the family and base ourselves in Launceston, Tasmania.
Q. Marcos, what will you miss most about NASCAR, and perhaps your biggest moment over here in the eight or nine years you raced?
MARCOS AMBROSE: I've got some incredibly fond memories of racing in the U.S., and there is no feeling like running a Sprint Cup car on a high‑speed oval. It's something that not many professional drivers get a chance to taste, and I will miss that. I will miss the sensation, the speed and the intensity of the racing, the amount of racing. You know, that is why I came to America. I came to America because of the schedule, the amount of races, you know, of the toughness and the aggressiveness of the racing, and I'll miss that, there's no doubt about it. But at the same time, V8 Supercar is an incredible series, and I'm certainly going to get plenty of competition down there, as well. I will miss the high‑speed racing that is NASCAR and just the general intensity of it and the size.
Q. What was the moment you'll remember most from your eight or nine years here?
MARCOS AMBROSE: Yeah, certainly winning my first Sprint Cup race will go down as one of my highlights, but tonight to be honest with you ranks right up there, the opportunity to be sitting next to Roger Penske announcing a deal to return home. If I look at my racing in America, to think that I was actually able to come to this point in my career, it's an amazing thing. So I think tonight is a highlight.
Q. Is there any chance you would do a one‑off in NASCAR?
MARCOS AMBROSE: I haven't thought about that, but to be honest with you, I'm just really, really excited to announce this and to look forward to putting my full commitment behind the V8 Supercar program for DJR Team Penske.“In the boy’s case, he was reportedly given a gym membership, given religious guidance and had regular visits and phone calls from community contact police.” What? He got a gym membership and he still tried to wage jihad against Infidels? Doesn’t he know that the Qur’an says to wage war against and subjugate non-Muslims, unless they give you a gym membership?
(Note for the incurably literal-minded: it doesn’t really say that.)
“Boy, 16, arrested over ‘Anzac Day terror plot’ was in deradicalisation program,” by Rachel Olding, Sydney Morning Herald, April 26, 2016:
A 16-year-old boy arrested over an alleged Anzac Day terrorism plot had been in a government-run deradicalisation program for about a year.
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, chose not to appear in Parramatta Children’s Court on Tuesday for a brief mention two days after his arrest.
His lawyer, Zemarai Khatiz, entered a not guilty plea to one charge of doing an act in preparation or planning for a terrorist act, an offence that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Zemarai Khatiz, the lawyer for the 16-year-old terrorist suspect.
Mr Khatiz said a psychologist with more than 38 years’ experience would assess the boy in prison this week to support an application for bail on Friday.
The boy was arrested near his Auburn home Sunday afternoon, just hours after police allegedly intercepted an online chat he was having with a man overseas in which he mentioned trying to obtain a firearm and targeting an Anzac Day event on Monday.
He was not considered a “prime target” for counter-terrorism officers but had been on their radar for about a year.
The boy’s father was interviewed anonymously by The Australian in December about a deradicalisation program in which his son had been placed after extremists allegedly tried to involve him in a foiled plot in May last year.
He said his son was bullied at school and spent a lot of time in his room. However, he spoke about the dramatic progress the boy had made after ASIO and the police intervened, including the boy starting an electrician’s apprenticeship and going to English-language sermons at a mosque with his father.
“[It is] the worst thing, but also the best thing … because, potentially, it enabled him to come out of that shell, or wherever he was, and see that he could get it out,” the father said of the program.
The article lauded the government’s National Disruption Group, a $ |
successful in complying with the request. Retrieve and Lookup requests involve data transfer from the server to the user. The user sends the request, the server responds with a rs, and transfers the data specified by the request. Upon completion of the data transfer, the server terminates the transaction sequence with a successful terminate if all goes well, or with an unsuccessful terminate is errors were detected. Store and Append requests involve data transfer from the user to server. The user sends the request and the server responds with a rr. The user then transfers the data. Upon receiving the data, the server terminates the sequence. Execute request involves transfer of inputs from user to server, and transfer of outputs from server to user. The user sends the request to which the server responds with rr. The user then transfers the necessary inputs. The server "executes" the program or subroutine and transfers the outputs to the user. Upon completion of the output transfer, the server terminates the transaction sequence. 3C. Aborts Either host may abort the transaction sequence at any time by sending an unsuccessful terminate, or by closing the connection (NCP to transmit a CLS for the connection). The CLS is a more drastic type of abort and shall be used when there is a catastrophic failure or when an abort is desired in the middle of a long file transfer. The abort indicates to the receiving host that the other host wishes to terminate the transaction sequence and is now in the initial state. When CLS is used to abort, the using host will reopen the connection. 4. Data Types 4A. The data type code together with the extension code defines the manner in which the data field is to be parsed and interpreted [14]. Although a large number of data types are defined, specific implementations may handle only a limited subset of data types. It is recommended that all host sites accept the "network ASCII" and "binary" data types. Host computers which do not "recognize" particular data types may abort the transaction sequence and return a data type error status code. 4B. The following data types are tentatively defined. The code in the type and extension field is represented by its ASCII equivalent with 8th bit as zero. Data Type Code Byte Size Type Extension ASCII character, bit8=0 (network) 8 A NUL ASCII characters, bit8=1 8 A 1 ASCII characters, bit8=even parity 8 A E ASCII characters, bit8=odd parity 8 A O ASCII characters, 8th bit info. 8 A 8 ASCII characters, 7 bits 7 A 7 ASCII characters, in 9-bit field 9 A 9 ASCII formatted files (with SOH, STX, ETX, etc.) 8 A F DEC-packed ASCII (5 7-bit char., 36th bit 1 or 0) 36 A D EBCDIC characters 8 E NUL SIXBIT characters 6 S NUL Binary data 1 B NUL Binary bytes (size is binary ext.) 1-255 B (any) Decimal numbers, net ASCII 8 D A Decimal numbers, EBCDIC 8 D E Decimal numbers, sixbit 6 D S Decimal numbers, BCD (binary coded) 4 D B Octal numbers, net. ASCII 8 O A Octal numbers, EBCDIC 8 O E Octal numbers, SIXBIT 6 O S Hexadecimal numbers, net. ASCII 8 H A Hexadecimal numbers, EBCDIC 8 H E Hexadecimal numbers, SIXBIT 6 H S Unsigned integers, binary (ext. field is byte size) 1-225 U (any) Sign magnitude integers (field is binary size) 1-255 I (any) 2's complement integers (ext. field is byte size) 1-255 2 (any) 1's complement integers (ext. field is byte size) 1-255 1 (any) Floating point (IBM360) 32 F I Floating point (PDP-10) 36 F D Status codes 8 S NUL 4C. The data type information is intended to be interpretive. If a host accepts a data type, it can interpret it to a form suited to its internal representation of characters or numbers [15]. Specifically when no conversion is to be performed, the data type used will be binary. The implicit or explicit byte size is useful as it facilitates storing of data. For example, if a PDP-10 receives data types A, A1, AE, or A7, it can store the ASCII characters five to a word (DEC-packed ASCII). If the datatype is A8 or A9, it would store the characters four to a word. Sixbit characters would be stored six to a word. If conversion routines are available on a system, the use of system program could convert the data from one form to another (such as EBCDIC to ASCII, IBM floating point to DEC floating point, Decimal ASCII to integers, etc.). 5. Initial Connection, CLS, and Identifying Users 5A. There will be a prearranged socket number [16] for the cooperating process on the serving host. The connection establishment will be in accordance with the initial connection protocol of RFC 66 as modified by RFC 80. The NCP dialog would be: user to server: RTS<us><3><p> if accepted, server to user: STR<3><us><CLS><3><us> server to user on link p: <ss> server to user: STR<ss+1><us>RTS<ss><us+1><q> user to server: STR<us><ss+1>RTS<us+1><ss><r> This sets up a full-duplex connection between user and server processes, with server receiving through local socket ss from remote socket us+1 via link q, and sending to remote socket us through local socket ss+1 via link r. 5B. The connection will be broken by trading a CLS between the NCP'S for each of the two connections. Normally the user will initiate the CLS. CLS may also be used by either the user or the server to abort a data transmission in the middle. If a CLS is received in the middle of a transaction sequence, the whole transaction sequence will be aborted. The using host will then reopen the connection. 5C. The first transaction from the user to server will be the identify transaction. The users will be identified by the pathname in data field of the transaction which should be a form acceptable to the server. The server is at liberty to truncate pathnames for its own use. Since the identify transaction does not require a response or terminate, the user can proceed directly with other requests. IV. Extensions to Protocol The protocol specified above has been designed to be extendable. The obvious extensions would be in the area of transaction types (new types of requests), error return status words, and data types. Some of the non-obvious extensions, that I can visualize are provisions of access control mechanisms, developing a uniform way of specifying file attributes in headings of files, increasing the scope of the execute command to include subroutine mediation, and the provision of transaction sequence identification numbers to facilitate handling of multiple requests over the same connection pair. Users of protected file systems should be able to have a reasonable degree of confidence in the ability of the serving process to identify remote users correctly. In the absence of such confidence, some users would not be willing to give access to the serving process (especially write access). Inclusion of access control mechanisms such as passwords, is likely to enhance the indirect use of network by users who are concerned about privacy and security. A simple extension to the protocol would be to have the serving host sent a transaction type "password?" after it receives user name. Upon receipt of "password?" the using host will transmit the password, which when successfully acknowledged, would indicate to the user that requests may proceed. There are a number of file attributes which properly belong in the heading of a file rather than the file itself or the data type in descriptors of transactions. Such attributes include access control lists, date file was last modified, information about the nature of file, and description of its contents in a data description or data reconfiguration language. Some uniformity in the way file attributes are specified would be useful. Until then, the interpretation of the heading would be up to the user or the using process. For example, the heading of files which are input to a data reconfiguration (form) machine may be the desired transformations expressed in the reconfiguration language. The "execute" command which achieves the execution of programs resident in remote hosts is a vital part of indirect use of remote hosts. The present scope of the execute command, as outlined in the specifications, is somewhat limited. It assumes that the user or using process is aware of the manner in which the arguments and results should be exchanged. One could broaden the scope of the execute command by introducing a program mediation protocol [17]. The present specification of the protocol does not allow the simultaneous transfer and processing of multiple requests over the same pair of connections. If such a capability is desired, there is an easy way to implement it which only involves a minor change. A transaction sequence identification number (TSid) could replace a NUL field in the descriptor of transactions. The TSid would facilitate the coordination of transactions, related to a particular transaction sequence. The 256 code combinations permitted by the TSid would be used in a round-robin manner (I can't see more than 256 outstanding requests between two user-processes in any practical implementation). An alternate way of simultaneous processing of requests is to open new pairs of connection. I am not sure as to how useful simultaneous processing of requests is, and which of the two is a more reasonable approach. V. Conclusions I tried to present a user-level protocol that will permit users and using programs to make indirect use of remote host computers. The protocol facilitates not only file system operations but also program execution in remote hosts. This is achieved by defining requests which are handled by cooperating processes. The transaction sequence orientation provides greater assurance and would facilitate error control. The notion of data types is introduced to facilitate the interpretation, reconfiguration and storage of simple and limited forms of data at individual host sites. The protocol is readily extendible. Endnotes [1] The interim version of the protocol, limited to transfer of ASCII files, was developed by Chander Ramchandani and Howard Brodie of Project MAC. The ideas of transactions, descriptors, error recovery, aborts, file headings and attributes, execution of programs, and use of data types, pathnames, and default mechanisms are new here. Howard Brodie and Neal Ryan have coded the interim protocol in the PDP-10 and the 645, respectively. [2] The network system survey was conducted last fall by Howard Brodie of Project MAC, primarily by telephone. [3] PDP-10 Reference Handbook, page 306. [4] We considered using two full-duplex links, one for control information, the other for data. The use of a separate control link between the cooperating processes would simplify aborts, error recoveries and synchronization. The synchronization function may alternatively be performed by closing the connection (in the middle of a transaction sequence) and reopening it with an abort message. (The use of INR and INS transmitted via the NCP control link has problems as mentioned by Kalin in RFC 103.) We prefer the latter approach. [5] Identifying users through use of socket numbers is not practical, as unique user identification numbers have not been implemented, and file systems identify users by name, not number. [6] This subject is considered in detail by Bob Metcalfe in a forthcoming paper. [7] Filler bits may be necessary as particular implementations of NCP's may not allow the free communication of bits. Instead the NCP's may only accept bytes, as suggested in RFC 102. The filler count is needed to determine the boundary between transactions. [8] 72-bits in descriptor field are convenient as 72 is the least common multiple of 6, 8, 9, 18, 24 and 30, the commonly encountered byte sizes on the ARPA network host computers. [9] The execute request is intended to facilitate the indirect execution of programs and subroutines. However, this request in its present form may have only limited use. A subroutine or program mediation protocol would be required for broader use of the execute feature. Metcalfe considers this problem in a forthcoming paper. [10] The pathname idea used in Multics is similar to that of labels in RFC 76 by Bouknight, Madden and Grossman. [11] We, however, urge the use of standard network ASCII. [12] The exact manner in which the input and output are transmitted would depend on specific mediation conventions. Names of input and output files may be transmitted instead of data itself. [13] The transactions (including terminate) are not "echoed", as echoing does not solve any "hung" conditions. Instead time-out mechanisms are recommended for avoiding hang-ups. [14] The data type mechanism suggested here does not replace data reconfiguration service suggested by Harslem and Heafner in RFC 83 and NIC5772. In fact, it complements the reconfiguration. For example, data reconfiguration language can be expressed in EBCDIC, Network ASCII or any other code that form machine may "recognize". Subsequent data may be transmitted binary, and the form machine would reconfigure it to the required form. I have included in data types, a large number suggested by Harslem and Heafner, as I do not wish to preclude interpretation, reconfiguration and storage of simple forms of data at individual host sites. [15] The internal character representation in the hosts may be different even in ASCII. For example PDP-10 stores 7-bit characters, five per word with 36th bit as don't care, while Multics stores them four per word, right-justified in 9-bit fields. [16] It seems that socket 1 has been assigned to logger and socket 5 to NETRJS. Socket 3 seems a reasonable choice for the file transfer process. [17] The term program mediation was suggested by Bob Metcalfe who is intending to write a paper on this subject. [ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ] [ into the online RFC archives by Ryan Kato 6/01] RFC Index | Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | Cities | Counties ]By Ed Santos, The Shooting Channel
What to expect after you have defended yourself.
Having taught over 16,000 concealed carry students and been involved as an expert witness in numerous shooting cases, I am always surprised by the concealed carry shooters lack of understanding of the post shooting process. Sadly, this lack of knowledge is often due to an incomplete presentation offered by the CCW instructor or is further perpetuated by the no training requirement found in some states.
Don’t misread my intention here; I am not advocating any training requirements that would even in appearance approach any form of gun control. However, if you carry a firearm, or any weapon for protection, and you are not aware of the elements necessary to prove innocence in one’s defense, you are at great risk of losing your freedom and all the material things you have worked hard to attain.
Before I get into the particulars of a post shooting incident, I want to make it clear that I am not offering legal advice in this article. I am not an attorney and the purpose here is to make the reader aware of the typical sequence of events that take place after someone is shot. This info is presented in general terms and may differ from your particular state’s rule of law. It is merely presented with the intent to inspire the reader to be sure of the laws and procedures that may impact you if you have to shoot someone in your defense or the defense of the innocent.
There is no easy way out of the emotional barrage after a self-defense shooting incident.
From a sequence perspective, the following steps are typical in most states:
Shots Fired
911 Call
First Responders
LE Supervisors
Detectives – Some Jurisdictions ADA responds
Investigation / Questioning
Prosecutor Determination
Trial Phase
Sentencing
Appeal Process
Civil Trial
So let’s assume you have no choice but to shoot an attacker to protect yourself. I hope this is something you are never faced with but if in fact it happened it will probably be the most traumatic experience of your life.
Bad Guy Down; you made the decision that shooting your attacker was appropriate, necessary and the correct thing to do. Under the level of stress you will be experiencing it is important that you make sure the threat is truly over. This is not television or the movies. Do not expect the bad guy to immediately fall and or stop trying to hurt you. Be sure the threat over. Attacker down, but are there any others trying to hurt you? Assess everyone and your surroundings. Be sure to check your six. Holster only when you are safe and it is appropriate.
Are you injured? Be sure to feel yourself and be sure there is no blood on your hands. Your adrenaline and other physiological aspects you are experiencing may very well block out your pain from injury. Is anyone else hurt? Any collateral damage to the people around the incident? Is it even safe to remain in area and are you capable of securing the scene?
You may even choose to render some form of catastrophic care to the person you shot. A word of caution here, be sure the bad guy is no longer a threat. The last place you want to find yourself is on the ground with a ground fighter. Throughout all of this never lose sight of the fact that You Are The Victim.
After the threat in neutralized, then call 911 immediately
The 911 call. The first words out of your mouth should be the location. This is critical in case your connection is lost. You may realize that you are back in the fight and have to lose contact with the 911 operator. If you have not provided the location there will be no one coming to help you.
Remember you are the victim, so provide the minimal amount of information. I addition to your location, I would suggest you provide the need for the police and medical. Tell the operator you were attacked and someone has been shot. I would not say much more than that. You may want to identify yourself and give a discription of what you are wearing etc.
The operators are very well trained. They will be trying to provide as much information to the first responders as possible. During this time you will have a great physiological need for someone to say you did the right thing. Do not get too involved with this call and say too much. There will be plenty of opportunity for you to articulate your actions to the police when you are in the presence of your attorney.
We need to remember the police are not your friends or your enemy. They are just trying to do their job, which part of, is to determine what happened and if a crime has been committed.
First Responders Arrive. First responders typically come in two forms; Law Enforcement and Medical. Both share the primary concern of scene safety.
If medical arrives in the area first, they may not approach the scene until Law Enforcement clears the scene and determines it is safe.
Law Enforcement Arrives. They are on scene and they make contact with you. They begin to preserve the scene, assess the injured, identify and collect evidence, talk with witnesses and so on.
The scene after the first responders begin to arrive.
Medical Arrives. Their primary concern is the patient. They will try to preserve evidence and the integrity of the scene. In some cases they may remove the victim before police complete their investigation if the victim is still alive.
LE Supervisors Arrive. The crime scene will be secured and a crime scene perimeter entry point along with an access log will be established. The Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains and even the police Chief or Sheriff may show up. Don’t let all these supervisors make you nervous. A shooting incident is a serious call for all involved. This seriousness often brings out the “brass” to make sure all procedures are followed and the investigators have all the resources necessary to properly process the crime scene.
At the crime scene a great deal of effort will be dedicated to gathering evidence and documenting all the elements of the crime scene as the first responders found it at the time of their arrival. Of course, the reason for all this is to find out what happened and determine if a crime has been committed and to what extent those present were involved.
The loneliest room in the world.
The Interview Room. A small room often thought of as an interrogation room designed to shift the power in favor of the investigators. Be respectful of the process and the police who you are dealing with. Remember you are innocent, the investigators just don’t know it yet. They will, but for now the process is slow, intimidating, embarrassing, and often out of your immediate control.
Ask for your attorney as soon as possible. It is your right to have an attorney present when questioned about the incident. This is not the movies or television and you are not being interviewed about a speeding ticket. You need to protect yourself from both the criminal and civil process. Speaking to the investigators without an attorney first hearing and approving your answers can be extremely dangerous.
The investigators will form opinions based on fact. This is an often overlooked principle when lay people discuss events surrounding an incident and form their public opinions. The professionals will analyze the totality of their findings and come to an educated decision as to what transpired based on the facts of the investigative efforts of the entire investigative team.
If the police arrest you. You will typically experience one of the following three scenarios.
The prosecutor’s office may not agree or support the charges as presented by the police. If they decide not to pursue charges, you are released. You post bond (bail). You stay in jail and LE will transport you to arraignment.
Police submit a report to a prosecutor which will notify them of the arrest and their charge sheet. The prosecutor’s team will review all the evidence. Basically they are determining, based on the evidence presented, if they can win the case. If they agree with the charges a felony or misdemeanor determination will be made. They may decide to file on all or a few of PD (Police Department) charges. They will often add additional charges they feel are appropriate.
An Attorney is your advocate guiding you through a daunting and confusing legal system.
Generally this will all take place within 48 hrs of the in-custody time. In most cases, weekends, public holidays and court holidays do not count in the 48 hour timeline.
First time in court: The first appearance before a judge will be when you can expect to hear the charges against you. This will be told to you on the record by a judge. The judge will also read you your rights as they relate to the charges and notify you of your access to an attorney. If you can’t afford an attorney the court will provide one to you free.
Next page please…
You will then enter a plea. Typically you will plead Not Guilty – which is you saying that you did not commit the crime with which you are charged. You might plead Guilty – which is you admitting you did the crime as charged. In this case the judge finds and enters the conviction in record. You may decide to enter a plea of No Contest – which is you saying you do not contest the charges. This plea is similar to guilty plea but the conviction can’t be used against you in civil trial.
After you enter a plea the judge will either release you to your own recognizance and provide a specific date and time to return to the court or hold you. The judge may also decide to set bail. In this case you will be returned to jail until bail is made. The judge could also refuse to set bail. If he refuses bail you will be incarcerated until a verdict in the case is established.
It’s possible that you may be arrested and arraigned. Be prepared.
Based on arraignment the prosecution and defense exchange information. This process is also known as discovery. You may be limited on seeing all the discovery information but not the lawyers – as officers of the court they are required to protect the identity of witnesses.
In my opinion, this may be the best reason to have a lawyer represent you. With an attorney representing you at least someone on the defense team will be privy to all the discovery and can defend you accordingly.
Pretrial motions are conducted and decided. You are able to change your plea at any time. During this phase of the process, the judge and lawyers may discuss resolution options. A plea bargain offer may be made at this point. Your attorney will present you any pretrial options and offer suggestions with regard to your decisions at this time.
Jury trial or Court trial? Most defendants choose a jury trial of their peers. In some cases the defense will request a Court trial. It has been my experience that your attorney will have a definite opinion and subsequent recommendation for you in this regard. However, the decision is ultimately yours. My opinion; listen carefully to your attorney.
The Trial Process starts with jury selection and then opening statements. Each side will have an opportunity to present evidence, hear and challenge witness testimony and then progress to closing arguments. The number of days to hear the case will depend on the complexity of the prosecution and defense cases.
After closing arguments, the jury will be given their instructions by the judge. This is always an area that concerns me as the judge certainly sets the stage for the jury through these instructions. The outcome of the trial is now in the hands of the jury. The jury must find beyond a reasonable doubt based on the totality of the facts presented and what we call the doctrine of a reasonable and prudent person’s interpretation.
A Not Guilty decision is an acquittal. The arrest still shows on your record.
To CLEAN YOUR RECORD – If wrongfully arrested, you must have a hearing before a judge to determine factual innocence. It is much harder to prove factual innocence than prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
If found Guilty the judge will enter the finding of guilt for the record and begin the sentence phase of the process.
The Appeal is NOT A NEW TRIAL. So many people believe an appeal is another chance to plead their case. Not so. The applet court does not decide the facts of the case. For an appeal you are basically saying the trial court made legal error. You may also say there was not enough evidence for verdict rendered.
If you are arguing Mistakes of Law, then a hearing will be held and both sides will present their positions. The court can decide if any trial errors prejudiced (hurt) your case and act accordingly. The appeal process typically has timelines and deadlines that must be followed.
The Civil Case — Hang on it is coming!! But that is the subject for a future discussion.
I hope you found some of this information helpful.
I hope you will discuss any questions with an attorney who can provide specific detail for your particular laws and local court procedures.
Be Safe…Ed
Ed Santos is author of the books “Rule the Night Win the Fight” published 2008 and his latest “Low-Light Combatives” published 2013. He is the Owner/Founder of Center Target Sports, Inc. and Tactical Services Group. He teaches advanced firearm skills and Low-light training around the world and can be reached at [email protected].
Thanks to TheShootingChannel.com for this advice. Keep in touch with them on Facebook – click here to give them a “Like.”Foto: Instagram/ZIL
RUSKOG predsjednika Vladimira Putina uskoro bi se mogli vidjeti u najopakijoj pili koja pomalo podsjeća na nešto u čemu bi se inače vozikao najpoznatiji tajni agent James Bond.
Naime, ruska je agencija Lenta objavila fotografije makete superlimuzine Marussia L2 koju će koristiti Putin i ostali visoki dužnosnici.
Svakako je zanimljivo spomenuti da mediji u šali dodaju kako će ovaj "tenk" biti otporan na lakšu nuklearnu eksploziju. To je, dakako preuveličavanje, ali u svakom će se slučaju raditi o dobro zaštićenom vozilu. Međutim, sve se to neće negativno odraziti na performanse jer u samo 4,2 sekunde dostiže brzinu od 100 kilometara na sat.
Ideja je da vozilo bude lagano, brzo i sigurno. Mediji pišu kako će se limuzina proizvoditi na način kao i bolidi Formule 1.
Radi se o projektu stručnjaka Središnjeg istraživačkog prometnog instituta. Ruska tvornica satova Denisov pobrinut će se za kokpit, a blindirano vozilo imat će zatamnjena i neprobojna stakla.
Nažalost, Marussia neće biti dostupna "običnim smrtnicima". Barem ne još neko vrijeme. Naime, Marussia Motors, uglavnom proizvodi vozila po narudžbi, a tako će biti i u slučaju limuzine čija bi proizvodnja trebala započeti iduće godine. Isprva će se proizvoditi u ograničenoj količini, a sa serijskom će se proizvodnjom krenuti tek 2018. (cijena će biti u rasponu od 44 do 110 tisuća eura).
No, to nije sve, predsjednik Vladimir Putin dobit će na korištenje i F2 SUV. U oba modela koristit će se materijali koji se inače koriste i u izradi vojnih zrakoplova.
Tekst se nastavlja ispod oglasa
Podsjetimo, o Putinovoj limuzini i ranije se pisalo, a kako bi planiranog vozilo moglo izgledati pogledajte u galeriji.Broadband Industry 'Studies' Claim Users Don't Need Privacy Protections Because ISPs Are Just Harmless, Innovative Sweethearts
from the watching-the-watchers dept
"Limiting the use of broadband data... would constrain broadband providers’ ability to provide numerous benefits to consumers. Analyzing data is essential for ISPs to understand patterns and trends in Internet traffic and allows for informed adjustments to network functions and capacity, both in the long and the short term. Customer data is also important to help diagnose problems within the network and facilitate responses to customer requests for assistance with various issues."
"The privacy policies of operating systems like Apple’s OS X and Google Android are also subject to FTC enforcement if they misrepresent how they use their users’ personally-identifiable information. This is the model for a well-functioning, self-regulatory environment that maintains the flexibility needed for rapid innovation and experimentation with welfare-enhancing business models. Broadband providers should not face steeper burdens for implementing advertising than already exist.
With few protections in play, most of the last decade broadband ISPs have collected any and every shred of data about their customers' online behavior. It began with clickstream data, which ISPs sold to third parties, then either refused to comment on or outright lied about. Since then, more intelligent network hardware has let ISPs use deep packet inspection to track and monetize user online behavior down to the second. In wireless, carriers like AT&T and Verizon not only collect and sell user online behavior and location data, but now embed stealth packet headers to track and profile users across the entire Internet.It was that last decision that raised eyebrows at the FCC, prompting the agency recently to consider whether it should use its new Title II authority to build at least some basic rules of the road regarding broadband user privacy. This has, of course made the broadband industry rather nervous. After all, the telecom industry has grown very comfortable with the fact that nobody has bothered to give half a damn about broadband privacy for the better part of a generation.Enter the telecom-industry funded Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which has released a new "study" (pdf) that argues no privacy protections are necessary because. The report starts off on anote, insulting those who'd like some basic broadband privacy protections as "broadband populists" that are pushing an agenda that will -- you guessed it -- will hurt puppies, innovation, broadband deployment, and tear giant holes in the time-space continuum.Amusingly, the report claims that basic privacy protections would prevent ISPs from providing "numerous benefits" to consumers. The report also tries to claim that basic privacy protections will somehow stop ISPs from properly managing their networks:The report goes on to claim consumers really don'tprivacy protections because they have the option of using VPNs and encryption to hide their traffic from ISPs. But Nick Feamster over at Freedom to Tinker does a nice job explaining why it's not really that simple. ISPs can still observe user online behavior based on overall traffic pattern and volume, unencrypted portions of communication, and the growing volume of unencrypted Internet of Things traffic. And a VPN is no guaranteed blockade to ISP snooping either, since again IOT devices won't use the VPN, and ISPs can often still monitor user behavior via DNS anyway.To be clear, what the FCC is proposing isn't particularly heavy-handed, nor would it stop ISPs from managing their networks or even profiting from snoopvertising. With the FCC's recent Title II move, ISPs are now subject to Title II’s Section 222 privacy protections regarding "customer proprietary network information" (CPNI). But since those rules were crafted for older phone companies, the FCC's looking to modernize them for the modern era. We're talking about relatively basic protections, such as requirements that you inform customers if you're tracking them and selling their data, and give themGiven the billions everyone is happily making hoovering up user data from Silicon Valley to K Street, there's really no serious political motivation to go beyond that, "populist" outcry or not. But the report argues that broadband users don't need privacy protectionsbecause hey, ISPsand industry "self regulation" works exceptionally well to thwart bad behavior:Except not. One, broadband is notably different from Apple and Google because telecom operators hold a monopoly over the last mile. Whereas an Apple smartphone customer annoyed at Apple's privacy policies can migrate to Android, or a Google search customer can pick a new engine, most broadband customers don't have a real choice of providers. Meanwhile, the FTC has proven all but useless in telecom privacy enforcement, and the self-regulatory approach has worked about as well in telecom as it has in the banking industry thanks to generations of cronyism and dysfunction.For years, Verizon repeatedly stated that more meaningful privacy protections weren't necessary for broadband providers because " public shame " would keep the company honest. Verizon-owned AOL recently parroted that idea when it insisted "the market" would keep companies on their best behavior. How does that actually work in practice? As we've seen with Verizon's "zombie cookies," not at all.In fact, it took months for security researchers to even realize that Verizon was embedding user wireless packets with stealth tracking technology. It took another six months of public pressure before Verizon even gave users the option to opt out. The self-regulatory approach just doesn't work in telecom. What we get in reality are companies like AT&T that are now charging broadband users a $60 premium if they want to opt out of invasive snoopvertising, then calling that innovation.Alongside the ITIF report, the industry is pushing a second report this week (pdf), funded by telecom-industry lobbying group "Broadband for America." While most people familiar with sockpuppetry and astroturf will disregard these reports as the conflicted proxy musings of the telecom industry, the press usually isn't so savvy. In fact, ReCode ran an article on the study with a headline informing readers that ISPs know "less than you might think" about them, and an opening paragraph claiming ISPs "have limited access to consumer data." Only in a later update at the bottom of the story did ReCode disclose the study was funded by AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.It's clear the broadband industry is now engaged in a full court press to derail rules that might take a small bite out of billions in user-tracking revenues. And in typical telecom-industry fashion, that involves creating a sound wall of fauxcademics, fake consumer advocates, third-party consultants and other mouthpieces who will be spending the next six months informing you that ISPs arewhen it comes to respecting and protecting consumer privacy, and that the status quo (read: no real privacy protections whatsoever) is good enough.
Filed Under: broadband, fcc, privacy, studies
Companies: itifLast night I had a beer. A single pint of beer. I drank it over the course of 4 hours. This morning I woke up with chest pain and my heart rate was under 60BPM – unusually slow for me, and potentially dangerous for someone with POTS and Dysautonomia.
Unfortunately, these episodes have been more and more frequent. I haven’t been as kind to my body as I should be. When I am in a funk, my health tends to suffer. I indulge in things I shouldn’t indulge in – like sugar, coffee, a single beer, or staying up all night binge watching a new show on Netflix.
My physical wellness isn’t the only thing that suffers when I am in a funk. I also stop doing the things I care about – like learning languages, making art, or quilting. I stop spending time with people I care about, and I start doing things that are counter to what I believe in.
But, when you’re overwhelmed, burned out, or in a funk (whatever you want to call it), it is possible to come out of it. You *can* reboot your life and your wellness if you’re willing to work for it. And that is exactly what I need. I need to reboot my system. I need to reboot my life. I need to reboot my wellness.
That is what this 7 day challenge is all about! We can accomplish a lot in just 7 days. In just a week we can make foundational changes that will transform our lives.
The 42Yogis 7 Day Life and Wellness Reboot is designed to help you (and me!) refocus our energies, be kinder to our bodies, and get rid of that which no longer serves us.
This is for you if…
You have clutter in your life – emotional, or physical – that you could do without.
You want to uncover your blockages and start to move past them.
You need to be nicer to your body.
You don’t want to deprive yourself of whole foods.
You are open to doing yoga for a few minutes every day.
You want to start channeling and focusing your energy in more productive ways.
This is not for you if…
You want to lose weight quickly.
You are looking for a juice cleanse program.
You are expecting a “quick fix.”
You are resistant to doing yoga.
You just want someone to tell you what you want to hear.
How |
MD][dPoW] Komodo ICO - Zcash Zero Knowledge Privacy Secured by Bitcoin January 10, 2017, 02:51:32 PM
Last edit: January 10, 2017, 03:07:36 PM by KomodoPlatform #3690 A complete update about Iguana app and DEX
Here's a conversation that happened on #komodo channel.
audo
The DEX GUI isn't finished yet, so there won't be DEX trading with the initial GUI release. My undertanding from @grewalsatinder is that the EasyDEX GUI will be the next priority after we get komodod fully working in the GUI.
and we also need some liquidity provider nodes for the DEX to work, so it's gonna take some time. It's a complex thing, but the backend is ready and that is what really matters
jl777
it would be possible to DEX trade using command line
grewalsatinder
When I was given EasyDEX-GUI task, I had to think about the overall development cycle to go with. The most basic need for EasyDEX was to make a user able to manage their wallets, and at that time Iguana Team was still doing work on their part of Iguana Multiwallet GUI. Also, Iguana GUI is bit different, as it not only manages Iguana running coins, but also Non-Iguana running coins, which means acting as a GUI for the existing bitcoind, litecoind, dogecoind, etc installed on users machine.
My priority was to have the Iguana running coins first, so there I started work, and completed that part first. In between there came Komodo project and I also made the wallet GUI for Komodo in EasyDEX-GUI specifically meeting then needs of getting Z transactions possible with the EasyDEX-GUI.
Then came the need of having a easy Desktop Wallet, which is a single bundle, and need to totally GrandMa proof. Its easier to say than done. And the whole December Month was dedicatedly on developing and making the Desktop Wallet solid, along with the installer packages getting configured so its very much like installing a software with installer file like any other software out in the market.
Im still working on Desktop Wallet making last bit of works to get komodod integration completed with it. Right now, its manual commands to get komodod GUI accessible via EasyDEX-GUI. So, its more like advanced user friendly, not grandma friendly.
Iguana Wallet includes multiple techs with it. To clear things up this is what there is:
1. iguana daemon
2. komodod daemon
3. Iguana Multicoin GUI
4. EasyDEX-GUI
5. Electron Desktop Wallet Framework, with Shephered API
with iguana daemon = Transparent Transactions of coins. Including Komodo
with komodod daemon = Transparent + Private Transactions of Komodo, Assetchains and PAXFiats.
iguana daemon part is what all complete, and ready.
komodod daemon part is what we are working on right now. which is more like 80% complete already in rough terms.
Right now the most priority is komodod daemon part to complete, which will get Desktop Wallet more kinda complete working wallet for end users. for our dear grandparents like users.
once the desktop wallet is there for users, then Ill start coding the EasyDEX Trading GUI part.
miketaz
Do you think EasyDEX GUI be finished and launched before Waves releases their decentralized exchange? Because I know their working on that right now. That would be great if EasyDEX is first.
jl777
waves is token based, totally different
grewalsatinder
@miketaz I dont care of any other projects GUI or core going first or second. My priorities are to get things done as fast as possibly I can, and make sure the team tests it before putting it to public.
I do not promise dates, but to my previous work record with SuperNET being GUI dev, I delivered good results I guess may be ask team....
miketaz
Ahh ok, and alright @grewalsatinder that's understandable
eclips
EasyDEX is going to need central nodes?
grewalsatinder
no
in DEX each node is trading directly with one another.
each node can also act as Liquidity Provider
it does not matter they are Notary Node or not
Thats why its DEX
eclips
so a node is a guy using chrome to access it?
grewalsatinder
A node is a guy/person whos running iguana daemon running wallet on their machine/device
if you can run igauan running wallet on your desktop, you are a node.
I watched coininterview komodo interview, and I see some things were said which might still confuse people. but overall it was better interview than previous. :+1:
miketaz
So how does an ordinary node act as a liquidity provider?
jl777
by issuing liquidity provider API commans
grewalsatinder
Ordinary node will also execute either iguana API command to set itself as Liquidity Provider or possibly soon will have a GUI to give them easy to do Liquidity Provider stuff.
jl777
curl --url "
curl --url "
curl --url "
can be profitmargin relative to central exchange price or a specific bid/ask quote
miketaz
Ohh that's pretty awesome
jl777
thanks. So given a set of LP nodes that are configured with their pricing, the end user node can make a shapeshift type of "convert" request
all the LP nodes that see the request is within their parameters respond
the end user node selects the best offer and they both do an atomic cross chain swap
this avoids the partial order problem that most decentralized DEX suffers from
the user asks to fill X amount of COINA -> COINX, only the LP nodes willing to do this respond, so it is a fill or kill and the auction process current waits 30 seconds to decide which node to atomic swap with
this all needs a lot more testing, but it works with one off trades I have setup, so mostly it is adding error handling and making it easier to use
for the following blockchains, neigher the end user node or the LP node needs to have the blockchain local:
["KMD", "BTC", "USD", "EUR", "JPY", "GBP", "AUD", "CAD", "CHF", "NZD", "CNY", "RUB", "MXN", "BRL", "INR", "HKD", "TRY", "ZAR", "PLN", "NOK", "SEK", "DKK", "CZK", "HUF", "ILS", "KRW", "MYR", "PHP", "RON", "SGD", "THB", "BGN", "IDR", "HRK", "REVS", "SUPERNET", "DEX", "PANGEA", "JUMBLR", "BET", "CRYPTO", "HODL", "SHARK", "BOTS", "MGW", "MVP"]
of course best performance is by having it local, but BTC is getting pretty big nowadays to have local
any other coin will need to have a local coind or iguana full mode active for it to DEX Here's a conversation that happened on #komodo channel.The DEX GUI isn't finished yet, so there won't be DEX trading with the initial GUI release. My undertanding from @grewalsatinder is that the EasyDEX GUI will be the next priority after we get komodod fully working in the GUI.and we also need some liquidity provider nodes for the DEX to work, so it's gonna take some time. It's a complex thing, but the backend is ready and that is what really mattersit would be possible to DEX trade using command lineWhen I was given EasyDEX-GUI task, I had to think about the overall development cycle to go with. The most basic need for EasyDEX was to make a user able to manage their wallets, and at that time Iguana Team was still doing work on their part of Iguana Multiwallet GUI. Also, Iguana GUI is bit different, as it not only manages Iguana running coins, but also Non-Iguana running coins, which means acting as a GUI for the existing bitcoind, litecoind, dogecoind, etc installed on users machine.My priority was to have the Iguana running coins first, so there I started work, and completed that part first. In between there came Komodo project and I also made the wallet GUI for Komodo in EasyDEX-GUI specifically meeting then needs of getting Z transactions possible with the EasyDEX-GUI.Then came the need of having a easy Desktop Wallet, which is a single bundle, and need to totally GrandMa proof.Its easier to say than done. And the whole December Month was dedicatedly on developing and making the Desktop Wallet solid, along with the installer packages getting configured so its very much like installing a software with installer file like any other software out in the market.Im still working on Desktop Wallet making last bit of works to getintegration completed with it. Right now, its manual commands to get komodod GUI accessible via EasyDEX-GUI. So, its more like advanced user friendly, not grandma friendly.Iguana Wallet includes multiple techs with it. To clear things up this is what there is:1.daemon2.daemon3. Iguana Multicoin GUI4. EasyDEX-GUI5. Electron Desktop Wallet Framework, with Shephered APIwithdaemon = Transparent Transactions of coins. Including Komodowithdaemon = Transparent + Private Transactions of Komodo, Assetchains and PAXFiats.daemon part is what all complete, and ready.daemon part is what we are working on right now. which is more like 80% complete already in rough terms.Right now the most priority isdaemon part to complete, which will get Desktop Wallet more kinda complete working wallet for end users. for our dear grandparents like users.once the desktop wallet is there for users, then Ill start coding the EasyDEX Trading GUI part.Do you think EasyDEX GUI be finished and launched before Waves releases their decentralized exchange? Because I know their working on that right now. That would be great if EasyDEX is first.waves is token based, totally different@miketaz I dont care of any other projects GUI or core going first or second. My priorities are to get things done as fast as possibly I can, and make sure the team tests it before putting it to public.I do not promise dates, but to my previous work record with SuperNET being GUI dev, I delivered good results I guess may be ask team....Ahh ok, and alright @grewalsatinder that's understandableEasyDEX is going to need central nodes?noin DEX each node is trading directly with one another.each node can also act as Liquidity Providerit does not matter they are Notary Node or notThats why its DEXso a node is a guy using chrome to access it?A node is a guy/person whos runningdaemon running wallet on their machine/deviceif you can runrunning wallet on your desktop, you are a node.I watched coininterview komodo interview, and I see some things were said which might still confuse people. but overall it was better interview than previous. :+1:So how does an ordinary node act as a liquidity provider?by issuing liquidity provider API commansgrewalsatinderOrdinary node will also execute either iguana API command to set itself as Liquidity Provider or possibly soon will have a GUI to give them easy to do Liquidity Provider stuff.curl --url " http://127.0.0.1:7778 " --data "{\"agent\":\"tradebot\",\"method\":\"amlp\"}"curl --url " http://127.0.0.1:7778 " --data "{\"agent\":\"tradebot\",\"method\":\"liquidity\",\"targetcoin\":\"KMD\",\"vals\":{\"profit\":0.01}}"curl --url " http://127.0.0.1:7778 " --data "{\"agent\":\"tradebot\",\"method\":\"liquidity\",\"targetcoin\":\"MVP\",\"vals\":{\"rel\":\"USD\",\"bid\":0.09,\"ask\":0.11,\"maxvol\":100}}"can be profitmargin relative to central exchange price or a specific bid/ask quoteOhh that's pretty awesomethanks. So given a set of LP nodes that are configured with their pricing, the end user node can make a shapeshift type of "convert" requestall the LP nodes that see the request is within their parameters respondthe end user node selects the best offer and they both do an atomic cross chain swapthis avoids the partial order problem that most decentralized DEX suffers fromthe user asks to fill X amount of COINA -> COINX, only the LP nodes willing to do this respond, so it is a fill or kill and the auction process current waits 30 seconds to decide which node to atomic swap withthis all needs a lot more testing, but it works with one off trades I have setup, so mostly it is adding error handling and making it easier to usefor the following blockchains, neigher the end user node or the LP node needs to have the blockchain local:["KMD", "BTC", "USD", "EUR", "JPY", "GBP", "AUD", "CAD", "CHF", "NZD", "CNY", "RUB", "MXN", "BRL", "INR", "HKD", "TRY", "ZAR", "PLN", "NOK", "SEK", "DKK", "CZK", "HUF", "ILS", "KRW", "MYR", "PHP", "RON", "SGD", "THB", "BGN", "IDR", "HRK", "REVS", "SUPERNET", "DEX", "PANGEA", "JUMBLR", "BET", "CRYPTO", "HODL", "SHARK", "BOTS", "MGW", "MVP"]of course best performance is by having it local, but BTC is getting pretty big nowadays to have localany other coin will need to have a local coind or iguana full mode active for it to DEX ◈▣ KOMODO ● Set Your Ideas Free ▣◈
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MoveCrypto
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move that crypto
Sr. MemberActivity: 364Merit: 250move that crypto Re: [ANN][KMD][dPoW] Komodo ICO - Zcash Zero Knowledge Privacy Secured by Bitcoin January 10, 2017, 04:58:36 PM
Last edit: January 15, 2017, 01:42:29 PM by MoveCrypto #3692 Hello KMD holders!
I pledge not to sell any mined KMD for at least 1 year (and probably much longer) if elected.
On 12 October 2016, MoveCrypto_EU was the first node other than jl777 to participate in a BTC notarization:
https://blockr.io/tx/info/fa2a3164f977171a20cb139d6210ccb44e529391e6ba3df0f596f8762ecc1bde
Server for MoveCrypto_SH node is provided by PondSea. More information about the 4 Movecrypto nodes is here:
https://www.komodoelection.com/candidates/movecrypto/
Komodo to the dark side of the moon!
Thank You Voting for MoveCrypto nodes is good for Komodo. I am very active in the crypto community and I monitor my nodes + slack every day. I will continue to spread the good word of Komodo to investors and developers, both online and offline.I pledge not to sell any mined KMD for at least 1 year (and probably much longer) if elected.On 12 October 2016, MoveCrypto_EU was the first node other than jl777 to participate in a BTC notarization:Server for MoveCrypto_SH node is provided by PondSea. More information about the 4 Movecrypto nodes is here:Komodo to the dark side of the moon!Thank You
https://komodoplatform.com/ MoveCrypto for Komodo Notary
RJF19
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AKA RJF - Since '14 - On line since '84
Sr. MemberActivity: 420Merit: 250AKA RJF - Since '14 - On line since '84 Re: [ANN][KMD][dPoW] Komodo ICO - Zcash Zero Knowledge Privacy Secured by Bitcoin January 10, 2017, 06:19:44 PM #3695 I see BTCD has been, or is in the process of being delisted at Bter.com
They sure don't waste any time do they? If you have any there, looks like you have 90 days to collect them.
"The following coins will be delisted
DVC, RED, ZET, WDC, PRT, BQC, BTCD, C2, CKC, MAX, FTP,
DGC, DTC, GEMZ, MEC, MINT, MSC, NBT, NODE, NSR, BAY,
NXTTY, QRK, SRC, TBC, UNITY, VRC, VTC, XC, YAC, BLK
We will provide 3 months withdrawal service for all of them.
BTER
Jan. 5, 2017" Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. Thomas A. Edison
tclo
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Hero MemberActivity: 518Merit: 500 Re: [ANN][KMD][dPoW] Komodo ICO - Zcash Zero Knowledge Privacy Secured by Bitcoin January 10, 2017, 06:40:31 PM #3696 Quote from: RJF19 on January 10, 2017, 06:19:44 PM I see BTCD has been, or is in the process of being delisted at Bter.com
They sure don't waste any time do they? If you have any there, looks like you have 90 days to collect them.
"The following coins will be delisted
DVC, RED, ZET, WDC, PRT, BQC, BTCD, C2, CKC, MAX, FTP,
DGC, DTC, GEMZ, MEC, MINT, MSC, NBT, NODE, NSR, BAY,
NXTTY, QRK, SRC, TBC, UNITY, VRC, VTC, XC, YAC, BLK
We will provide 3 months withdrawal service for all of them.
BTER
Jan. 5, 2017"
They delist coins based on trading volume. If they aren't generating fees and commissions for them, then why would they keep them listed.
BTCD is mainly traded on Poloniex and the volume there has been up 500% or more lately and is in a healthy range. And when KMD is trading, people will be using arbitrage between the two and will be even more volume, in theory. So unlikely they will delist it. They delist coins based on trading volume. If they aren't generating fees and commissions for them, then why would they keep them listed.BTCD is mainly traded on Poloniex and the volume there has been up 500% or more lately and is in a healthy range. And when KMD is trading, people will be using arbitrage between the two and will be even more volume, in theory. So unlikely they will delist it.
RJF19
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AKA RJF - Since '14 - On line since '84
Sr. MemberActivity: 420Merit: 250AKA RJF - Since '14 - On line since '84 Re: [ANN][KMD][dPoW] Komodo ICO - Zcash Zero Knowledge Privacy Secured by Bitcoin January 10, 2017, 06:42:55 PM #3697 Quote from: tclo on January 10, 2017, 06:40:31 PM Quote from: RJF19 on January 10, 2017, 06:19:44 PM I see BTCD has been, or is in the process of being delisted at Bter.com
They sure don't waste any time do they? If you have any there, looks like you have 90 days to collect them.
"The following coins will be delisted
DVC, RED, ZET, WDC, PRT, BQC, BTCD, C2, CKC, MAX, FTP,
DGC, DTC, GEMZ, MEC, MINT, MSC, NBT, NODE, NSR, BAY,
NXTTY, QRK, SRC, TBC, UNITY, VRC, VTC, XC, YAC, BLK
We will provide 3 months withdrawal service for all of them.
BTER
Jan. 5, 2017"
They delist coins based on trading volume. If they aren't generating fees and commissions for them, then why would they keep them listed.
BTCD is mainly traded on Poloniex and the volume there has been up 500% or more lately and is in a healthy range. And when KMD is trading, people will be using arbitrage between the two and will be even more volume, in theory. So unlikely they will delist it.
They delist coins based on trading volume. If they aren't generating fees and commissions for them, then why would they keep them listed.BTCD is mainly traded on Poloniex and the volume there has been up 500% or more lately and is in a healthy range. And when KMD is trading, people will be using arbitrage between the two and will be even more volume, in theory. So unlikely they will delist it.
Yea, I understand that but, with BTER's track record, I would be cautious...
Yea, I understand that but, with BTER's track record, I would be cautious... Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. Thomas A. Edison
tclo
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Hero MemberActivity: 518Merit: 500 Re: [ANN][KMD][dPoW] Komodo ICO - Zcash Zero Knowledge Privacy Secured by Bitcoin January 10, 2017, 07:31:08 PM
Last edit: January 10, 2017, 07:49:43 PM by tclo #3698
Remember that.006512 is equivalent to the ICO price, so still plenty more room to run up to near that level.
Current BTCD Price (Poloniex):.00433 BTCD/BTC
Current BTC/BTCD rate: 230.95 : 1 (amount of BTCD that you get for 1 BTC)
KMD/BTCD swap rate: 50.42041779: 1 (amount of KMD you will get for 1 BTCD that you swap on ICO site)
KMD/BTC current rate: 11644.438 (amount of KMD you get for 1 BTC worth of BTCD at current price on Poloniex)
KMD/BTC ICO rate: 7746.522 : 1 (amount of KMD you got for 1 BTC at the end of ICO with no bonus)
Current extra KMD via BTCD: +3897.916KMD or +50.32% extra (relative to ICO KMD/BTC rate at the end of ICO with no bonus)
So at current prices, you get much more KMD that you would have gotten at the end of the ICO.
The price could rise sharply from here to.006512 BTCD/BTC and you would still get the same amount of KMD. per BTC spent, as during the final phase of the ICO.
The swap has begun for KMD, so once you buy the BTCD, move them to the Komodo IC:
Request that KMD be added to Poloniex here:
BTCD price is rising quickly, on strong volume, now that the BTCD to KMD swap has officially begun..Remember that.006512 is equivalent to the ICO price, so still plenty more room to run up to near that level.(amount of BTCD that you get for 1 BTC)(amount of KMD you will get for 1 BTCD that you swap on ICO site)(amount of KMD you get for 1 BTC worth of BTCD at current price on Poloniex)(amount of KMD you got for 1 BTC at the end of ICO with no bonus)orextra (relative to ICO KMD/BTC rate at the end of ICO with no bonus)So at current prices, you get much more KMD that you would have gotten at the end of the ICO.The price could rise sharply from here toand you would still get the same amount of KMD. per BTC spent, as during the final phase of the ICO.The swap has begun for KMD, so once you buy the BTCD, move them to the Komodo IC: https://ico.komodoplatform.com/ or keep them in your own personal wallet: http://bitcoindark.com/Request that KMD be added to Poloniex here: https://poloniex.com/coinRequestThe consequences of a free web?
We wanted an internet free from oversight, an environment where ideas could be exchanged freely. In many important ways, the web has achieved that idyllic vision. Individuals have the ability to communicate with large audiences, a power that in the past belonged only to media tycoons and governments. A lack of gatekeepers means frictionless communication, but it also means the quality of that communication can’t be controlled. And too often on the internet today, no consequence means no class. The internet experience is being degraded by those bent on settling scores, intimidating enemies, or simply silencing those with whom they disagree. The social networks say they’re powerless to stop it. Police say they’re overwhelmed. For these reasons, many people find the web a hostile and dangerous environment.
Online harassment can take many forms. Consider the message sent to African-Americans by "Trayvoning." That’s the meme that caught on after the death of Trayvon Martin, the teenager who was stalked and killed in Florida last year. People recreated scenes of Martin's death and posted photos to the web. Some of the pics show teenage boys and girls lying on a floor wearing hoodies and holding bags of Skittles — the confection Martin carried at the time of his death. Some even wore blackface. In 2010, Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers student, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge in New York City after his roommate used a webcam to secretly record him kissing another man. Clementi’s roommate then wrote about the scene on Twitter. While minorities and homosexuals are often targeted, experts say no group is more abused online than women.
Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland, lays out some of the numbers in her upcoming book, Hatred 3.0. Citron writes that the US National Violence Against Women Survey reports 60 percent of cyberstalking victims are women. A group called Working to Halt Online Abuse studied 3,787 cases of cyberharassment, and found that 72.5 percent were female, 22.5 percent were male and 5 percent unknown. A study of Internet Relay Chat showed male users receive only four abusive or threatening messages for every 100 received by women.
"Things are getting worse because these technologies are going with us wherever we go," Citron said. "They’re ubiquitous. We take our cellphones and tablets to work out, to restaurants, while we’re out in the country. It’s getting worse because [online harassment] is a simple, easy, and effective way to hurt someone."
And what people want today is "to hurt one another" and "get back at the people that hurt them," Hunter Moore, the founder of IsAnyoneUp.com, told Rolling Stone last October. Moore ought to know. He’s one of the pioneers of revenge porn, the practice of posting nude photos to the web of a former lover in an attempt to embarrass, defame, and terrorize. Moore has sold his site but scores of wannabes are cropping up. A check of these sites shows that victims are almost always women.
Experts say no group is more abused online than women
At Myex.com over 1,000 nude photos and new pictures are added nearly every day. Each post typically includes the name of the person photographed, their age, and the city they live in. The posts come with titles like, "Manipulative Bitch," "Cheater," "Has genital warts," "Drunk," "Meth User," "This girl slept with so many other guys," and "Filthy Pig."
Skeptics question the authenticity of the photos. They claim operators of revenge-porn sites use actresses or that those photographed are seeking attention. The Verge contacted several women found on some of these sites, including Myex.com. While all of them declined to be interviewed, they did acknowledge that the photos were posted without permission by an ex-boyfriend or lover. One woman said that she was trying to get the pictures pulled down and had successfully removed them from other sites because she was not yet 18 years old when they were taken (if her claim is accurate it would make the snapshots child pornography). She pleaded that we not use her name and asked that we not contact her again.
Social networks say they're powerless to stop it
If the woman was upset and afraid, she has a right to be, says Holly Jacobs, 30, who has started a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending revenge porn and supporting its victims. Jacobs knows firsthand that these sites are killers of reputations and relationships. Three years ago, Jacobs was studying for her PhD in industrial organizational psychology and working as a consultant at a university when a former boyfriend began posting nude photos of her online. The embarrassment and terror was just the beginning. Jacobs’ ex sent copies of the photos to her boss and suggested she was sexually preying on students. Jacobs’ employers, fearing bad press, asked her to prove she didn’t upload the photos herself. She finally felt compelled to change her name (Jacobs is the new name). The low point came at her parent’s house, when Jacobs’ mother told her she had seen the pictures. She called them "disgusting." Seething, she asked her daughter if she intended to become a porn star.
Jacobs asked herself: "Where was the justice?" In high school, she was an honors student and captain of the swim team. She played the piano, spoke fluent French, was never in trouble at school or with the law. Now, society was telling her that she had committed the unpardonable crime of being a sexual woman, that sex is still only acceptable for men. "The discussion with my mom was the first time in my life I had suicidal thoughts," Jacobs said. "I was losing everything that I had built: my relationships, my good standing at the university, my education that I worked my butt off for … We all do these things when we’re young, but it shouldn’t ruin our lives."Real estate developers and the municipal codes they’re operating under can’t seem to nail the parking-space formula — putting the right number in the right places — at multifamily housing and commercial projects in cities and suburbs.
And because there’s been flawed policy in place for decades, at least according to some urban-planning groups, there’s actually an ample inventory of parking in most high-density, or otherwise highly traveled, areas. Those spaces just need smarter use.
That solution may lie in part with parking matchmaker apps that, by closing the gap between supply and demand, generate supplemental income for listers, convenience and cost-effectiveness for drivers, and improved neighborhood liveability. The apps aren’t new, nor are they exclusive to the U.S. (U.K.-based Just Park operates there and elsewhere), but their acceptance is broadening, with help from big thinkers on planning.
“One-size-fits-all parking standards from transportation engineers and municipal ordinances apply the same guidelines whether the development sits two blocks from transit or covers the needs of two to three cars in a far-flung suburb,” said Linda Young, a managing director focused on urban analytics at the Center for Neighborhood Technology. The Chicago-based nonprofit has studied the parking patterns of the Chicago; Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco metro areas in particular.
Center for Neighborhood Technology In Chicago, for example, rental buildings oversupply 0.27 parking spaces for every unit.
Urban-planning organizations, which previously may have been willing to wait, or had little choice but to wait, for building-code policy to catch up to trends see the “sharing economy” helping to alleviate the problem sooner, especially when used as part of a broader plan that includes mass-transit subsidies, car-share programs and bicycle-friendly design.
Rethinking the parking economy
Parking-rental apps, much like an Airbnb for parking, are helping, including the app from Chicago-based ParqEx. These apps differ from apps that inform drivers of their proximity to available parking garages and lots, such as ParkWhiz and SpotHero. Even Google Maps now lets users know if parking will be easy or limited at their destination.
Instead, these apps play matchmaker between building managers, individual owners and companies that wish to generate revenue from leasing out their parking spaces when not in use. That covers short-term use, like when drivers are headed to a restaurant, and longer-term use, perhaps securing a space near work that’s otherwise empty during the day. ParqEx even received some accelerator support, $20,000, from real estate-minded venture financing source Elmspring, reinforcement that smart parking must be part of smart planning. (It also raised $90,000 from the Milwaukee-based accelerator called gener8tor to secure a total round of $1.3 million in seed-round funding in December.)
Don’t miss: Uber, Zipcar and self-driving cars among factors mapping a path to ‘parking lot blight’
“Rather than paving more land with parking lots, we could help each other by using what we already have,” said Vivek Mehra, chief executive officer of ParqEx, which operates in Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison, Wis., in an interview with MarketWatch.
“If you don’t park in your spot all day, why not list it when you aren’t using it so that someone who needs a spot can use it and you collect supplemental income?” he said. That rings up at an average of $116 a month in Chicago.
Read: You know what North Dakota needs? More parking meters
Rival app SPOT, which operates in eight cities, including Miami, Philadelphia and notoriously car-dependent Los Angeles, offers going rates as guidelines on its site. For instance, right now in Boston’s Back Bay, average monthly rental rates are $285 to $325 for a single space, weekly rates are at $75 to $90, and hourly rates run $2.25 to $4.
The legality of renting out, essentially subleasing, private parking spots varies by location. San Francisco famously went after a firm called Money Parking and others a few years ago, charging that the sites were selling first rights to public spots on the street.
Why the need anyway?
The parking formula shouldn’t be so hard to crunch. Yet it is. Building requirements demand a certain number of spaces per resident, often at the behest of neighbors worried that residents in a new development will gobble up scarce street parking. Undersupply can risk real-estate marketability, too. But reality shows that the number of spaces poured often overshoots actual space needs and that parking spots are often underused, by residents leaning on public transportation, for instance, the Center for Neighborhood Technology said. At the same time, empty private spots historically have been off-limits to car-dependent commuters or shoppers who head into a neighborhood.
Parking lots at commercial locations, or even revenue-starved schools, have traditionally remained closed off-hours for trolling drivers headed to a restaurant or a movie. The sharing economy can change that, too. ParqEx’s Mehra confirmed interest from schools among his client base.
The parking supply-and-demand gap bothers the Center for Neighborhood Technology because excess or misused parking capacity hurts neighborhood affordability, the center argues; the cost to manage underused spaces is passed on through rent.
Read: VW to buy parking-space mobile app PayByPhone
Technology can provide relatively nimble solutions to matchmaking challenges. Already, ParqEx has cracked one big setback to on-demand sharing: locked or security-protected parking spots hidden behind doors or gates. Internet-of-things capability built into its app opens up 98% of gates and garage doors (after permission is granted), Mehra explained. Security overall can leave some users reluctant, and ParqEx argues that its lease application and vetting elevates the service compared with direct listings from owners on Craigslist or similar personal-ad sites.
For now, acceptance of widespread parking sharing may be increasing at a trickle as growing pains are worked out and as awareness spreads. ParqEx, for example, says it has about 15,000 users; 80% are space seekers and 20% are space listers. So, clearly there is some supply-and-demand imbalance as users warm to the concept. ParqEx won’t release company revenue figures but said it has seen 25% monthly growth in revenue for the last 12 months.
In light of the lumbering pace of policy making in this area, urban-planning groups are embracing the fact that the sharing economy, sufficiently nimble to keep pace with changes in transportation and living habits, is eagerly taking on some of the burden.
“Right after the [2008-09] recession, alternative transportation really had gripped a new generation, whether that was a reduction in number of cars per household, car-free biking or ride sharing, such as with Uber and Lyft — not as an alternative to a taxi, but as |
In the former (and various related texts), he posits the need for a ‘messianic’ moment which will rupture the current sequence of events and blast history out of homogeneous empty time.
Elsewhere, he uses similar concepts to theorise language, culture and the arts. His work on language largely repeats his work on the state: language can be divided into bad, judgemental and instrumental uses connected to fate, and good, nominal and relational uses connected to the divine. His work on culture, and his critique of fascism, counterpose the aestheticisation of politics, based on spectacle, to the politicisation of art, to produce ‘illuminations’ or ‘dialectical images’. In his work on method, he calls for the revelation of illuminating ‘truths’, instead of cumulative analyses. These discussions are not far removed from those of his more explicitly political works. The images produced by a politicised art are designed to produce the kind of messianic rupture which would generate law-destroying violence. The positive functions of language and mimesis are designed to actualise a messianic world, in continuity with such ruptures.
Benjamin’s work is confusing in its implications, because of the way it moves between conceiving transformation as a total, incommensurable rupture and as a series of microsocial gestures and practices such as collecting, allegory, Surrealist art and non-judgemental language. The relationship between the two types of transformative practice is unclear. Is a dialectical image identical to a social revolution, or is it a means to produce it? Is Benjamin a believer in total refusal and insurrection, like Sorel, Bakunin and Bonanno, or in subterranean, everyday ‘evolutionary’ transformations, like Colin Ward and James Scott? Is the drastic rupture Benjamin proposes a political revolution, a change in perspective, or a rearrangement of everyday relations? Do people first go through a personal break, seeing the world from a ‘divine’ perspective, and only subsequently make a revolution, when a critical mass of revolutionaries is reached?
I’m not sure that any simple answer can be reached to these questions. Perhaps Benjamin is proposing some combination of insurrectionary and evolutionary approaches, in which a personal or small-group transformation through dialectical images and illuminations creates a subjectively changed world which prefigures social transformation. Perhaps one can see, or even be part of, a present revolution only if one is already seeing in a messianic way.
[Click here for other essays in this series.]Count Kate Winslet in as an Oscar contender as once again Woody Allen delivers the goods for his Wonder Wheel leading actress.
Deadline
The Amazon Studios film (the first they are solely distributing themselves) closes the New York Film Festival tonight and it is the obvious choice as the 50’s set drama takes place in Coney Island. In advance of its gala NYFF screening Saturday night the film was unveiled for press this morning in both New York City and Los Angeles. Winslet plays Ginny, a 40 year old frustrated wife and mother working in a dead end job as a waitress while reliving her earlier glory days as a wannabe actress. She finds brief hope for a brighter life when she embarks on a summertime affair with Mickey, a lifeguard nicely played by Justin Timberlake who seems to have the Allen dialogue rhythms down pat. He also narrates the tale speaking directly into the camera. James Belushi in perhaps his best screen role plays the devoted but gruff second husband to Ginny in a kind of Ralph Kramden manner, appropiate since this takes place right around the time The Honeymooners aired. He operates the Coney Island Carousel and gets dangerous when he hits the bottle. He has a grown daughter named Carolina, perfectly played by Juno Temple, who turns up after escaping her own unfortunate marriage to a gangster. Because of that she has a couple of thugs on her tail which complicates matters, but none more so than when Mickey finds himself attracted to her, the step daughter of the woman he is sleeping with. Add in Ginny’s own movie mad troubled young son who is basically a pint sized arsonist and you have the recipe for ripe melodrama which this movie doesn’t stint on. It actually feels like a play, the kind that populated the Broadway of the 1950s from Tennessee Williams and William Inge.
Amazon Studios
In some ways Winslet seems to be channeling Blanche DuBois, even though we have already seen anther Cate, as in Blanchett’s Oscar winning turn in Allen’s Blue Jasmine, do the
same thing. Will the magic work for Winslet, already a Best Actress winner for The Reader and a frequent nominee? It is certainly the kind of no holds barred performance actors love, with incredible monologues and highly emotional scenes. On top of her current terrific crowd pleaser, The Mountain Between Us, Winslet is burning up the screen these days and there’s no reason to think the Academy won’t recognize that, especially after seeing Wonder Wheel. She dives into this role and doesn’t let go. Although the film itself may feel too stage bound to be a sure thing for the Best Picture race (Allen’s last trip to that category was the superior Midnight In Paris), you have to count Vittorio Storaro’s stunning cinematography, with the lights of Coney Island attractions playing against the actor’s closeups, as a real contender in that category, as well as Allen’s literate screenplay loaded with the kind of dialogue writers love. He is a frequent fixture in the Original Screenplay category, but this year the competition is especially tough there.
The fate of Wonder Wheel which doesn’t open until December 1, will largely depend on how willing audiences – Oscar voters and otherwise – are ready to buy into the kind of movie that Hollywood loved turning out in the 50’s. Think A Streetcar Named Desire, The Rose Tattoo, Desire Under The Elms and you get the picture, but this is also pure Woody Allen who, when he is on his game, has the kind of Oscar track record that can’t be ignored.
For Amazon the NYFF closing night slot gives them another key moment at the NY Film Festival where they also had the opening night movie, Last Flag Flying and the centerpiece
Amazon Studios
film, Wonderstruck, a remarkable achievement in this prestigious fest for the streamer. It also comes at a moment when Amazon Studios head Roy Price was just suspended after a 2015 sexual harrassment allegation once again came to light. It has been announced that Amazon made a decision to cancel the red carpet before the screening but no direct reason was given. Certainly the company didn’t need that distraction as they are hoping for strong awards season traction from several films including of the aforementioned films that have been playing NYFF, as well as summer indie hit The Big Sick. In their first go round with Oscar last year they landed a Best Picture nomination for Manchester By The Sea as well as two wins including Best Actor Casey Affleck (who ironically was also dogged during the Oscar campaign season by an older sexual harrassment claim ) and Best Original Screenplay.Beat a dog like that and they'll make you the starting quarterback for the Falcons, Nick.
If he pisses like he calls plays then I hope Brian Schottenheimer wears galoshes.
Good news, Mark Richt! Read the Bible this morning. Your football team inherits the whole earth.
Saw a guy named Lambert get chased down for a few hours, so congratulations, Georgia; You made a Highlander movie.
Even the Persians didn't sack Athens that hard, Nick.
Give someone an Old Testament beating like that and the hedges in Sanford Stadium should catch fire and start telling you to grab a rock and take notes.
Last time something cut through Georgia like that Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler were running away from it in a buggy.
Last time a bunch of Georgians staggered around moaning like that Rick Grimes started shooting them in the head.
Last time a house got burned down that bad in Georgia, Andre Rison had to call his insurance company.
Last time 22 Georgians got flattened that quickly the roof fell in at a Waffle House.
Lose a fight like that in Georgia and they'll start calling you "Evolution."
Heard Georgia's been trying to steal Tennessee's water. Makes sense. Trying to put out that secondary will take a minute.
Hardest part of explaining the loss to a UGA grad is telling him what 28 over par is in football terms.
Makes sense that Georgia shares a name with the British king who couldn't win the one that mattered.
First time anyone in the history of the state of Alabama ever fought off advancing Chubb.
Alabama's red, can't handle a Freeze, and is fatal to dogs. Y'all are poinsettias, basically.
Ole Miss fans don't believe in vaccinating their children, so of course a quarterback with the flu is gonna beat you.
Beat the Tide but lost to the Gators. Hugh Freeze might be an Olympic swimmer in a Hiaasen novel.
It's okay, Ole Miss. It's a struggle for most people in Mississippi to go 69 yards on the ground, too.
You can see why Florida wanted to hire Freeze, though. Only took him one game to make a Gator QB look great.
What do Ole Miss, bankruptcy, and active warrants for your arrest all have in common? They all make Florida sound like a good idea.
Smart of Ohio State to use the Meth Lab Formation against Indiana - just stand back and let 'em self-detonate.
Worst part is Miami can't even blame Glenn Beck for their bad Golden investment.
I wouldn't worry about Michigan State. Fighting with boilermakers for four hours straight is a Midwestern tradition.
I'm gonna call Texas football Tokyo cause a lizard just flattened it.
Hell, Charlie, even the Falklands were competitive through Week 5.
The difference between UCLA's defense and Eve is the Devil only fooled Eve once.
Always thought Jim Mora was a humble guy. Explains why UCLA always shrinks in the spotlight.
Bob Stoops has a future in casino security. Threw Dana Holgorsen out of the building like a pro.
Course, Oklahoma has a reputation for takin' yardage they're not entitled to.
Dana's a true West Virginian, though. Hospitalized in a wagon accident, then probably out killing bears two weeks later.
For once, Iowa's undefeated in something other than polluted groundwater.
This new economy confuses me. How are jobs like "Snapchat producer" or "Maryland scoreboard operator" real things?
Welp, if there's one fanbase comfortable with the cold misery of zero, it's Minnesotans.
Shame what happened in the Oklahoma State/K-State game. Bill Snyder ain't been screwed like that since he dated Messalina.
Missouri fans haven't cheered that hard for a Lock since John Brown got put in shackles.
Mark Helfrich better watch it. He might work 18 hours a day, but so can 500 Indonesian kids making three dollars a day.
You'd think a NASCAR fan like Frank Beamer would've been able to handle Pitt.
It's a super-churchy place. Probably pretty dumb of Brian Kelly to try and convert in Clemson like that.
Hypocritical of ESPN to cut out Dabo because he was talking about Jesus when they let Craig James show his ass on national TV for years.
LSU had a hard time with EMU, but cut Les some slack. They beat people up in Australia all the time.
Can't wait to see how Boston College responds after losing the first set to Duke 9-7.
Butch Jones blows so many leads he should star in a revival of Glengarry Glen Ross.
Butch Jones works a lead about about as well as Mike Bianchi does. Love ya, Mike!
That explains why Mike Riley loves In 'N Out - he doesn't have the clock management skills to microwave a burrito.
Mike Riley's clock management skills are so bad he moved two time zones over "because he'd always wanted to live in the future."
If Mike Riley were The Terminator he'd time-travel to 1948 to find Carah Sonner.
If Mike Riley were Doc Brown the movie'd just be called "The Future".
If Mike Riley found a Hot Tub Time Machine we'd find him sitting in a toilet in 1978 screaming WHY WON'T IT WORK.
Mike Riley thinks it's just Morris Day.
Mike Riley's in charge of my DNR because I know he won't wait to pull the plug.
Mike Riley needs another year of preschool because you can give him all the time outs in the world and he still won't learn.Greetings Citizens and Civilians, you’re tuned to episode 165 of Guard Frequency — the best damn space sim podcast ever! This episode was recorded on April 21st 2017 and released for streaming and download on Tuesday, April 25th 2017 at GuardFrequency.com
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In this week’s Squawk Box, NASA is taking a dive, and we’re not talking about their budget. Next we hit the Flight Deck and see what news from your favourite space-sims has landed as we cover:
Finally, we tune into the Feedback Loop and let you join in on the conversation.
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Check out the callsigns we use personally in each gameOn the whole, I don’t really like car adverts. They’re often either horrifically cringeworthy, or tell you next to nothing about the car or company they’re trying to promote. However, when Honda commissions an advert, the result is usually something clever, slick and worth a watch. This is particularly true of the company’s ‘Keep Up’ advert, which came up in conversation in the CT office only a few days ago, after Honda’s latest advert dropped. Disappointingly, that ‘Keep Up’ advert - created by Wieden & Kennedy - has just been banned from our screens after it received two complaints. Two!
The thing is, if the Advertising Standards Agency finds anything that falls foul of the stringent Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice Code, it doesn’t matter how many complaints brought the advert to the organisation’s attention. In fact, only one of the complaints was upheld. It alleged that the “ad encouraged dangerous or irresponsible driving” due to speed apparently being a central theme to the advert (something the BCAP Code prohibits), by encouraging viewers to keep up with the fast-paced captions by speed reading.Insiders and Email
The office of Mr. Band, a Teneo co-founder and longtime aide to Mr. Clinton, offers a reminder of the firm’s roots. One photograph pictures Mr. Band, Mr. Clinton and President Obama playing golf. Another shows Mr. Band and Mr. Clinton in 2009 after they negotiated the release of journalists from North Korea.
Teneo was formed in June 2011, when Mr. Kelly, the former fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton, joined with Mr. Band and Paul Keary, who worked with Mr. Kelly at another communications firm. Mr. Keary and Mr. Kelly are members of a rock band at Teneo, Insane Asylum, which performs Rolling Stones covers, former employees say.
Early on, Mr. Clinton was named to Teneo’s advisory board. A search of LinkedIn profiles shows that a number of former aides to the Clintons or employees of the Clinton Foundation have worked there or acted as consultants, including Justin Cooper, an assistant to President Clinton who helped set up the family’s private email server.
One employee who has faced particular scrutiny is Ms. Abedin, who worked as a consultant at Teneo in late 2012 while simultaneously working as Mrs. Clinton’s aide in the State Department. Late last year, a letter sent to Teneo by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked for details of Ms. Abedin’s agreement and whether the arrangement had resulted in undue influence on Mrs. Clinton’s diplomatic work.
Teneo declined to provide the information and said it had provided the necessary details, including Ms. Abedin’s contract, to the State Department Office of the Inspector General, which was conducting its own inquiry into Ms. Abedin’s work status. “Out of respect for the independence and integrity of that review, I respectfully refer your office to them for any other questions you might have,” Mr. Kelly wrote last October.
The State Department Office of the Inspector General declined to comment on the inquiry.
About the same time, Teneo changed its retention policy. In a June 2015 email to staff members that was reviewed by The New York Times, Teneo said that nearly all emails older than one year would be “automatically removed” from its system. The firm cited cybersecurity concerns.
When asked about the new email retention policy, Teneo said in a statement that it was “well aware of its obligations under the law in terms of retention and preservation of electronic communications and any insinuation that it has not met these obligations is totally false.”Children may be smarter than ever, but their capacity for empathy – the much touted antidote to bullying – has reportedly reached new lows.
Psychotherapist Graham Music, of London, England, said his growing alarm at the rise of callous, selfish behaviour observed in three decades of clinical practice became the impetus for his new book, The Good Life: Wellbeing and the New Science of Altruism, Selfishness and Immorality, published this month by Routledge and available on Amazon Canada.
Drawing from nearly 600 academic sources on child development and moral psychology, He argues that harried parenting and rampant materialism are making children meaner and more self-absorbed. Raised to prize consumer goods over people, children with low empathy are turning into narcissistic adults who have never learned the intrinsic rewards of social belonging and interdependence, he writes.
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But toy-crazed kids aren't doomed, Music told The Globe. Here he explains how parents can steer children away from self-obsession.
How is it that parents with altruistic values are raising self-centred kids?
It's partly by exposing them to materialistic values – it's amazing how much money is spent on advertising to kids. The other thing is that life has become much more stressful. parents feel guilty because they're busy and give kids what they want right away, which leads to an inability to delay gratification. We want the best for our kids, and take them to music class, art class and [soccer]. But if we're not spending quiet, loving time together, these things become at risk because that's how they are learned. We might have the right values, but we're not putting them into practice.
How does consumer culture breed narcissism?
The idea of consumer culture is to try to sell us things to make us feel better, and often better than other people. Research shows that people who care more about status symbols, what they look like or being famous, have more mental health problems, and if you are exposed to those values, you are more likely to become unhappy. People who place greater value on being with the people they care about and doing things they believe in, tend to be healthier, both physically and mentally. But consumerism is addictive … Once self-interest wins, it's hard to get the other side back.
What are the most powerful things parents can do to counteract consumerism?
Live by example, making sure there's time to help a neighbour, or get involved in community activities. Mindfulness activities can make a huge difference – they really do trigger different parts of our brains – and many can be done with kids, such as being still, concentrating and showing an interest in things such as bird songs. We can learn from our children instead of trying to force them into our pace.
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Attachment parenting focuses on the nurturing connection that parents can develop with their children. How can a touchy-feely approach help children thrive in a competitive work force?
We know from attachment theory that securely attached kids are often quite successful, bright and very good at interpersonal relationships. Those are good skills that help you later in life – competitively, if you like, but also allow the kind of reciprocity and mutual kindness that help you feel good.
Does that mean you support attachment parenting?
Attachment parenting doesn't have much to do with attachment theory, which looks at things such as parental sensitivity. In the West, we give kids so much attention that it can risk creating a very unboundaried, narcissistic kid. If you study some of the hunter-gatherer communities on which attachment theory is based, they do not encourage people to think they are the centre of the universe, even though children absolutely get what they need on demand. There's a very powerful cultural ethos – group first, individual second.
You argue that shaming has an upside.
A lot of hunter-gatherer cultures use shaming, but often in a subtle, humorous way. You know that if you go slightly out of line, you're going to be teased mercilessly, but you're not going to be made to feel like you're a bad human being. So you don't get narcissistically wounded about it – You laugh at yourself and get on with it.
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How can parents teach moral expectations in a secular society?
It's a real problem. We no longer have the Ten Commandments up on the wall; fewer children are joining the Boy Scouts [and Girl Guides], which have their own codes and are probably incredibly effective for kids. Some families put secular practices in place, such as holding hands in gratitude before meals. Those things can be really helpful, but it's a shame that every family has to invent rituals that have been around in our evolutionary history, in some form or other, for tens of thousands of years.This interview has been condensed and edited.Image caption Russell Craig walks a cell block after hours
At a 19th Century prison that pioneered the use of solitary confinement in the US, former inmates lead one-of-a-kind tours about the history of incarceration and their own experience within it.
Standing in a cool stone corridor near the heart of Eastern State Penitentiary, a sprawling Gothic prison-turned historic tourist attraction in Philadelphia, Russell Craig tried to round up an audience.
"In one minute, I'm about to give a tour... an exclusive, never-before-done tour," he called to families and couples as they ambled past, audio tour players dangling from their necks.
Eastern State, a gloomy, turreted structure looming high above an upscale Philadelphian neighbourhood, was the world's first "penitentiary", a word coined for the founders' hope that its inhabitants would reform through prayer and become "penitent".
It operated from 1829 until 1971, and held 1,800 men at its peak. After the last inmate left, it collapsed into a ruinous state, then reopened as a museum in 1994.
Image copyright Eastern State Penitentiary
Today, the eerily decrepit cell blocks bustle with tourists, boy scouts and girl guides, church groups and primary school field trips - in total, nearly 220,000 visitors a year.
Craig, a tall, bearded 35-year-old dressed in a maroon tour guide's polo shirt, gradually convinced a group of 10 visitors to gather around, and led them through a door into what was once the prison chaplain's office.
Inside, the walls are covered with colourful religious murals - depictions of the resurrection of Jesus, a prisoner kneeling at the foot of a priest - though they are badly damaged from exposure to sunlight.
They were painted in 1955 by a prolific inmate artist named Lester Smith who served seven months for a string of armed robberies. Craig explained to the group that after his release, Smith was never imprisoned again.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Historic Philadelphia prison hires former inmates of US prison system as tour guides
"Why would you think that Lester would use art in prison to change his life?" Craig asked.
The visitors shrugged. Someone ventured "Something to do?" to nervous laughter.
Craig nodded. "True - I can see that." He paused.
"I was in prison. I used art to change my life in the same way," he said. "I'm here to give you, like, right in front of you, a live example of how art can change your life."
This is the moment the museum staff refer to as the "face melt" - suddenly all the visitors snapped to attention, their eyes leapt to Craig in surprise.
"I have examples of my work, if you would like to see," he offered, then pulled out a large reproduction of his prison identification card that he painted in lifelike detail.
Image caption Craig presents his work to a group of visitors
Image copyright Courtesy Russell Craig
He passed around the real card, too, which identifies him as "Inmate HP9290". In the ID photo, Craig's gaze is cold and detached. He is almost unrecognisable from the smiling, slightly bashful man standing in front of the group.
"I decided when I get out, I'm never going to commit crimes again, I'm [going to] be an artist," he told them. "And it happened for me, just like Lester. He changed his life."
After a string of drugs charges beginning when he was a teenager, Craig came under the tutelage of a fellow inmate serving life for murder, who was also a talented artist. Craig emerged from prison in 2013 an accomplished portraitist determined to turn his life around.
Today, Craig is one of four formerly jailed tour guides at Eastern State. When he first arrived, he became so connected to the story of the self-taught Lester Smith - who painted saints by copying images out of old copies of Jet magazine - that he asked to give tours of the chaplain's office.
"Those guys are just like me way back then," he says.
Image copyright Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Image caption Lester Smith with his paintings
Nothing identifies tour guides like Craig as different from the other staff roaming the halls of the prison. There is no special signage or promotion of their tours anywhere. After a year of planning, hiring and training, the tours began without announcement or fanfare in March.
"We are in new territory, uncharted territory," says Lauren Zalut, Eastern State's director of education and tour programmes, who leads the new group. "No other museums really around the country are doing work like this."
The tours coincide with the unveiling of a new exhibit called Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration, which explores the American model of punishment. In the decades after Eastern State Penitentiary closed its doors, the state of the criminal justice system changed tremendously and the US prison population ballooned by 700%.
The US imprisons 2.2 million people, far more than any other country, and yet no national museum had attempted to explore the history of imprisonment.
Sean Kelley, director of public programming at Eastern State, says that he once felt that tackling issues of contemporary incarceration - especially the disproportionate number of African American prisoners - was too controversial for their holidaying visitors.
Image copyright Eastern State Penitentiary
But after years of careful exploration and prototyping - and a "conversion" for Kelley in terms of his thinking on what the purpose of the museum should be - they decided to build out a new, state-of-the-art space to hold an exhibit whose main thesis is that "mass incarceration isn't working".
"In our original mission statement, we dropped the word 'neutral' from it," he says.
"You really want to be neutral on the fact that our nation has 30% people of colour in the general population and 60% in our prisons, and it's been that way since before this building was built?"
The guides' 15-minute tours turn into something of a miniature social experiment - the majority of visitors to Eastern State are middle-class white tourists, many of whom have never had any interaction with the American criminal justice system.
On the so-called "pilot programme" tours, visitors have the opportunity to speak to a person who can connect the history of the old prison with the present, with the intent to build empathy for so-called "returning citizens" who often struggle to acclimate to life in the free world.
"I'm a normal person just like you, I made a lot of poor decisions obviously, but I want them to be more informed," says pilot programme guide Marvin Robinson, a contemplative 29-year-old in tortoise-shell glasses. "I think that by expressing myself and my personal experience I can give them something to think about."
Image caption Marvin Robinson leads a tour of the "punishment cells" at Eastern State
The tours are purposefully unscripted and each of the guides reveals their back story differently.
Sheri, who asked that only her first name be used, waits until her tour of "Soup Alley", the half-collapsed kitchen and communal dining hall, is nearly over before offering her personal experience of prison food. She shares a recipe for cheesecake that she made in her cell from crumbled packaged cookies, provolone cheese and coffee creamer from the commissary.
"It's amazing what you can do," she tells visitors. "I love cooking, so just having that experience of different ways of cooking, coming up with things, was pretty amazing."
Robinson leads visitors through the dank underground "punishment cells" beneath Cell Block 14. Visitors have to take care to avoid knocking their heads on the low pipes, though the cells themselves had no working plumbing.
The American founders of Eastern State constructed the building as an alternative to the crowded, filthy communal jail cells of the 1800s as a criminal justice reform effort swept the young nation.
They prescribed solitary confinement, keeping inmates separated in almost total silence with a single thin window in the ceiling so they could pray and learn penitence. At the time it was seen as a revolution in humane incarceration.
Image copyright Eastern State Penitentary
But modern times warped that vision into a form of punishment. On his tour, Robinson reveals that he was once one of the 81,000 individuals estimated to be held in solitary confinement in the US prison system at any given time.
During his time behind bars for drug trafficking, Robinson was placed in the "SHU", or special housing unit, for 15 months in a federal facility in North Carolina for possession of a contraband mobile phone. He tells visitors how he tried to stay mentally active by reading books, though he sometimes became too depressed to eat or even move.
"It takes everything from you," he says. "You strip a human of everything that makes you human."
The decision to hire the formerly jailed guides to work in the museum happened almost by accident, after a man who had served time in prison joined the staff briefly. He began having unprompted conversations with guests about his time behind bars. On the museum's annual "Prison Food Weekend", he offered to prepare his personal recipe for chi chi - a casserole-like dish inmates concoct in their cells using items purchased from the commissary like ramen noodles, cheese curls, sausage and barbecue sauce.
Kelley says the experience helped him realise that his staff of mostly white, university-educated employees could learn a lot from a group of guides that had lived through the prison experience.
There were concerns about "tokenism" or placing the guides in a vulnerable position by having to disclose their criminal histories to strangers all day long.
Kelley says there were also worries that visitors would protest, or that having people on staff with criminal records could pose some kind of safety risk. But once they met the four people who were ultimately hired, those worries evaporated - and were replaced by others.
Image caption Inside the museum's new exhibit on incarceration in the US today
"I don't want visitors to come in explicitly looking for a formerly incarcerated person as a tour guide," he says. "This becomes like adventure tourism - that is the nightmare."
Though the reaction from visitors has been mostly positive - there are hugs, handshakes, even rounds of applause - the tours can also trigger complex reactions. One man responded angrily when he heard about Craig's access to a luxury like art supplies. Sheri says she, too, has noticed subtle negative responses, like a woman who began nervously pacing after Sheri revealed that she was incarcerated.
"She was a little snooty," Sheri recalls. "They're welcome to their own opinions, I don't take offence to it."
And then there is the fact that by disclosing their records, the guides can be exposed to a host of personal questions.
When one older couple asked Craig what happened in his childhood that led to prison, he found himself explaining that he'd been taken away from his alcoholic mother by child protective services at age five, then bounced from group home to group home, eventually running away and dealing drugs to make money. When he revealed that he does not know who his father is, the woman's horrified expression was hard to miss.
Image caption Sheri offers tours of the prison's old mess hall - and shares stories of her own prison recipes
Image caption The ruined mess hall
"You gotta keep it together and stay professional," he recalls. "I thought I was alright, but I was affected a little bit."
Overall, however, Kelley says that visitors' receptiveness reflects the shifting public opinion on incarceration.
"I think there's been a national change in the tone and it's bipartisan," he says. "I'm really proud to have those four voices as part of our programme. I really, honestly think it's one of the most interesting things happening in America in historic sites."
Last week, Robinson, Sheri and Craig attended a cocktail party to fete the opening of Eastern State Penitentiary's "Prisons Today" exhibit. Robinson actually cut the ribbon, flanked on either side by academics, dignitaries from the Philadelphia mayor's office and high-ranking members of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
Near the entrance of the new exhibit, a hallway splits into two paths. "Have you ever broken the law?" a huge red sign asks. Visitors have the option to step to the left under a sign that says "YES" or to the right - "NO".
Robinson stepped to the left, along with almost everyone in the well-heeled crowd. He passed various exhibit implements nodding approvingly.
"I feel like I'm a part of something bigger," he said. "Something that's positive, something that's progressive."
The pilot programme will end in June - whether or not it will be renewed is still an open question, though both Kelley and Zalut feel it has been an overwhelming success.
Image caption Russell Craig inside his studio
While Craig has contract work from the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and Robinson drives for a private emergency vehicle service, Sheri is still struggling to find full-time work, especially as she lives in a halfway house that has no internet access. She's trying to use the connections she's made through Eastern State to get a job helping other former inmates re-enter society.
At the very end of the exhibit are two glass display cases, each containing the only signs that acknowledge the existence of the pilot programme.
"Several of our tour guides have experienced incarceration first-hand," the sign reads. "These objects hold important memories of their time in prison."
Craig's side of the case is filled with artwork. Sheri donated a thin cotton head scarf that she worked for weeks at 19 cents an hour in order to afford.
Robinson's side of the case is empty.
"I left everything," he explained. "I wanted to just leave everything behind."
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.I am not confident that target display mode will work, since on the previous 5K iMacs it was found out that the screen needed two streams of DP signals, being fed directly from the GPU via internal non-standard circuitry in a duplex manner for the full 5K 60Hz to be realized. Even with Thunderbolt 3, the MBP connecting to the LG Ultrafine 5K used similar tricks, but this time over a singular TB cable, since the intel TB3 specs only use DP 1.2 where a single DP connection does not have enough bandwidth for full 5K 60Hz. LG and Apple was probably on some hardware tricks to allow 2 streams of DP going through that one TB3 cable, treating them as data than DP streams.
If Apple were to allow the same to happen with the new iMac, specially to allow duplex DP1.2 to enter the motherboard to be fed to the panel(s), it actually should take substantial amount of engineering in circuitry and probably something more on firmware / OS level for that to happen.
Therefore, my guess is that if Target Display Mode is enabled, it won't be full 5K 60Hz, in which case Apple is likely to just not allow TDM at all.
Click to expand...The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) has confirmed its website outages are not disrupting its Bitcoin futures trading.
After the exchange launched the pioneering futures on Sunday, its front-end interface crashed almost immediately, apparently due to high traffic volumes, leading to concerns that the launch would fail.
However, in a series of Twitter updates, CBOE said that the technical problems had “no impact” on the “orderly trading” of its new product.
Orderly trading on all @Cboe exchanges continues, and intermittent website delays have had no impact on trading activity. — Cboe (@CBOE) December 11, 2017
Bitcoin prices immediately rocketed following the release, correcting upwards following a dip below $13,000 in the run-up to Sunday.
At press time, almost 20 percent daily growth has contributed an average value of $16,785 per coin, according to Coinmarketcap exchange data.
Despite CBOE’s hiccups, commentators meanwhile note, the launch was in fact comparatively trouble-free for such a large-scale event that continues to draw huge numbers of interested participants.
“The launch was smooth, although our website experienced some issues due to an overwhelming number of hits looking for the trading data,” CBOE itself added in a new blog post Monday.
With the surge of public interest in crypto and Blockchain, 2017 has become notorious for crypto-related services having technical issues due to unprecedented consumer demand.
Major exchanges such as Coinbase, Poloniex and others have all felt the strain and experienced temporary delays and crashes. Coinbase has publicly promised to hire support staff and improve backend performance as the principal US exchange venue.Nigel Hayes stared at the ground. In a hallway outside of the visiting locker room at Northwestern's Welsh-Ryan Arena, there was no mistaking his displeasure. The same Wisconsin forward who dropped words like cattywampus and zephyr in postgame press conferences and flirted with stenographers on his way to the |
gym, or he reads to me while I’m doing some mindless task around the house (chopping veggies for salad, combing out the dog, mending one of his juggling costumes, etc.).
After he read me a chapter from the first book in the series, I read the first three books. (The fourth book will be published in the next week or so.) My first reaction was that it was an interesting concept, that borrowed heavily from earlier works of high fantasy. Anyone like me who’s read a lot of great high fantasy, will recognize many of the situations and archetypical characters — the aloof and nearly immortal elves could have come straight out of J.R.R. Tolkien, and so could the crafty and treasure loving dwarves and their feud with the elves.
There is nothing wrong with taking themes from literature and making them your own, of course. If there were, few writers would have anything to write about, since most books deal with the same basic themes of romance, adventure, comedy, drama and tragedy. But the more I read of this series, the more I started to wonder if there wasn’t just a bit too much “borrowing” going on here.
For example, when you have a young dwarf named Thrain who longs to be an adventurer — and the physical description of Thrain makes him sound a lot like the character Thorin Oakenshield from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, is it really a coincidence that Tolkien’s Thorin is the son of Thrain? And when the young hero Alex finds a mysterious magic ring in a cave, are we not supposed to think of Bilbo and that other ring?
Is it just coincidence when I read about a magic sword taking action on its own to counter a threat to Alex — and the passage reminds me strongly of a passage in Harry Potter? The number of words in the scene, and even the aftermath when Harry and Alex each tries to convince others that he didn’t do it, the wand or sword took independent action, seem eerily similar to me. (Compare the passage where Harry Potter describes his wand’s actions when confronted with Voldemort in the Battle of the Seven Potters scene at the beginning of Deathly Hallows and Alex’s first battle with Moon Slayer in The Horn of Moran to see what I mean.)
Forman even added wraiths called the shetani to his tale, and the description is eerily similar to Alan Dean Foster’s shetani in Into the Out Of. Is that a coincidence, too? The globe-trotting Foster gives full credit for his shetani to the east African tribal elders who told him the traditional stories of the wraiths who have been part of African folklore for centuries. Forman never mentions his inspirations or sources — at least not in the books themselves.
I could go on with dozens of similar scenes in the first three books of Forman’s series that brought other books or movies to mind. But when I saw the cover art for the third book — and compared it with two signed photos of John Rhys-Davis as Gimli in The Fellowship of the Ring — I thought that Forman had gone too far, and actually crossed the line from unattributed inspiration to outright copyright infringement. When I posted the photo shown above on Facebook, and asked my Facebook friends if they thought it was copyright infringement, author Ray Audette made me laugh out loud with his pithy comment: “That’s not copyright infringement. It’s racial stereotyping.”
He could be right, of course. Maybe our collective consciousness just automatically calls up images of dwarves who look like Gimli whenever we think of what a mythical race of axe-weilding, treasure-obsessed miners might look like. I must be the only person to even think of a copyright issue since no one including the litigation happy J.K. Rowling or the film studios behind Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit has sued Forman.
(Note: Typically, authors have little control over the covers of their books, but no illustrator is credited with the cover art for Forman’s books, and I have read online that he is both the illustrator and author for the series.)
I guess the sad part for me is that the basic premise of Forman’s book is interesting enough to stand on its own. There’s no need for the many, many places in the book where I find phrases, names, and descriptions that sound as if they were drawn straight from other author’s works. The fact is that this writer doesn’t need to borrow from others — he’s quite good all on his own.
A good editor — or a careful publisher — might have been quite helpful in keeping the derivative content to a minimum, I think. I don’t know anything about Shadow Mountain (the imprint on the book) and little about R.R. Donnelley (the publisher). They’re not on any warning lists for SFWA or ASJA, so I assume they’re a reputable publishing company with lawyers who don’t think that anything in Mr. Forman’s series rises to the level of copyright infringement.
Kameron is waiting for the fourth book in the series — it’s what he asked for on his upcoming birthday — and I’m sure we’ll follow the series to its eventual end. (Foster says he is planning “seven or eight” books in the series.) But I’d have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t run into a reference every few pages that made me think of another author’s work.
Photo credit: The book cover is ©2012 by Mark L. Forman; the photographs from The Fellowship of the Ring are ©2001 by New Line Cinema. The photographs are from my personal collection of signed movie memorabilia, the book cover is a photo I took of the book we purchased at Barnes & Noble. I do not own the copyright, and am using the images solely for illustrative purposes, in what I believe to be Fair Use. Do not republish or reuse without permission of the copyright owner.From the August/September 2014 issue of National Geographic Traveler
I FIND Niki’s West on Birmingham’s industrial north side, maybe a mile from an old pig-iron foundry. It’s a windowless room with linoleum floors that has been serving meat-and-threes—an entrée and a choice of sides—since before George Wallace first ran for Alabama governor. I join the cafeteria-style line, which is jammed tight for a Tuesday lunch, feeling as if I’m stepping back half a century. I emerge with heaping plates of chicken, turnip greens, black-eyed peas, butter beans, corn bread, and cherry pie. Halfway through my meal, I finally look up and realize this can’t be 1963 because I see roughly the same number of black customers as white.
That checkerboard of faces reveals how far Birmingham has come. Once so committed to segregation that it was called America’s Johannesburg, Birmingham has loomed large in my consciousness. Throughout my Connecticut childhood, its name served as code for racial intolerance. Now, five decades after the civil rights movement’s most galvanizing events—Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” the Children’s Crusade, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church—I’ve come down to see how much has changed.
I’ve found a modern city that has retained its pace and charm, one with many of the accoutrements and attitudes of the New South but without the shiny facelessness common to too many cities around the region. You can do a billion-dollar banking deal in Birmingham. But you can also still eat at Niki’s.
I ask my waitress whether Niki’s started off serving the white or the black community when it opened in the ’50s, since at that time it wouldn’t have been possible for them to gather together. Eyes wide, she runs off to fetch one of the owners, then returns to say that they’re both working the line. She scrawls a phone number on a scrap of paper place mat. And that’s the last I see of her.
When I call that evening, a woman tells me that both Teddy and Pete Hontzas, who inherited the restaurant from their father, are too busy to talk. They won’t be able to talk in the morning, either, or the next afternoon, or anytime in the foreseeable future. Today’s business and civic leaders have made their peace with the city’s past. But that doesn’t mean they want to discuss it.
View Images Dance students (left) gather in downtown Birmingham for a dance competition at the landmark Alabama Theatre (right).
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO VISIT BIRMINGHAM, with a population of some 212,000, and not confront the struggle for racial equality. Civil rights is living history here. The city doesn’t let itself forget.
Walking around downtown, I’m never far from one of the seven-foot-high Heritage Trail markers, more than 200 of which are spread throughout the city. One on 19th Street between Sixth and Park has a photo of King getting arrested at that spot. “Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle,” it quotes him as saying.
Turning a corner, I see the 16th Street Baptist Church. The staging area for marches and protests over the years, it’s where the Ku Klux Klan planted bombs that killed four girls on September 15, 1963. This is a national historic landmark, built of sturdy stone more than a century ago, and—as much as any inanimate structure can be—a major protagonist in the civil rights movement. Yet for decades it has been hidden in plain sight. I don’t recall ever seeing a picture of it.
At the Civil Rights Institute across the street, I spend two hours immersed in old news footage. There’s a replica of King’s jail cell, and interviews with participants in the city’s protests and boycotts, mostly ordinary people who were living and working amid the tumult. Especially poignant is a display of the shoes, doll, purse, and other belongings of 11-year-old Denise McNair, the youngest of the four church bombing victims.
I step out of the museum into a far different place: a thriving metropolis with a black mayor, dozens of black corporate executives, and a list of accomplished native sons and daughters that includes Carl Lewis and Condoleezza Rice. Birmingham’s university hospital is now a leading center for health care and medical research. The city has the region’s largest public art museum, manicured public parks, and small but significant communities of Latinos and Kenyans and Russians.
As in other American cities, race relations here remain a work in progress. Fifty years on, Birmingham’s challenges are anything but unique. But in part by memorializing its past and in part by transcending it, the area has refashioned itself into a place both livable and relevant, part of the national conversation in unexpected ways. “You’ll be surprised by what you find,” Scott Mowbray, the editor of Cooking Light magazine—which is based in the city—told me when I said I’d be visiting.
One night Mowbray drives me to Ona’s Music Room. It’s part of a commercial complex in a renovated Dr. Pepper plant, the kind of repurposed development that’s usually home to the same national chains as any shopping mall. Here, though, there are local boutiques, small businesses—and Vittoria, a new Italiansalumeria that cures its own charcuterie. When we arrive at Ona’s, a jazz quintet is playing for an audience of young and old, well-dressed and grungy, attentive and distracted. “You probably don’t think of Birmingham this way,” Mowbray says, “but some of the music that passes through is amazing. And the crowds that go hear it are as eclectic as you can get.” I see his point.
What would have been radical, even sometimes illegal, in the early 1960s is taken for granted today.
I have the same feeling at Highlands Bar and Grill, renowned as the city’s best restaurant since the 1980s. Chef and owner Frank Stitt worked at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse and in Europe. Then he returned to raise the level of fine dining in his home state. Dishes like braised duck with chicory and pork chops with roasted sweet potatoes and escarole bring French sensibilities to familiar southern flavors. “The restaurant still remains the best reason to move to Birmingham that I can think of,” author Pat Conroy once wrote.
With white tablecloths and waiters in semiformal dress but a warmth that I’m finding most everywhere I visit around the city, Highlands is classy without feeling unapproachable. Mayor William Bell eats at Highlands nearly every Tuesday night when he’s in town. Sitting at the bar, I meet politically connected attorney Michael Choy, the son of a Chinese father and an African-American mother. Over braised rabbit and Pinot Noir, we start to discuss race, but the conversation soon strays: to wine, southern politics, and then the University of Alabama football team. We end up debating the merits of country club golf versus public courses, and, finally, the consummate artistry of Highlands’ signature stone-ground grits, which we contemplate ordering with a nightcap before learning that the kitchen has closed.
View Images The Miles College baseball team plays at Rickwood Field, opened in 1910 and the oldest surviving baseball park in America.
WHEREVER I GO IN BIRMINGHAM, I orient myself by looking for the 56-foot-tall representation of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and the forge, that looms over the city. The largest cast-iron statue in America, it’s visible almost everywhere in town. Now I’m off to visit it. I head south out of downtown and up Red Mountain and wind my way toward the iron giant, which is the centerpiece of the Vulcan Park and Museum.
After an elevator ride up to the base of the statue, I see Birmingham laid out before me—cradled in the Jones Valley, framed by twin ridges of the western end of the Appalachians. It’s a geographic setting that emphasizes the separation between the city and its suburbs—and though the hills are easily traversed these days on highways, they’re still a psychological barrier to suburbanites returning downtown in the evening.
Inside the museum, rooms representing the different phases of Birmingham’s history underscore the crucial role that mining played in building the city, which is one of the few in the Southeast that didn’t exist before the Civil War. Until recently, Vulcan was a symbol of better times. During the industrial era that it represents, Birmingham was the South’s second largest metropolis. U.S. Steel employed as many as 30,000 residents, white and black, and paid them well, creating a thriving—though decidedly segregated—middle class.
Then steel collapsed, and the local economy went with it. “We got left in the dust by other cities in the region,” says Richard Arrington, Jr., who served as Birmingham’s first black mayor, from 1979 to 1999. A former anodyne marketing slogan epitomized how low the city’s reputation had sunk: “Birmingham: It’s Better Than You Think.”
But later, driving through its neighborhoods, I come to understand what those marketers were trying to get across. In Highland Park, on the city’s southern rim, the shops and restaurants along the graceful streets seem desirable yet not snooty or exclusive. In Avondale, I stop at a watering hole with the somewhat preposterous name of 41st St. Pub & Aircraft Sales and find a bar full of true believers in America’s craft bourbon and rye revival. As pleasant days segue into balmy nights, I realize that Birmingham is better than I’d believed. The University of Alabama at Birmingham hospital not only drives its economy but, by recruiting employees from around the world, has helped create the texture of a major city. Yet the city’s scale has remained manageable.
“We missed out on great opportunities in the past,” acknowledges John Hudson, the 43-year-old president of the Alabama Power Foundation. “But the fact is, we don’t want to be Atlanta. Bigger isn’t always better. We like the size of our city. It’s small enough that someone who wants to can make a positive impact.”
View Images Birmingham must-dos: Sample the historic Peanut Depot's signature snack (left); stroll in Railroad Park (right).
One of the most tangible that I see is the remaking of downtown. A few brave entrepreneurs who glimpsed potential in the burned-out storefronts and abandoned buildings lead the effort. I’m impressed by Regions Field, which opened last spring downtown. It’s one of the prettiest minor-league baseball parks I’ve seen, offering the game at its pastoral best, captured in a sleek, industrial setting that harks back to the city’s past. It even succeeds in getting suburbanites to linger downtown at night.
Some are doing more than lingering. “We sort of woke up one day and there were lofts,” is how Jim Noles, a local attorney, describes it when I meet him for oysters at the Fish Market on 22nd Street. Thousands of new arrivals now own or rent apartments in renovated buildings. With them has come a wave of youthful and urbane bars, restaurants, and cafés, such as El Barrio and Urban Standard, both on Second Avenue. Urban Standard is the kind of postmodern, ecologically minded neighborhood coffee shop typically found in thriving college towns. At breakfast there one morning, I watch the city come to life. There’s a hipster talking college football, a university student typing on her laptop, a twentysomething forking a tofu scramble while nodding with the hip-hop thump of the sound system.
Downtown is drawing people together, but the other unifying factor in the city might surprise me, Noles says. It’s religion, which for decades served to do exactly the opposite. As Martin Luther King, Jr., famously noted: “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” But like patriotism, meat-and-threes, and Alabama football, the worship of God in today’s Birmingham cuts across every demographic. “Head downtown on a Wednesday at noon,” Noles advises, “and see what I mean.”
It’s lunchtime the next day when I visit Linn Park and run headlong into a church service taking place under the maples and oaks. As the Episcopal bishop for the Alabama diocese preaches from the Gospel of Matthew, I spot a wildly assorted group around him. A gray-haired man in a conservative suit stands beside a young woman in a puffy down jacket. One woman could be headed to the opera, or at least Neiman Marcus. Several men appear to be homeless. But when they break into “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” their voices blend in … well, not quite harmony. But close.
Boulder, Colorado-based BRUCE SCHOENFELD wrote about classic American beach towns for the June/July 2014 issue. SUSAN SEUBERT also contributed to that story, photographing Manzanita, Oregon, south of her home in Portland.For other people with the same name, see Ed Moses (disambiguation)
Edwin Corley Moses (born August 31, 1955) is an American former track and field athlete who won gold medals in the 400 m hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics. Between 1977 and 1987, Moses won 107 consecutive finals (122 consecutive races) and set the world record in the event four times. In addition to his running, Moses was also an innovative reformer in the areas of Olympic eligibility and drug testing. In 2000, he was elected the first Chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, an international service organization of world-class athletes.[1]
Competition in 400m hurdles [ edit ]
Moses was born in Dayton, Ohio. Having accepted an academic scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, he majored in physics and industrial engineering, while competing for the school track team. Morehouse did not have its own track, so he used public high school facilities around the city to train and run. Initially, Moses competed mostly in the 120-yard hurdles and 440-yard dash. Before March 1976, he ran only one 400 m hurdles race, but once he began focusing on the event he made remarkable progress. With his height of 6'2", Moses' trademark technique was to take a consistent 13 steps between each of the hurdles, pulling away in the second half of the race as his rivals often took 15 strides[4] or changed their stride pattern.[citation needed] That year, he qualified for the U.S. team for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. In his first international meet, Moses won the gold medal ahead of teammate Mike Shine while setting a world record of 47.63 seconds in the process.
After breaking his own world record the following year at the Drake Stadium with a time of 47.45 seconds, Moses lost to West Germany's Harald Schmid on August 26, 1977 in Berlin; this was his fourth defeat in the 400 m hurdles. Beginning the next week, Moses beat Schmid by 15 metres (49 ft) in Düsseldorf, and he did not lose another race for nine years, nine months and nine days. Moses qualified for the 1980 U.S. Olympic team but was unable to compete due to the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott. He did however receive one of 461 Congressional Gold Medals created especially for the spurned athletes.[5] In the 1984 Olympics held in Los Angeles, Moses was selected to recite the Olympic Oath, but forgot the text during his presentation.[4] He went on to win his second Olympic gold medal.
By the time American Danny Harris beat Moses in Madrid on June 4, 1987, Moses had won 122 consecutive races, set the world record two more times, won three World Cup titles, a World Championship gold, as well as his two Olympic gold medals. After the loss to Harris, he went on to win 10 more races in a row, collecting his second world gold in Rome in August of the same year.
Moses finished third in the final 400m hurdles race of his career at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.
Eligibility reforms [ edit ]
In 1979 Moses took a leave of absence from his job with General Dynamics to devote himself to running full-time. In the next two years, he was instrumental in reforming international and Olympic eligibility rules. At his urging, an Athletes Trust Fund program was established to allow athletes to benefit from government- or privately supplied stipends, direct payments, and commercial endorsement money without jeopardizing their Olympic eligibility. Moses presented the plan to Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the International Olympic Committee, and the concept was ratified in 1981. This fund is the basis of many Olympic athlete subsistence, stipend and corporate support programs, including the United States Olympic Committee's Direct Athlete Assistance Programs.
Awards [ edit ]
Despite the U.S. led boycott that kept him from competing at the summer games in Moscow, Moses was the 1980 Track & Field News Athlete of the Year. A year later, he became the first recipient of USA Track & Field's Jesse Owens Award as outstanding U.S. track and field performer for 1981. He received the AAU's James E. Sullivan Award as outstanding amateur athlete in the United States in 1983. He was being named as ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year in 1984. Moses also shared the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year with American gymnast Mary Lou Retton in 1984, the same year he took the Athlete's Oath for the 1984 Summer Olympics.[1] In 1984 his hometown of Dayton renamed Miami Boulevard West and Sunrise Avenue "Edwin C. Moses Boulevard". In 1999, Moses ranked #47 on ESPN's SportCentury 50 Greatest Athletes.
Drug testing [ edit ]
As a sports administrator, Moses participated in the development of a number of anti-drug policies and helped the track and field community develop one of sports' most stringent random in-competition drug testing systems. In December 1988 he designed and created amateur sports' first random out-of-competition drug testing program.
Other achievements [ edit ]
After his retirement from track, Moses competed in a 1990 World Cup bobsled race at Winterberg, Germany. He and long-time US Olympian Brian Shimer won the two-man bronze medal.
In 1994 Moses received an MBA from Pepperdine University and was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame.[6]
Since election in 2000, Moses has been chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, which seeks "to promote and increase participation in sport at every level, and also to promote the use of sport as a tool for social change around the world." [7] Several dozen Olympic and world champion athletes, through the Laureus Sports for Good Foundation, work to assist disadvantaged youths around the world.
In 2008, Moses presented the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award to Martin Luther King, Jr., biographer Taylor Branch.
In May 2009, the University of Massachusetts Boston awarded Moses an honorary doctorate for his efforts to maintain the integrity of Olympic sports and for his use of sports as a tool for positive social change.
Personal life [ edit ]
Moses is a vegetarian, humanitarian and advocate for peace.[8][9] Moses has one son, Julian, born on August 29, 1995, in southern California. He married Michelle Moses in February 2007.
References [ edit ]Image caption The River Eden burst its banks, causing flooding in Appleby
The Environment Agency has issued 17 severe flood warnings in the North East and Cumbria, meaning the weather could pose a danger to life.
Homes have been flooded and roads shut after the River Eden burst its banks in Appleby. Flooding has also started in Corbridge and Hexham, Northumberland, and Sedbergh, in Cumbria.
Eleven of the severe warnings are for the River Greta in Keswick.
More than 30 other flood warnings are in place in the North East and Cumbria.
Following our live page for the latest updates across the North East and Cumbria.
Forecasters are predicting more rain later and throughout Sunday.
Fire crews are visiting flooded homes in Appleby to check residents are safe.
In Sedbergh, resident Lester Close said the flooding was the highest he had seen in 54 years living there.
He said: "There's just more and more water pouring down the road, it's horrendous all over.
"Not many roads will be passable now."
According to an Environment Agency gauge on the River Kent in Cumbria, the water is 12in (30cm) higher than in 2010, the previous record.
Image caption Two severe warnings and more than 30 red alerts for flooding have been issued across the North East and Cumbria
The Environment Agency said about 60 homes in low-lying parts of Corbridge were expected to be flooded with some already affected.
A spokesman said: "If you are caught in a flash flood, get to higher ground. Stay away from floodwater and don't take risks."
He urged people in the affected areas to move their family, pets and valuables to a safe place.
He added: "Heavy rain is currently falling in the Tyne Catchment and will continue throughout Saturday.
"River levels on the River Tyne are rising and are expected to rise through the day."
The spokesman said some homes in Well Bank had already flooded and the agency expected water to reach the top of the floodwall at the Stanners later.
Northumbria Police said they have also received reports of flooding in parts of Hexham.
Supt Geoff Logan said: "We are working closely with the other emergency services and partner agencies to plan and respond to flooding."
Image caption The A684 outside Sedbergh on the way to Kendal has also seen flooding
Premises along the River Wear in lower Stanhope in Weardale are also being warned of an imminent flood risk.
Warnings are also in place for the River Tees at Hurworth Place, Newbus Grange and Low Dinsdale after a night of heavy rain fall has swollen the river.
Flood gates at Yarm and Croft have been closed this morning.
Flooding has closed the A591 in Cumbria in both directions between Ambleside and Windermere, and the A6 is closed at Plumpton.
Several events have also been cancelled including the Newcastle Christmas Market.Papilio Wiki
Welcome to Gadget Factory's Papilio Wiki, Papilio is an open-source hardware and software project that puts the awesome power of an FPGA into your creative arsenal.
We live in exciting times where we can create masterpieces with the Arduino and marvels with the Raspberry Pi. Where we can use technology as a canvas to create things that amaze and amuse our friends and family. Wouldn't it be great if we could take the same technology that has been the staple of rocket scientists and put it in our creative arsenal? Without the need to become a rocket scientist or the headache of learning a new programming language like VHDL/Verilog.
Why can't we just draw up the circuits that we want to use? With the right software and circuit libraries we can! Let's put a full circuit lab on a chip, pair it with an easy to use Arduino-Compatible chip, and sprinkle in a generous helping of debugging tools.
FPGA Unleashed!
Our dream is to take the hardcore out of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and make it an amazing tool that anyone can use for creative technology projects.
Just like the Arduino team simplified C++ programming, we simplify FPGA design by providing easy to use drag and drop circuit libraries. We believe that drawing circuits will result in an amazing outpouring of creative FPGA projects!
Use the Papilio to unleash your inner DaVinci. Draw and debug circuits on a chip without any soldering, breadboarding, or weird programming languages. Set your imagination free and put an FPGA in your creative arsenal!
What are Papilio MegaWings?
MegaWings are an exciting addition to the Papilio family of FPGA boards that are similar to Arduino Shields. They provide all the hardware needed for a targeted FPGA application such as recreating arcade games, experimenting with FPGA synthesizers, or even learning VHDL.
What are Papilio Wings?
The Papilio Platform was designed from the ground up to make it easy to add hardware to your FPGA circuits using what we call Wings. Wings are like mini-Arduino shields that let you add peripherals Ala-Carte as you need them without wasting pins.
Software and Features
The Papilio is much more then just a hardware project. In fact, the software is the secret sauce that sets the Papilio apart from other FPGA boards. It lets you draw up circuits without investing time and energy in learning VHDL/Verilog.
We start with the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and supercharge it by adding circuits into the mix. We bring all of the pieces needed to draw and debug your very own circuits in one place. It's an easy and seamless user experience that we call Papilio DesignLab for use with both Windows and Linux.
Papilio DesignLab
We start with the Arduino IDE but every sketch now has a circuit associated with it - editing and debugging circuits is just a click away!
Simply draw and debug your circuits!
Click on the "Edit Circuit" button and simply draw your circuits using the Xilinx ISE schematic editor and our Papilio Circuit Library.
Logic Analyzer
Drop a professional quality Logic Analyzer into any circuit and know instantly what it's doing. Up to 32 channels and 200Mhz speed handles any circuit you can throw at it. Use up to 75KB of internal memory or the external SRAM memory.
System on Chip - Draw Soft Processor Circuits!
Want to get into more complex circuits? DesignLab includes the ZPUino Soft Processor with a Wishbone bus, providing greater speed and flexibility than the Arduino-Compatible chip. A Soft Processor runs inside the FPGA and uses the Wishbone bus to make it easy to connect peripheral circuits, such as UARTs, PWMs or SPI masters. Making your own Soft Processor with just the right mix of peripheral circuits is known as a SOC (System On Chip) design. With DesignLab you can draw your SOC designs in minutes!
Create SOCs with ten serial ports, or a PWM on every pin, or something exotic like classic Atari and Commodore audio chips connected at the same time. The sky is the limit, you can create things that don't exist anywhere else!
Example of making your own SOC design with ZPUino and a Commodore 64 SID audio chip. (This tutorial was written for an earlier version of our software. DesignLab integrates circuits and sketches together for a much easier and seamless user experience.)
Papilio Circuit Library
Drawing circuits can only accomplish so much without a library of circuits (known as cores) to do the heavy lifting. Our goal is to provide the framework for anyone to write a core that can be wired into a circuit.
We want to seek out the best open source circuits on the interwebs and convert them to a dead simple schematic library. The internet is absolutely full of open source circuits; just take a look at sites like OpenCores.com. You will find everything from classic audio chips to stepper motor controllers. All of these amazing circuits are within our reach when converted to schematic form!
Take a look at what is already available in the beta version of DesignLab. (Cores colored in red are still in progress.)Find out more about the unusual life and “reign” of one of America’s most famous eccentrics.
On September 17, 1859, a most unusual decree appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin newspaper. In grandiloquent fashion, the message stated, “At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens…I, Joshua Norton…declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States.” It went on to command representatives from all the states to convene in the Bay Area, “to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring.” The edict was signed, “NORTON I, Emperor of the United States.”
The Bulletin’s editors had printed the imperial decree on a lark, but over the next 20 years, its author would grow into one of San Francisco’s most recognizable tourist attractions. Clad in an epaulette-adorned Navy coat, an ostrich feather-plumed hat and occasionally carrying a military saber, the delightfully eccentric “Emperor Norton I” walked the streets accepting mock-fealty from all who were willing to indulge his royal fantasy. He ate in restaurants free of charge, issued his own currency and made official proclamations that ranged from the comical to the surprisingly prophetic. It didn’t matter that the self-styled ruler was more than a little unhinged, or that he was actually a poor beggar whose “palace” was a local flophouse—many in San Francisco enjoyed playing along with the joke. It is even said that when Emperor Pedro II of Brazil visited the City by the Bay, its residents marched out their beloved “Mad Monarch” for a formal meeting.
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Joshua A. Norton
Before he was “Norton I, Emperor of the United States,” Joshua Abraham Norton was just another businessman who ventured to the West to make his fortune. Born in Britain around 1819 into a decidedly un-regal family of merchants, he spent his youth in South Africa before migrating to San Francisco during the heady days of the 1849 Gold Rush. Norton dove into the real estate business, and by the early 1850s, he’d turned his original $40,000 stake into a quarter million dollar fortune. But like so many Gold Rush-era speculators, Norton’s greed eventually got the better of him. During a rice shortage in 1853, he concocted a scheme to conquer the San Francisco market, only to land in financial ruin when fresh shipments poured into the harbor and caused the price to plummet. Norton declared bankruptcy and fell off the map for several years. When he resurfaced in September 1859 and marched into the offices of the San Francisco Bulletin, royal decree in hand, it was with the sincere belief that he was the unrecognized sovereign of the United States. Norton had never exhibited any symptoms of mental instability or delusion during his business career, but all signs seemed to indicate that he had lost his mind along with his riches.
In a display of the off-kilter charm that would make San Francisco famous, its residents scarcely batted an eye at Norton I’s claims. People greeted him with bows when he passed by on his royal walks, and the city directory ironically listed his occupation as “Emperor.” Smelling a story, local newspapers actively encouraged the Norton myth and printed his zany imperial proclamations with great fanfare. One of the first, from October 1859, declared, “fraud and corruption prevent a fair and proper expression of the public voice…in consequence of which, we do hereby abolish Congress.” When the nation’s leaders had the gall to continue meeting, Norton I issued a second decree ordering General Winfield Scott to march on Washington and put the legislators to a rout. The following summer, as the United States teetered on the brink of the Civil War, he announced that he had dissolved the Union altogether and replaced it with an absolute monarchy with himself at the helm. When the French later invaded America’s neighbor to the south, he nurtured international relations by adding the honorific “Protector of Mexico” to his title.
One of Norton I’s imperial bonds
As his celebrity grew, Norton I became a cherished mascot for the city of San Francisco. Photos of him in imperial dress were popular souvenirs, and Emperor Norton dolls found their way into shops across the city. Theater owners saved him a seat at the opening night of every play; local train and ferry companies let him ride free of charge; and some restaurateurs allowed him to skip out on his tab in exchange for the right to post an imperial seal of approval that read: “By Appointment to His Imperial Majesty, Norton I.” The Emperor remained cash poor in spite of the handouts, so admiring subjects gave aid under the guise of paying taxes into the imperial treasury. In 1871, a local printing firm even ran off a special currency emblazoned with a picture of Norton I and his imperial seal. The Emperor passed the notes as his official government bonds until the day he died, and many recipients displayed them as treasured mementos. Today, Norton I’s imperial IOUs still fetch a kingly fee among coin collectors.
Even the Bay Area’s most powerful men delighted in catering to the Emperor’s whims. Army officers at the Presidio gifted him a fresh uniform when his old one wore out, and local lawmakers helped furnish the royal wardrobe from public funds. When an overzealous police officer once dared to arrest the Emperor on charges of vagrancy, the city’s newspapers responded with outrage. One writer defended him as a local institution, arguing, “since |
mental diseases like depression or the burn-out syndrome.
Some people claim depression can be cured with just pulling oneself up and burn-out doesn't exist. But on the other hand, well-educated medical personnel are treating people with these problems. And that is a good thing: mental illness exists, and diagnosis or getting rid of it is difficult. Ignoring their existence may lead in a downward spiral, which ultimately can even lead to suicide.
Statistics say, taking sick leave from work is on the rise due to stress. Mental disease costs companies a lot of money each year. In Switzerland, the cost of mental illness is around 15 billions of euros each year [1]. In Germany it's similar, and there is one more concerning fact: according to the TK (a German health insurer) mental illness is not only a disease which takes the most time to cure but has overtaken any other reason to stay away from work.
As employer, but also as employee, we can't ignore that. Workers need to stay healthy if we want to avoid risks for the company. What can happen is not only losing employees with high expertise but also losing reputation worldwide. The bad news on working practices at Foxconn did not only have an impact on the company itself but also on their main customer Apple [4]. Apple executives were forced to react, which alone is awkward.
My father told me I need a career
Some people may feel pity for me, as I would "never make a career" in this life.
Why should I make a career? Some people seem to think you can life a "happy life" only with having "a successful career". Looking closer at "happiness" and "career" I couldn't find that much substance behind these terms.
Some say you'll be very happy when you have "made it". It's a kind of binary decision, you make it or not. It is often not further defined how you can "make it". However it seems to be clear that drug dealers, burglars or solitary alcoholics haven't made it. But a dentist driving a Porsche, a software manager with a Rolex or a politician working in the US Congress are considered the opposite. It's getting difficult if we think about a (stressed but happy) mother of six or a farmer, who likes his job. Maybe these people are happy, but usually nobody would say: the farmer really made it! He has a job he likes! Or, look at the tired mom around the corner - she must have made it!
If one could choose a life right now, I think most people would take the Rolex, the Porsche or the job with reputation. I showed this list to a few people and many would have picked the Porsche. I did not say the dentist was happy. I asked for the reasoning and it seems people expect Porsche-drivers to be happy, and being a dentist simply sounds better than being a mom.
With that observation in mind, it looks like we need a successful career to "make it", and we need to make it to live an easy, happy life.
It would be OK for some people, to first work very hard (like studying dentistry) and after a while they can enjoy the rest of their life. That's exactly what my father told me: if I didn't learn much and work hard I would end up as a poor assistant to some random craftsman. This vision combined the worst two scenarios for him: being poor and having a job without reputation. He told me that I would never be happy without earning a lot of money.
"What is a happy life?", I asked my father.
He couldn't give me a clear answer, but it included the ability to travel to exotic places, owning a home, and to be able to have dinner in a restaurant from time to time. If that would be the only thing we need and want from life, then it is a logical step to run after a career.
But there are fine nuances. My father would have told me, that owning a Porsche is too expensive and only a few people will be able to buy it. And he is at least not wrong with that. There are many people out there who will never "make it". And I speak of well-educated, nice people, who fail at some point in their career.
It would eventually mean that only a few of us are able to live a happy life.
The career model and its flaws
The career model is like a pyramid, and you need to get up the ladder to earn more money. As long as you are on the bottom of it, you have nothing to laugh at. But so you move up more, and the richer and happier you'll become. It's a carrot system: first do the work, then take the money.
I would guess it needs around 20 years of hard work first to succeed in this model. As a dentist you need to study, then work and pay back the loan. If you want to open your own clinic you have to buy a lot of expensive devices. You also take quite a risk with employing dental nurses. I calculated that it would take around €500.000 to make a person a dentist, if not more. In Germany it means that you are around 50 until you are out of the biggest debt. Then you have "only" 15 years left to "make it" before you retire.
But there are a lot of risks: a drunken driver could hit you when you leave your favorite coffee store. Is that unlikely? It happened to a colleague of mine recently (although the driver was texting).
Honestly, a lot of things happened recently that were considered almost impossible:
in 2011 around 20,000 Japanese residents were killed by an earthquake and a following tsunami, which caused nuclear meltdowns in three nuclear reactors. From the new dead zone, 150,000 people were expelled from their homes. Almost uncovered by media were the volcanic eruptions in the same time happening in the south of Japan. Until today the situation is not under control with tons of radioactive water spilling out from the reactors day for day.
In 2014 – after Russia accepted Crimea as part of their federation – people started to speak of a Cold War again. The country is deeply divided and if it hasn't happened yet; there is a new war taking place in Europe.
Life doesn't run straight and unexpected things can happen. Nobody expected natural disasters of that strength and nobody expected a new war in Europe. Only a few people expect their own death.
What I want to say is: when something is so uncertain, so fragile as life, how can we make such deals as "working hard for 20-30 years" just to have a couple of "happy years" after? The career model isn't accepting that we are humans. It's like Russian roulette: hope you do not die before you have managed to get a certain amount of money.
Being unhappy is OK
We all do this because we are constantly told that being "unhappy" is something which we need to avoid. We waste a lot of our lives to reach permanent luck and wealth, but in the end we'll find out that even the richest of us do not constantly smile. Here is a secret: even George Clooney sometimes poops. And sometimes his teeth hurt.
No matter what today’s media tells, it's perfectly OK to be unhappy. Nobody feels happy all the time. Corporations play with our fears to make us buy their products. But it's not that their products would help us to prevent sickness or solitude. If it would just be that easy.
At the university I learned people are constantly trying to imagine how others look at them. This may develop self esteem (or not). What, if we all just buy these things to make others think we are "happy"? This would certainly be very stupid, but we all are struggling with this. If we would have a great job, then people would surely think I am a healthy, intelligent, high-performer. If we have the job of a cleaning lady, people may think I was too stupid for college.
We are afraid to be alone, and this is what social media and our cell phones fix.
When I travel for work I often take the tube. Recently I was the only person in that wagon who didn't look at the small screen of a smartphone so I could observe others. None of them looked happy in that moment. People are constantly distracted. If we are not participating in social media, we might feel to miss something. We don't want to be disconnected from the people around us, so we stick with sending unimportant messages to people we rarely know. Just to not feel alone.
Were people less solitary without their smartphones? I doubt it.
In fact we are slowly unlearning to accept that life is not only happiness, it's also being unhappy. Unhappy people like Edgar Allen Poe wrote about in some of the best poems ever written. It's not necessary to avoid this, it is to accept.
Sometimes humans are feeling solitude. It's natural and we don't need to fix this immediately.
It's also OK to feel bored. As Nietzsche once said: "Boredom is the lull of the soul," (freely translated).
We need to accept that these feelings are there. We should not overvalue them. We should also not stick with these feelings. We need to learn: all happiness will go at one time. But also unhappiness will go. Both are tied to each other. There is not only one thing to achieve, it's always both.
The career model doesn't accept we are having these two sides in us.
Hippies? Weaklings? Wise?
A group of people, often called "Y Generation", are the people born between 1980s and early 2000s. They want to keep a balance between work life and free time. They want to develop themselves freely, work fewer hours than usual and maybe think, "working" was done wrong in the past.
When they got attention recently in German press, they were sometimes called weaklings because people assumed they are lazy or too soft.
It seems that there is a demand of some people to change the current way to live. Actually I agree, when they say we don't have a healthy relationship to our work today. However, having a lot of spare time would be just another way to run after a career. There is a time for fun, but there is also a time for work.
"A day without work is a day without food," Kôdô Sawaki
As it is wrong to say: "I want to work 60 hours each week", it is also wrong to say "I want to work no more than 10 hours each week". Sometimes it just feels good to work hard. Sometimes it's bad. With dogmatic views on work times, we miss one important thing: work is part of our lives.
It's not only exhausting and causing stress, it is sometimes also fulfilling and satisfying. I met one of my best friends at work. We are friends, since we made a big project work just fine, when everybody thought it was a lost cause. It was exhausting, but also fun to work there.
The "Y Generation" wants to experience life. But sometimes life requires long working days and even stress. The right view would be to understand that these periods will go away. And if there is no change in sight, or when one cannot identify any longer with what he does, there is most always a way to leave the situation.
I believe it is not the hours we work which cause the problems; it is how we look at our work and if we believe it is worth doing it.
Somebody once asked me, if Zen wouldn't mean to just quit the job and become a monk. For some of us, it is the right thing to do. For some not. Zen does mean to do the right thing, and it's up to you to decide what the right thing is. Personally I am not ready yet to become a monk. I struggle with a lot of things, and I admit, I am fighting the fear of tomorrow as many of us.
The discussion on self-expression and and how many hours you work or not is again not fixing the problem, that at some times you feel energetic and at some times not.
"Every day is a good day", I learned from Kôdô Sawaki. To achieve this, we often do not need to change the method, but we need to change the view. When we have changed the view, the method will adjust. Extreme views in any kind are rarely helping.
I am afraid
We worked hard before, and with the arrival of tablets we work even harder. Being online all the time, it became harder to speak to the person standing next to us. It's possible to fix a business deal when our counterpart sits on the toilet. In the tube we can chat with mom and the last thing we may do before going to sleep is checking our business emails.
Why?
Maybe because we are afraid.
You could lose your job.
You could lose your life partner.
You could lose your kid.
You could become poor and solitary.
You could not get a promotion.
You could die.
In fact, you will die. As everything else on this planet. Some people tend to think dying is a bad thing which we need to prevent sometime in future. I don't think so. I am afraid to die myself, I hope it will not be too painful. But in the end, it could be more worse to stay alive than to die.
In ancient times, men were afraid before the darkness. Today we have put a candle in each corner of the earth which gives us light. With social media, making careers, considering ourselves important, we do the same: putting up candles at places where we are afraid.
Slowly we melt more and more with the technologies we build, becoming some kind of cyborgs – see Google Glass [6]. Or more drastically, we have started to distract ourselves at any time and anywhere, with business emails, social media, taking pictures. We have started to lock ourselves into a digital world which in the end makes us live like zombies.
We need to get out of this circle of fright.
You don't need to earn happiness
The people who told you that you'll be happy after working hard for 30 years were wrong. The people who told you that you need to be successful at your job were wrong as well. The people who told you that you need to self-express at any price were wrong. The only truth is: you need to breath – and maybe a couple of other biological things.
Whoever you are, where ever you live, how much you ever have worked: you deserve to be a happy person. And there is absolutely nothing which prevents you to be one. Except that you will struggle hard with this thinking when you have to fight for existential things like water, food, or safety.
I am honest: I want to own a house. Maybe nearby a sea with a great view, or close to the ocean. I know, at least in Europe the cost for that house would be insane. I would have to work for the rest of my life to pay back the loan. For that reason, I have decided this is not the way which would make me happy. I don't want to commit myself for living a long time at one place. For you this may be different. For you it might be the right decision and you will happily take on the burden. But if not, then there is absolutely no need to get such a house just because you were told to do so. It will not make you happy afterward, it needs to make you happy right now, when you decide to spend your life for it.
Although living a simple life in a rented flat and working hard every day including Saturday and Sundays I am happy. Because I do what is right for me.
How can you work so much?
To be honest, my workload looks insane to others sometimes. I try a lot of things, and I have a family. It's complicated to get everything under one hood, but it's doable. At busy times, my day starts at 5am and ends at midnight.
Zen changed my view, but it's a hard practice. You can't learn Zen from a book, it's something you need to do every day. It's difficult to do a sitting meditation in an open space office, but inspired from Kôdô Sawakis words, that one can do Zen at anytime, I created my own strategies to practice. I call it "Kizen". It's best translation maybe would be: "The way of Code". I would not go as far to replace other meditation practice with Kizen. But I feel it's a good companion because you can do it at any time.
One of my favorite Kizen practices is to drink tea. Actually I love coffee very much and I drink lots of it in the morning while working. As this is nothing extraordinary to me, I have chosen to do something else which will need my full attention. Almost once a day I try to brew and drink the best tea ever made. I take time for this event: I clean the place before I make tea and to clean up everything afterward. Perfect tea needs more than perfect leaves. It needs the right temperature of water, the exact time to brew. It's even more complicated to drink tea: one needs to concentrate on the aroma, the taste and the perfect size of the nip.
With fully focusing on the tea, I can get rid of constantly thinking on today’s business. My mind gets a distance and I calm down. Doing this and some other practices as described more in detail in "The Zen Programmer" help me to get things done without being worried about my workload.
A career, without a career
Previously I wrote that running after a career is bad, but then I explained how I can manage to get done with an unbelievable huge amount of work. As mentioned, it is the point of view you take. Anybody who read this article that far could argue, that I would actually use Zen practice to increase my working performance to ultimately make a career.
In reality I consider "successful career" a side effect which you may have, or maybe not. Since I learned that my career doesn't need to go into a specific direction, it's running on steroids. I am having some kind of career, without wanting one or caring about it.
Let your career go. Instead focus on what you think is the right thing to do.
Life is not in ten years. It's now. Every second.
When I understood that my life and my happiness didn't depend on my career even in the slightest way, I started to lose my fright before the future. Nobody knows what the future brings. It doesn't make sense to be afraid before it. Without fear, I was able to make the decisions that changed my life in the way I have it today. Maybe still full of work, but with work of which I know that it is the right thing for me. With that knowledge I can enjoy the good and the bad parts.
Ask yourself the questions:
Do you like what you do?
Do you think the things you do are things you want to do?
Would you do the same things if you were to live alone, without kids, no loans or other things you might be responsible for?
If the answer is "yes", then stop running after your career. You have already reached everything to be happy. Just continue to do the best you can, but be aware that things are good as they are right now.
If your job is not like that, then you might start to hate it one day. You'll be worried about your situation. You might panic when somebody else is able to "make it", but not you.
"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." - Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
When I started with meditation I lost the ability to hate. I relearned to breathe. Eventually I could see that it is only me who am responsible for my life.
What we should understand:
A project is just a small slice of your life. There is your family, nature, the air you breathe.
A missed a deadline, requires action, not worries.
Your happiness doesn't depend on your job. If you lose it, it maybe be uncomfortable but it is unlikely that you die alone, poor and suffering.
Your boss might lead the project, but not your life.
There is no reason to be afraid for the future. All future is uncertain.
Leaders, and Leaders
I know quite a couple of people who were working, and almost every year they would earn a promotion. At lower levels the promotion is almost automatic. You can reach a career level by just not quitting your job, as long as you are half-competent in what you do. This alone is quite absurd.
Some programmers think their career goal is to quit programming and become a manager too. The difference between these two jobs is that big, one cannot say its "promoting to an upper level". It's switching jobs.
In 1969 Dr. Laurence Peter wrote something which went famous as the "Peter Principle":
"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence," - Dr. Laurence Peter
It means that you become promoted, until you are no longer able to deliver satisfying results. At this point promotions would stop and you would stick with a job in which you can't perform well.
There is quite a chance that you are very good at programming, but not that good with managing a company. Working with people is simply not the same as writing computer code. Still people aim to reach higher levels and are even willing to sacrifice their happiness.
There are good team leaders by heart. Like Sun Tsu described one in his excellent book "Art Of War" [3]:
„During the Warring States era, when general Wu Qi was military governor of West river, he wore the same clothes and ate the same food as the lowest of his soldiers. He did not use a mat to sit on, and he did not ride when traveling. He personally carried his own bundle of provisions and shared the toil and hardships of the soldiers. Once, when one of the soldiers was suffering from a festering wound on his arm, the general himself sucked out the pus. When that soldier's mother heard about this, she began to mourn. Someone said to her, "Your son is a soldier, yet the general himself sucked the pus from his wound - what is there to mourn about?" The woman said, "Last year General Wu did the same thing for my husband, and as a result my husband fought in battle without taking a backward step, finally dying at the hands of an enemy. Now that the general has treated my son in this way too, I have no idea where he will die. This is why I mourn him." - Sun Tsu: The Art Of War [3]
This kind of leadership can't be learned easily. Wu Qi didn't care much about his career level. He knew that a career is worth nothing. It is the goal that we need to achieve. The way he led people is nothing that can be learned easily. Such leaders would not be recognized in the current vision of career. Nor would a person who was semi-automatically promoted to the career level of a general be able to act like Wu Qi.
Decide yourself
Whether you decide to stick with your company or to leave it: what counts is to do the right thing. Happiness is not a constant thing. After periods of excitement and fun, you might be unhappy in each and every company. Things come and go, chances too. There is no reason to be afraid before the future.
You live now. You need to decide what you do with your life.
I have decided to not wait for happiness until I am promoted to a certain level in the career game. I don't worry on a successful career, I worry about a successful life. And that is not tied to working hours, it is tied to the ability to sleep when I am tired and to eat when I am hungry.
The career model makes people sick and a lot of us do fail at the game.
We need to forget that becoming a manager is the next milestone to reach for a programmer. Instead we should focus on the things we are good at and which we want to do. If you can feel the fun in it, then you are at the right job – and you should decline any further promotion which would move you "up to the next level". Because there are no levels.
References
Cost of mental illness (in german): Last retrieved on 08.04.2014. http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/leben/Psychische-Krankheiten-kosten-die-Schweiz-19-Milliarden-pro-Jahr/story/18005771 TK Gesundheitsreport, last received on 08.04.2014: http://www.tk.de/centaurus/servlet/contentblob/516416/Datei/83065/Gesundheitsreport-2013.pdf The Art Of War: Complete Text and Commentaries, Shambhala Publications Inc, translated by Thomas Clearly. China Contractor Again Faces Labor Issue on iPhones, last received on 12.05.2014: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-to-use-forced-student-labor-to-make-iphones.html?_r=0 Google Glass: http://www.google.com/glass/start/ "The Zen Programmer": http://www.zenprogrammer.org, or at Leanpub on https://leanpub.com/thezenprogrammer
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This article was originally published in the Summer 2014 issue of Methods & ToolsSome authors write books because they have a way with words. Other people write books because they have a story they want to share with the world. And a select group of individuals write books mostly to spite the author of another book. These books were written in response to another book, some angrily and some lovingly (mostly).
1. Truax
In case you’re not familiar with The Lorax (1971), it’s widely recognized as Dr. Seuss’ take on environmentalism. The Lorax “speaks for the trees,” and let’s just say that the trees aren’t exactly thrilled with the way things have been going. Many of them have been chopped down to make Thneeds, strange little garments that everyone needs. Though many people lauded Seuss and his Lorax for being outspoken about the wanton destruction of natural resources, at least one group of people didn’t appreciate the sentiment: the logging industry.
To defend themselves against the unjust Lorax, the timber industry provided funding to Terri Birkett, a member of the National Wood Flooring Association, to write a rebuttal book. In it, an irrational, irate “protector of trees” named Guardbark berates a lumberjack who patiently explains that he replaces the trees he cuts down, that they’ve set land aside to serve as Nature Preserves, and that no one really cares about some of the species that go extinct because of logging anyway. “How far will we go? How much will we pay? To keep a few minnows from dying away?” the lumberjack asks. If you want to know more about the logging industry’s point of view, you can read Truax in its entirety here.
2. The Cat in the Hat
Speaking of Dr. Seuss, one of the reasons he wrote was in response to the mind-numbing dullness of Dick and Jane and their mundane lives that consisted mostly of watching Spot run. The director of the education division at Houghton Mifflin challenged Seuss to come up with a story children would actually want to read using some of the same basic words used in Dick and Jane. “At first I thought it was impossible and ridiculous,” Seuss later said. “I was about to get out of the whole thing; then decided to look at the list one more time and to use the first two words that rhymed as the title of the book - cat and hat were the ones my eyes lighted on.”
Years later, Dr. Seuss said, “I have great pride in taking Dick and Jane out of most school libraries. That is my greatest satisfaction.”
3. Little Eva: the Flower of the South
After Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, outraged slave owners produced a number of works called “Anti-Tom literature.” Very few of them were targeted at kids, though, which is where Little Eva stands out from the pack. In Philip J. Cozan’s Little Eva, a young girl teaches the child slaves on her father’s plantation how to read and write. When the slaves are set free, they opt to stay on the plantation with Little Eva because she was so kind and good to them.
4. Goodnight iPad
An anonymous author going by the name Ann Droyd wrote this updated version of Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon, perhaps as commentary about how plugged in we are. Speaking of which, you can watch Goodnight, iPad on YouTube:
5. Pat the Husband
We’ve probably all read the original Pat the Bunny at some point in our lives. Let me jog your memory: “Judy can pat the bunny. Now YOU pat the bunny. Judy can play peek-a-boo with Paul. Now YOU play peek-a-boo with Paul.” In this parody by Kate Merrow Nelligan, Paul and Judy are married, and maybe not 100% happily. “Paul is a confident man. No one needs to tell Paul who he is, or where he is going. Except when he is lost. Can you help Paul ask for directions?”
6. The His Dark Materials trilogy
Though Pullman has never directly come out and said so, many critics and scholars think that his young adult books (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) were written in response to the Christian themes in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.
“I hate the Narnia books, and I hate them with a deep and bitter passion, with their view of childhood as a golden age from which sexuality and adulthood are a falling-away,” Pullman once said. “I realized that what [Lewis] was up to was propaganda in the cause of the religion he believed in.”
7. Go the F*** to Sleep
The short children’s book, which is really not a children’s book at all, spoofs the saccharine bedtime stories a lot of us heard as youngsters (and/or read to our kids now). The ebook was funny all on its own, but when Samuel L. Jackson was tapped to read the audio version, Go the F*** to Sleep reached a whole new level of fame. What you may not know is that the wickedly funny book is a spoof of a very specific bedtime read, not just the overall genre. The inspiration, It’s Time to Sleep, My Love, by Eric Metaxas, includes lines like, “The songbirds sing in trees above, ‘It’s time to sleep, my love, my love.’”Between 2010 and 2014, Guatemalan soccer official Hector Trujillo helped to secretly negotiate hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from a Miami-based sports marketing firm in exchange for the broadcast and commercial rights to the Guatemalan national team’s World Cup qualifier matches. He kept nearly $200,000 of that money for himself, using an intermediary in the US to hide the origin of some of the payments, and bragged that he would never be caught.
On Wednesday afternoon, a federal judge in Brooklyn sentenced the 63-year-old Guatemalan to eight months in prison for his actions, making Trujillo the first person to be sentenced in the government’s sprawling, multiyear probe of corruption in international soccer.
The investigation, known around the world as the FIFA case because of its focus on soccer’s highest governing authority, has transformed world’s most popular sport, helping root out corruption that was widely suspected but considered to be impossibly entrenched.
Over the past half-dozen years, prosecutors and federal agents methodically uncovered an intricate and clandestine web of vote rigging, bribes, and kickbacks at nearly every level of the game, including the selection of which country will host the World Cup, the planet’s most popular sporting event. The corruption, prosecutors found, was “endemic,” dating back to at least the late 1980s and permeating almost all aspects of the sport.
Since the case became public following the sensational arrests of top soccer officials from around the world at a five-star Zurich hotel in May 2015, it has sparked a string of criminal investigations in other countries, as well as the resignation of Sepp Blatter, the once-untouchable president of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA.
In the course of the investigation, some two dozen people have pleaded guilty to a variety of racketeering, fraud, and money laundering charges, sweeping out several generations of leadership from some of soccer’s most powerful organizations and transforming the dynamics of the multibillion-dollar business that undergirds the sport.
Trujillo, however, is the first to receive his punishment.
In addition to his prison sentence, Trujillo, a lawyer who had been an alternate to Guatemala’s Constitutional Court and a member of the executive committee of the Guatemalan soccer federation, was ordered by Judge Pamela K. Chen to pay $415,000 in restitution to the federation. That financial penalty comes on top of $175,000 in illicit gains Trujillo agreed to forfeit when he pleaded guilty to one wire fraud count and one conspiracy charge last June.
“He committed these crimes because he was greedy and felt entitled to abuse his position,” prosecutors claimed in a sentencing brief submitted earlier this week. Trujillo’s lawyers had asked the court for no prison time.
Compared with many other defendants, some of whom doled out or took tens of millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks over the past quarter century, Trujillo was a relatively minor player, accused of being involved in just two corrupt acts and never attaining higher office in soccer.
As such, his sentence sends a message to three other defendants who continue to plead not guilty and face trial beginning on Nov. 6 in US District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Those men, Paraguayan Juan Ángel Napout, Brazilian José Maria Marin, and Peruvian Manuel Burga, all held more prominent positions in the sport’s hierarchy and stand accused by US prosecutors of accepting substantially more money. Napout, for example, was at the time of his arrest a FIFA vice president and president of the regional confederation overseeing all South American soccer and is accused of conspiring to receive millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for commercial rights to two immensely popular soccer tournaments played in North and South America, the Copa América and Copa Libertadores.
Should the three men be found guilty in the trial, expected to last six weeks, they could face significantly more severe sentences, particularly given the fact that almost every other defendant in the case ultimately elected to plead guilty in a bid to receive reduced penalties.
But the stakes in the trial are also high for the prosecution, which has invested a huge amount of taxpayer time and money in the case, one of the most ambitious international money laundering probes in history.
A not-guilty verdict could hasten the closure of the investigation, which is still ongoing, and could also spell lighter sentences for other defendants, most of whom have cooperated with the investigation. It could also undermine the Justice Department’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of complex prosecutions employing anti-racketeering laws, known as RICO, as their foundation.
Among other arguments, lawyers for Napout, Marin, and Burga are expected to tell the jury that the case is plagued by prosecutorial overreach, with the US attempting to apply its laws to foreign countries and thus criminalize behavior they suggest is commonly accepted practice abroad.
Indeed, attorneys for Trujillo made much the same point in a pre-sentencing memorandum filed earlier this month. “It is noteworthy that accepting these payments was not unlawful in Guatemala,” Trujillo’s lawyers, Florian Miedel and Joshua Paulson, wrote. “Like much of the world, Guatemala does not prohibit private bribes or kickbacks.”
Prosecutors, for their part, will likely counter that much of the criminal conduct in fact took place inside the US, as the defendants used American financial institutions to wire bribe payments to one another, and in many cases held the money in banks or real estate within the country’s borders.
That was the case for Trujillo, who, along with two other Guatemalan soccer officials, traveled to Miami in 2010 to negotiate the first bribes in exchange for ceding rights to the Central American country’s qualifying matches for the 2018 World Cup to sports marketing firm Media World. The payments, totaling $200,000, were wired from a bank in Miami to Guatemala.
The second round of bribes, negotiated with Media World in 2013, covered commercial rights to Guatemala’s 2022 World Cup qualifiers. That payment — also for $200,000 — was wired the following year to the bank account of a Seattle-based construction firm owned by a friend of Trujillo’s, an apparent attempt to launder the money.
In both cases, Trujillo divided the bribes and shared them with other Guatemalan soccer officials who allegedly were in on the conspiracy. In July 2015, he and one of those men met in Chicago with a Media World executive who had secretly agreed to cooperate with the prosecution and was wearing a wire. Trujillo was recorded admitting to taking the payments and confidently proclaiming that he didn’t think the payment would appear suspicious because he used a sham contract to hide his tracks.
Just over four months later, Trujillo and the other Guatemalan officials were indicted. And on Dec. 4, 2015, in one of the more cinematic moments in a case loaded with dramatic twists, federal agents dragged him off a Disney Cruise ship docked in Port Canaveral, Florida.
Trujillo, who does not speak English, had been vacationing with his wife, children, and grandchildren and was remanded to detention for over a month before being released on bond. He has been held under house arrest, mainly in Miami, ever since. After completing his prison term, Trujillo will be subject to deportation to Guatemala.
Until the time of his arrest, he was an alternate judge on the Constitutional Court, one of Guatemala’s most important legal bodies. His attorneys, whom he found through Super Lawyers, a legal advertising service, claimed Trujillo had been a candidate to Guatemala’s Supreme Court at the time of his indictment, and that because of the US criminal case, “it is unlikely he will ever be able to recover his reputation.”
Trujillo’s lawyers did not deny he participated in illicit activity, calling his acts an “ethical lapse.” But they also argued that he was unfairly targeted by US prosecutors otherwise focusing on the most powerful officials in global soccer simply because of his high-profile status as a judge in Guatemala.
Prosecutors contended that Trujillo’s role as a public official placed a higher burden on him. “Even as he benefited from the prestige of serving on the Guatemalan constitutional court, hoping to be appointed to the highest court in his country, the defendant accepted kickbacks,” the prosecutors wrote in their sentencing brief.
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bodily experience associated with religiousness. In the eyes of theoretical physicist Fritjof Capra, spirituality conceived in this way is fully consistent with complex systems science, and particularly the theory of embodied cognition:
Spiritual experience is an experience of aliveness of mind and body as a unity. Moreover, this experience of unity transcends not only the separation of mind and body but also the separation of self and world. The central awareness in these spiritual moments is a profound sense of oneness with all, a sense of belonging to the universe as a whole.
With this in mind, I take spirituality to mean:
exploring the metaphysics of the infinite
which becomes expressed in ecstatic embodied experiences
and which informs our ethics at both the individual, collective and wider social scales
In other words, it involves asking three questions: What exists beyond my immediate perception? How does this make me feel? And what therefore does acting justly entail? This includes religious belief in the traditional sense, but also goes beyond it. The feeling of being humbled by the scale of the universe when staring into the night sky. The feeling of the weight of history and your debt to it when walking through an old building. The feeling of infinite power and possibility on a protest march, surrounded by your friends and community in joyful union. All of these are comparable to a ‘religious experience’.
Whilst this definition allows us to identify spirituality in secular experiences, it does not imply that all of these experiences are good. For example, nationalism might also fall within this understanding:
a metaphysics based on racial and cultural essentialism
becomes expressed in the embodied practices of singing anthems, pride in the flag and love for the monarchy
and informs the ethics and organisational principles of hierarchy, fear of difference, and violence seen as legitimate for protecting racial or cultural homogeneity
Unlike certain commentators however, I would totally reject any suggestion that the left adopt elements of nationalism in order to be successful. Ash Sarkar from Novara Media details here why English nationalism can never be disentangled from racism and imperialism. But it is nevertheless instructive for helping us understand why nationalism is so successful in the West, where the left currently is not. To actually succeed against nationalism we need to have something as emotionally powerful. And to do that we need shared practices for creating communal, embodied emotional connections, based around a shared ethics and metaphysics. A socialist spirituality, but one which is internationalist and intersectional.
The rest of the articles in this series will concentrate on elaborating what this socialist spirituality could look like:
We firstly need a metaphysics which bridges the divide of spirituality, science and socialism. To do this I’m borrowing from 3 main areas, all of which converge around a focus on the constant motion and interconnectedness of everything:
Complex systems science, particularly the concepts of self-reproducing systems (‘autopoeisis’) and embodied cognition
Marxism – drawing both from the earlier dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels, as well as from contemporary Marxist Feminism and ecological Marxism
Process theologies informed by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, such as those of Monica Coleman and Allama Muhammad Iqbal.
Secondly, we need to take this framework and apply it to the body: how do we position ourselves in this world? What does it suggest about power and oppression? And what practices can help us to feel this knowledge? I draw in this section from work bridging social justice issues and mindfulness practices, such as Michael Yellow Bird’s neurodecolonization, Beth Berila’s feminist pedagogy and Bessel van der Kolk’s embodied trauma therapy. I am referring to this as Radical Mindfulness
Lastly, we need look at the ethical and organisational principles and strategies that emerge from these practices. The ideas in this section are drawn from discussions in the groups Radical Assembly and the Mental Health Under Capitalism support group, in our engagement with Marxist Feminist and post-work concepts such as social reproduction and emotional labour. We refer to this as The Care Ethic, to contrast it with the work ethic.
Although the metaphysical system set out in the next post will have to be fairly detailed, I’m going to try to keep it as simple as I can. For one thing, this will allow it to be more easily understood by non-academics – something which the theory-focused left often fails to do. It also gives space for the framework to adapt as our knowledge expands and changes. And also, most importantly for me, this allows for it to remain relatively consistent with differing beliefs as to whether any deity or supernatural force is involved. This can help form the basis of shared spaces – perhaps even organisations – that allow socialist collaboration across faith, without requiring people to divorce their spirituality from their organising.
Because whatever your position on the ultimate nature of the universe, we need to be able to work together on earthly matters like capitalism and climate change – while we still have an earth left to fight for.
If you enjoy my posts and/or real-world organising and want to help it continue, you can donate at either of the links below x
One off: https://www.paypal.me/onalifeglug
Regular: https://patreon.com/onalifeglug
References and further reading/watching:
The Tao of Physics – Fritjof Capra documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBJFJVZMnlo
Capra and Luisi – The Systems View of Life
Monica Coleman short intro, black feminist activist and ‘process theologian’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DjQcE5zo1Y
Documentary on Muhammed Allama Iqbal, Islamic Socialist process philosopher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFhatfkBsI4
Iqbal – The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam
Beth Berila – https://vimeo.com/97862528 Towards an Embodied Social Justice
Bessel van der Kolk on trauma as embodied https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWEjnGsLN-0
Michael Yellow Bird – Neurodecolonization https://vimeo.com/86995336
Christmas from a liberation theology perspective https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/12/christmas-culture-wars-revolutionary-gospel-left/
Francisco Varela on science, art and religion 1983 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgZMPcrRmio
AdvertisementsAmi Horowitz has released a video in which he asked young Muslim men in Marseilles what they thought of the massacres at the Charlie Hebdo office and the kosher supermarket, and the answers he got belie the conclusion that French Muslims overwhelmingly condemned the attacks. Marseilles has the largest Muslim population in France.
This is what Horowitz found:
One Muslim man said, “They defended their religion. They provoked the Muslim religion. They took care of it.”
Another young Muslim man said, “Already they are saying it’s a terrorist religion. Confusing terrorists and Muslims. I say it’s a government set-up. Somebody important who’s high up with money. To buy weapons, finance travel, to buy lots of things, you need money. It has to be someone high up in the government. It has to be.” Asked whether it was possible the Israeli government was behind the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermaket in Paris, he replied, “It’s possible. Yes, it’s possible. It was probably sponsored by someone in the government.”
Asked whether the Charlie Hebdo people deserve what they got because they insulted the Prophet, a black man answered, “Yes. You cannot play with the religion or the faith of people. There are some people who really love the Prophet; you cannot play.”
One of two Muslims straddling a motorcycle said, “It’s blasphemy. Oh, yes, (the killing) is normal. There is no smoke without fire, as we say in France. They mocked, and they were warned.” Asked whether the Jews were behind the attacks, he responded, “Probably, probably.” Horowitz prodded, “Because they do a lot of manipulation around the world?” The Muslim man answered, “It’s normal. You know what’s in their books? The Talmud? Us, the non-Jews, we are called the goy. They have the right to kill non-Jews, to “rape” them.”
The black man concluded, “Liberty, egalitarianism and fraternity are not shared values. On freedom of expression, there is a conflict.”“Kerber Baby” is at the U.S. Open. She may sound like baby food, but her game is far from infantile.
ESPN tennis analyst Brad Gilbert makes a career of creating goofy nicknames. German Angelique Kerber’s nickname, a take on the Gerber Baby, is just one of many.
“It goes over some people’s heads,” Gilbert said. “People will say, ‘She’s not a baby,’ but it has nothing to do with that.”
When Gilbert creates a new nickname, there is no systematic process. He looks at the player’s name and formulates a word association he finds funny and hopes his audience thinks the same. Sloane Stephens becomes “Sloane Ranger;” Jared Donaldson becomes “He Went to Jared.”
Gilbert’s nicknames, many of which are created spontaneously, originate from references to pop culture, food and brands, among many other sources.
Gilbert is part of the ESPN team that will be covering the U.S. Open for the next two weeks. He’s a retired tennis pro with 20 titles to his name and former coach of world Nos. 1 Andre Agassi, Andy Murray and Andy Roddick. He may not have an extensive media background, but he more than makes up for it with his unique approach to commentating.
Gilbert has been creating nicknames since starting at ESPN in 2003. Growing up, he was inspired by ESPN personality Chris Berman, famous for his quirky and playful nicknames.
In 2009, Gilbert joined Twitter, and the nickname biz took off. He often gets requests from both fans and players’ agents to think up new names. One of his most recent creations is “Shap Stick,” for Canadian sensation Denis Shapovalov. Gilbert explained the origin, saying he looks like a hockey player and his powerful groundstrokes resemble that of an NHL star. Before a name debuts on air, ESPN tennis analyst Chris Fowler said they discuss the names with an unofficial committee before approval.
Fowler said Gilbert’s nicknames help to humanize the sport in a world of data and statistics.
“His quirky style is not going to be perfect English, but it’s usually entertaining,” Fowler said.
“Putting some kind of panache and vernacular into it makes it a lot more fun,” added Gilbert.
Sometimes names don’t connect. One of Gilbert’s biggest reaches is current world No. 1 Karolina Pliskova’s “Snake Pliskova,” a riff on Snake Plissken, the hero of the 1981 cult classic, “Escape from New York.
“It’s a really clever one, but some people think it’s demeaning to call somebody ‘snake,’” he said.
American pro Christina McHale — “McHale’s Navy” — said Gilbert’s nicknames are funny and great for the sport.
“I think it’s awesome,” she told The Post. “There’s McHale’s Navy, you have the Genie Army [the name of Eugenie Bouchard’s fan base] … It gives the fans more of a chance to get involved.”
Gilbert told The Post that Romanian Simona “Halepeño” Halep embraces her moniker. Though not a fan of spicy foods, she loves her name so much that Adidas developed a line of “Halepeño” T-shirts.
Fowler admitted Gilbert’s nicknames can be too much, particularly when he intentionally mispronounces foreign names. He cites French player Gilles Simon’s nickname, “Simon Sez,” whose last name is actually pronounced SEE-mon, not SI-min, as an example. But Fowler commends some, namely Spain’s David “The Little Beast” Ferrer and Britain’s Johanna “Kontador” Konta. He speculates the latter is a reference to either Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador or simply to a condor.
“A lot of these nicknames just sort of work their way into tennis lexicon,” Fowler said.
Tennis audiences enjoy Gilbert’s nicknames, but Fowler said it’s his tennis knowledge and genuine passion that keep fans hooked.
“The dude eats, sleeps, breathes tennis,” Fowler said, “and it comes across.”AP GOP efforts to rig the Electoral College in favor of GOP presidential candidates may be close to dead, but a group of Republicans are hard at work at another plot to blow up the system: switch to the popular vote.
Although more closely associated with progressive circles in recent years, the idea has a number of conservative activists behind it as well. And there are signs it's gaining momentum.
"I think there's a growing consensus that the winner-take-all system we're currently under is a problem, that it's not representative, that only a small number of states benefit, and that it needs to be changed," Saul Anuzis, a Republican national committeeman from Michigan who advocates on behalf of the nonpartisan National Popular Vote group, told TPM.
The plan, as espoused by groups like NPV, is to lobby states to pass binding legislation pledging their entire slate of electors to whichever candidate wins the most votes nationwide. The bills would only take effect once enough states join in to provide a guaranteed majority in the Electoral College — 270 votes — in order to prevent individual legislatures from trying to game the system unilaterally.
On the surface, there's nothing particularly partisan about the proposal (several recent analyses concluded Republicans are actually more likely to benefit in the short term.) But the last race to feature a split between the popular and electoral vote was George W. Bush's 2000 victory and the memory of that contest still hovers over the debate for many Republicans.
"I argue we would have run the 2000 race differently, so it's not fair to judge based on past elections," Anuzis said.
Not coincidentally, the places that have actually passed a national popular vote agreement so far are all solid blue — California, Vermont, Maryland, Washington, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia — even though some states had Republican support behind their bill. RNC members also gave Anuzis some flack for his popular vote advocacy when he ran unsuccessfully for RNC chair in 2011.
Anuzis, for his part, is trying his best to tailor his arguments to their concerns. He pitches the Electoral College as a prime driver of big government, encouraging politicians to lavish goodies to win a narrow set of demographics in just a handful of battlegrounds.
"People realize we have ethanol because of Iowa, we have Medicare Part D because of Florida, and people realize many of the issues they care about aren't being discussed because they're not a swing state," he said.
Ray Haynes, who describes his title at NPV as "Champion of National Popular Vote," is another conservative whose activism has run up against movement politics. Haynes used to chair the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that promotes conservative state legislation around the country. But after he left, ALEC ended up leading the charge against popular vote bills Haynes lobbied for in states like Arkansas and Maryland, claiming it was "imperative the work of our forefathers on this issue be respected and protected."
"I've worked on my ALEC friends, but this is a big change," Hayne said. "Conservatives tend to come to big changes a little bit slower."
That said, there is polling evidence that GOP voters are become more interested in a national popular vote as 2000 fades into the distance and Democrats expand their reach into more swing states. A Gallup poll this month found 63 percent of respondents supported replacing the Electoral College with a national vote. But the big news was that 61 percent of Republicans now favor the change, a huge shift in support since 2000, when only 41 percent said they were were pro-popular vote. Even in 2011, only a slight majority of GOPers wanted to ditch the current system.
This might have something to do with the previous race. A week before the 2012 election, Republicans were a lot more worried that Mitt Romney might win the popular vote and lose the election than Democrats were about President Obama thanks to the latter's relative strength in Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa.
Meanwhile, the conservative movement's electoral reformers may not have the biggest megaphone in the party, but it is getting louder. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) came out for a national popular vote shortly after the election, complaining it put too much attention on swing states. (So did Donald Trump, for what it's worth.)
At this point, all it would take is one Democrat winning an election without the popular vote to spark a grassroots revolution. But by then the Democrats might have decided such talk is heresy that dishonors the memory of George Washington and, well, you can see why we still have the Electoral College today.Oakland police monitor sees continued racial disparities
Photo: Michael Short / Special To The Chronicle 2016 A line of police cruisers are seen in the depot at the Oakland...
After more than a decade of federal monitoring, police in Oakland are still showing signs of racial disparities in enforcement, according to the latest report. Officers, it said, were much more likely to stop and search African Americans than whites, but found suspected contraband more often on whites.
The monitor’s report, released Thursday, said Oakland police stopped 15,407 vehicles between mid-November and mid-May. Blacks were at the wheel 57 percent of the time, whites 11 percentand Latinos 21 percent. During the same period, officers stopped 1,858 pedestrians: 69 percent of them black, 10 percent white and 15 percent Latino.
Oakland’s population, according to the 2010 census, was 28 percent black, 34.5 percent white and 25.4 percent Latino.
The report also found that police searched African American motorists and their vehicles in 28 percent of their stops, compared with 5 percent for whites and 14 percent for Latinos. During pedestrian stops, African Americans were searched 48 percent of the time, whites 21 percent and Latinos 34 percent. The figures covered only searches officers chose to conduct, at their discretion, and did not include searches required by law when a suspect was being arrested or was visibly carrying a weapon.
By contrast, the report said, officers were somewhat more likely to find contraband when searching whites than blacks: 48 percent of the time in vehicle searches involving whites, compared with 46 percent for blacks, and 58 percent for searches of white pedestrians, compared with 42 percent for blacks. The figures for Latinos were 48 percent in vehicle searches and 53 percent in pedestrian searches.
Some of the disparity in search rates can be attributed to the fact that African Americans were more likely than whites to be on probation or parole, and thus subject to random police searches without suspicion. But a lawyer in the case that resulted in federal court oversight of the Oakland police said Friday that the numbers still suggested some racial bias in enforcement.
The fact that African Americans are more likely than whites to be searched is “grounds for extreme concern,” said attorney James Chanin. And he said it was “unacceptable” that blacks were searched more often while whites, particularly pedestrians, were more likely to be holding contraband.
On the other hand, Chanin said, “the figures are probably not dramatically different from any other police department.” The Oakland police force, he said, is “a work in progress.”
In fact, San Francisco police showed similar disparities in searches of both African and American and Latino drivers, as compared with whites, according to a recent report by The Chronicle that looked at three years of police records.
Officer Johnna Watson, an Oakland police spokeswoman, said in a statement that the report was based on “information that the Oakland Police Department is collecting so we may make improvements. We are committed to data-driven policing and transparency to help build community trust.”
Oakland police have been under federal court oversight since the 2003 settlement of a suit over illegal searches and detentions by a group of officers known as the Riders. The current court-appointed monitor, Robert Warshaw, has found the department in compliance with a majority of the standards for police conduct and supervision contained in the settlement, but said Thursday that the department remains in only “partial compliance” with standards for vehicle stops, field investigations and detentions.
Warshaw also cited a Stanford University study in June that found racial disparities in traffic stops by Oakland police in a 13-month period in 2013-14. The research team, led by psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt, has been holding training workshops for Oakland officers on recognizing and reducing racial bias.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @egelkoChicago Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews is having a really good month.
First, he led the Blackhawks past the Tampa Bay Lightning for their third Stanley Cup title in six seasons and the team’s first victory in front of its home crowd in 77 years. Now, he gets to enjoy another first.
Toews will be the first ever co-cover star of EA’s NHL video game franchise, sharing the NHL 16 cover with teammate Patrick Kane. It’s a fitting choice since it was Kane and Toews who were also the first teammates to ever earn back-to-back covers, for NHL 10 and NHL 11, respectively.
Rarely is one player brought up without mention of the other. They have been the backbone of the Blackhawks’ run of success since their first Cup win in 2010, and it was during the insanity of their most recent victory that they found out their year really couldn’t get much better.
“(We found out) actually in the crazy (Cup) celebration on the ice,” Toews said. “We had a bunch of people coming to us, the EA people, the NHL people, and Kane and I both work with the same agent, and they told us what was going on. We had to take the Cup and try to get a quick picture with it in the corner, and that’s when I realized that they were telling us we were (really) going to be on the cover of the video game. It was all too much to take in. It was pretty crazy, and that was just another thing you threw in the mix with how amazing that moment was.”
The chance to appear on the cover of hockey’s best-known video game a second time, and with a teammate, was an unexpected surprise for Toews, but he hopes the fans will be as thrilled about the final product as he is. Unsurprisingly, Toews and Kane can be pretty competitive with each other, and EA’s decision to tap both this year was heartily appreciated.
“I just hope the gamers out there aren’t getting sick of us,” Toews said. “I think we were both pretty psyched the first time around. He got it the year before I did, and I was hoping some day I would get the chance, but I didn’t think it would happen that quickly. And sure enough, here we are again.
“When one (of us) gets a little something, the other gets a little jealous, so you’ve got to keep us both happy, and now we’re both on the cover so it’s working out great.”
All jokes aside, Toews notes how much the two stars have grown in the six years since Kane first appeared on the cover, but that the magnitude of every distinction they get to share still awes them.
“We’re still kids at heart,” Toews said. “We love to play video games, but I think in a lot of ways we have grown on and off the ice, and as players we’re just so happy and thrilled that we’ve been able to share some of these moments on the ice, and this is another one of those things we can throw on the list of amazing things we’ve been through together.”
Toews’ initial reaction to the latest version of the game, which will include playoff beards, was total excitement, but he’s hardly a newbie. The 27-year-old has been there since the beginning.
“I think it’s something kids grew up with,” he said. “I grew up with it in the 1990s, playing Nintendo and Sega and NHL 95. I think 94 was the first year (they had one). I think it’s safe to say the game has changed a lot since then. For me, I was probably more of a two- or three-button guy, and now there are so many controls and they’re adding playoff beards to so it’s crazy to see the things they can do now.”
Although Toews plays for the Blackhawks now, they weren’t his go-to team to play with back then (“I was the L.A. Kings because Wayne Gretzky was my favorite player, and he was the best player in the game.”), and they aren’t even always his pick now.
“I guess I probably play with the Blackhawks more often than not, but I like to change it up once in a while too,” he said. “(I like to) try something different. (Seeing yourself in the game) is not only weird but seeing how detailed it is is weird. I can’t believe they do that stuff; it’s beyond my understanding. But it’s pretty cool.”
Unfortunately Toews doesn’t have a lot of time to spend with video games at the moment (“One of these days I will.”), but that’s a small price to pay. As he got ready to head to the NHL Awards, where he won the Mark Messier Award for leadership, Toews touched on what it took for the Blackhawks to complete their Cup run. How every game is its own game. How every moment is its own moment.
He was talking about hockey, but given the whirlwind surrounding him yet again, after another incredible year filled with highs, he could have been giving himself advice too.
“I don’t think you look at the big picture,” Toews said. “You just take it one day at a time.”Gang Of Four are set to release their seventh studio album since debuting with 1979’s Entertainment!. Content will be released on January 25, 2011 on Yep Roc Records, and will be the band’s first release in 16 years.
All the material on Content was written by founding members Jon King (vocals and percussion) and Andy Gill (guitar), and was recorded and produced by Gill. The album will be released on CD, vinyl, and in a deluxe “Ultimate Content Can,” which will include ceramic art, a book of photos, lyrics, a scratch-and-sniff booklet and (supposedly) vials of the band members’ blood.
Hey, I just report on what I’m told by PR people.
“What I’ve been thrilled by over the years is that our music still seems to make sense to our audiences, however old they are, and these days they’re mostly under 30,” says King. “They tell us that our music means something, that it makes them want to go start a band. That amazes me. I would never have imagined when we started off that we would have this impact after such a long time.”
Gang of Four gained most of their fame from their 1979 debut album, which included tracks such as “Damaged Goods,” “Not Great Men,” and “Natural’s Not in It” (below). I also happen to love “I Love a Man in Uniform,” a song from their 1982 album Songs of the Free. Feel free to disagree.Bradley Manning has been seen in public for the first time since he was arrested in Iraq in May 2010 for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of secret US state documents to WikiLeaks.
Security was exceptionally – some say bizarrely – tight at the opening on Friday of Manning's pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade in Maryland. Though a small number of seats in the military courtroom were reserved for members of the public, rigid reporting restrictions remained in place that prevent any live coverage of the proceedings.
The full charge sheet against Manning was released for the first time. It includes a total of 23 counts against the soldier, the most serious of which is that Manning knowingly gave "intelligence to the enemy, though indirect means".
The idea that WikiLeaks constituted an "enemy", or a conduit to an enemy of the US state, will in itself be subject of much debate and legal argument. A second charge follows a similar theme, and accuses of Manning of causing information to be published "having knowledge that intelligence published on the internet is accessible to the enemy".
Manning is charged with passing information from a secure database containing more than 250,000 records belonging to the US government – a reference to the US embassy cables that were published by WikiLeaks through a group of international newspapers including the Guardian in November 2010.
Another count refers to the first act of publication by WikiLeaks in February 2010 of a US embassy cable known as Reykjavik-13.
Aside from press and legal council, a small group of members of the public were allowed inside the courtroom. Admittance was decided on a first-come, first-serve basis. Those who got in had queued at the military base since "predawn", a military media liaison officer said.
A vigil in support of Manning was due to take place outside the main gates of Fort Meade to coincide with the start of the hearing. About 60 supporters were expected to attend. On Friday afternoon, the group is due to be joined by members of the Occupy Wall Street movement, who are travelling by bus to the military base. A further rally will be held on Saturday to mark Manning's 24th birthday. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam war, will be addressing the protesters.
The army has come under criticism for taking so long to bring Manning to trial, and it faces further questions over how it is conducting the start of deliberations. The hearing is a preliminary stage, known as an Article 32, equivalent to a civilian pre-trial hearing, and is designed to assess whether the US soldier should be sent to a full court-martial.
Manning was charged in March with 37 counts relating to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret documents to WikiLeaks from secure US databases that he allegedly accessed while working as an intelligence officer at the Forward Operating Base Hammer outside Baghdad. The documents included Afghan and Iraq war logs, a trove of US embassy cables from around the world and video footage of a US helicopter fatally firing on a group of civilians in Iraq including two Reuters employees.
It was the largest leak of US state secrets in history and Manning faces a maximum sentence of life in custody with no chance of parole. Technically, Manning could also face the death penalty on the count of "aiding the enemy", but prosecutors have made clear they will not seek the ultimate punishment.
Among the stranger aspects of the pre-trial are that it begins on a Friday and will run throughout the weekend. The military authorities have indicated that each day's proceedings could be extended late into the night.
"To run the hearing through a weekend right before the Christmas vacation is clearly designed to minimise both media coverage and public protests," said Jeff Patterson of the Bradley Manning support network.
Patterson added that in his view the tight security around the case was an attempt to cast Manning as a dangerous individual. "The prosecution are pushing for a sentence of life with no parole, so they have to portray him as someone who deserves such extreme punishment."
Reporters will be allowed virtually no access to the world outside the base while the court is sitting. There are also likely to be periods when the Article 32 goes into private session to deliberate on matters that the army regards sensitive to national security.
Under the military system, the proceedings will be led by an army official known as an investigating officer, whose duty will be to recommend at the end of the hearing whether Manning should move on to a general court-martial or face a lesser punishment.
Manning's defence lawyer, David Coombs, has made official protestations that most of the witnesses he wanted to call have been declined by the military. Coombs had issued a list of 48 witnesses that he had wanted to summons, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Manning's superiors and psychiatrists who assessed the soldier's mental and emotional state of health before the WikiLeaks transfer of secrets occurred. But only 10 of the listed individuals were accepted, all of whom were also on the prosecution's wish-list of witnesses.
In a filing, Coombs complained that any attempt by the military to block defence witnesses "would deny PFC Manning his right to a thorough and impartial investigation and turn this into a hollow exercise". The lawyer added that Manning's charges were "among the most serious charges that a soldier can face. The government must be prepared to accept the costs incurred by the seriousness of the charges that they have preferred against PFC Manning."Each year, we like to run a series of posts called "90-in-90." The idea is that we'll take a look at every player on the roster, from the very bottom to the top and break them down a few ways. This roster will certainly change, and some days we'll have more than one so it's not exactly 90 players in 90 days. At this point, it's a name we're keeping around for street cred.
The San Francisco 49ers signed guard Ryan Seymour from the Seattle Seahawks practice squad to a 3-year contract on December 10, 2013. The move came in conjunction with the decision to place Tank Carradine on injured reserve. Seymour was inactive the final three games of the regular season and the three playoff games.
Seymour was originally drafted by the Seahawks in the 7th round of the 2013 NFL Draft. He was cut at the end of training camp before signing with their practice squad. Seymour came to the Seahawks out of Vanderbilt having played a mix of guard and tackle positions.
What to expect in 2014:
Seymour will be competing in training camp with an incredibly deep group of offensive linemen. Alex Boone's potential absence does open the door, so it could help Seymour move up the depth chart in preseason action. He has been getting some second team work, and his versatility can only help him. He is viewed as a guard, but he has also gotten some tackle work during the 49ers offseason workout program. If he could show enough to snag a roster spot, he is a guy who could really help them potentially save a roster spot.
Odds of making the roster:
All that being said, his roster odds are likely somewhat slim. I suspect the team ends up waiving Seymour with hopes of signing him to the practice squad. Even if Alex Boone holds out into the season, Adam Snyder, Joe Looney, and potentially Jonathan Martin will be in his way. Marcus Martin or Daniel Kilgore are also ones to consider depending on how the center competition resolves itself.
The 49ers liked Seymour enough last year to keep him around on the 53-man roster. However, the addition of Jonathan Martin, and the potential emergence of Joe Looney does not bode well for Seymour. He'll get some opportunities, but it's a fairly steep climb for him.It’s bigger on the inside. That’s the thing everyone says about the TARDIS, the blue British police-box-shaped time machine that’s the center of the venerable TV show Doctor Who. But it’s also true of Gallifrey One — “the world’s largest and longest-running annual Doctor Who convention,” held this past weekend (February 15-17) at the Marriott Los Angeles Airport Hotel.
The BBC sci-fi show will celebrate its 50th anniversary this November, and “The 24 Hours of Gallifrey One” was appropriately stuffed with guests spanning all eras of the program, from what’s become known as the “classic series” (1963-1996) to the “new series,” which was revived by the BBC in 2005 and has continued since, becoming more popular than ever — especially on this side of the Pond. This is the con’s 24th year (hence the title), and its popularity has grown exponentially even since I began attending a mere five years ago. No one could possibly take in all that “Gally,” as it’s affectionately known, has to offer, so at this point it’s like the proverbial blind men and the elephant. But whatever you grab onto will add up to something you’ll never forget.
1. The Membership Cap
I started attending Gally in 2009, on its 20th anniversary. That year, the convention attracted around 1,000 people — a record for this fan-run function that was started by members of the Time Meddlers of Los Angeles in 1990, when Doctor Who wasn’t even on the air. This year, they sold out in advance for the first time ever, bringing in 3,200 attendees and forcing organizers to cap membership — also for the first time ever. That caused a fair amount of grumbling among veterans, as did the fact that the first hotel block offered sold out in less than an hour.
This turn of events led to much speculation that Gally would have no choice but to move to a larger hotel and eventually get so big that no one would ever have any fun. But during Opening Ceremonies on Friday, Vice Chair and Program Director Shaun Lyon genially came out swinging. Pointing to the standing-room-only crowd, he asked if anyone thought the cap was a bad idea now. (Noooooo!) Lyon acknowledged the frustrations and missteps made, but pointed out that Gally is still a fan-run, volunteer-fueled con. He insisted that “our hearts are in the right place” (appropriate for a convention that revolves around a hero who has two hearts), and declared that organizers aren’t interested in moving to another venue. A word to the wise: Registration for next year opens online on March 8. Keep an eye on the official site for updates.
2. Freema Agyeman for President?
Peter Lee
She’s the first new-series companion to appear at Gally — and the only one who will ever be thanked for being black Doctor Who fans’ Barack Obama, as one did during her interview session on Sunday morning. Freema Agyeman played Martha Jones, companion to 10th Doctor David Tennant in Series 3 of NuWho, who returned for several episodes of Series 4 and also guest-starred on spin-off series Torchwood. Both of her interview panel sessions were standing room only, and she was almost alarmingly sparkling and gracious through each one, as well as during lengthy autograph sessions.
3. Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith
Kid-oriented spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures ended in 2011, with the death from cancer of lead actress Elisabeth Sladen. As we learned during Friday’s SJA panel featuring co-star Anjli Mohindra (who played Rani Chandra), Sladen kept her condition so private that not even her fellow actors knew until she was gone. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it two years later,” Mohindra confessed.
She’s not the only one. The sudden loss of Sladen, arguably the most beloved |
to the AFC and its 46 full members.
"It’s important we don’t ask for it just for the sake of asking for it. It must be a target to develop Asian football and raise the standards of the game around the continent" Qatar 2022 General Secretary, Hassan Al-Thawadi
The clarion call was sounded by FIFA president Sepp Blatter on May 2. The Swiss supremo has a reputation for telling audiences what they want to hear and as he was talking to all 46 full members of the AFC Congress in Kuala Lumpur, his words should be taken with the usual amount of salt.
“We have to have a better balance. You are a powerhouse, you must be aware of your powerhouse.”
It may have been more blather from Blatter but he had a point. Over four billion people call Asia home but in terms of the World Cup, 60% of all humanity gets about 16% of the representation.
And as the FIFA boss pointed out, roughly half of the regular $1 billion income received by the world governing body rolls into Switzerland from the east. At the most basic level, it’s just not fair.
The man behind Qatar’s successful 2022 World Cup bid Hassan Al-Thawadi recently saw his attempt to win election to FIFA’s powerful Executive Committee defeated by Sheikh Salman, who also won the AFC presidency. The charismatic Al Thawadi, also the General Secretary of the 2022 Supreme Organising committee, believes it is an issue worth discussing.
"It is something we need to look at," he told Al Jazeera.
“That goes hand-in-hand with the development of the AFC. It is always a difficult issue as every continent wants more spots. It’s important we don’t ask for it just for the sake of asking for it. It must be a target to develop Asian football and raise the standards of the game around the continent and more World Cup spots could make a big difference.”
Bigger role
New AFC chief Salman agrees that it is time for more and he will get the chance to make his case when FIFA meets in Mauritius at the end of May. The problem is, of course, that if Asia gains a spot then someone, somewhere else has to lose one.
Football politics can seem remote to fans but when it comes to the World Cup, deals done have a very visible and emotive effect. Already Michel Platini, UEFA President, has said that he sees no reason to increase Asia's allocation which basically means he sees no reason to decrease that of his own confederation.
But as Blatter pointed out, Europe and South America have 19 of the 32 spots in 2014. These two traditional powerhouses have shared the World Cup trophy since its inception and it will be a surprise if that is not continued in Brazil next year.
The viewpoint that South America’s five spots for its ten members is unfair is not an exclusively Asian one but when all five made the second round in South Africa and four made the last eight, it will take a good argument to deprive CONMEBOL. And then there is UEFA and its 13 spots but once again, Europe did provide all four semi-finalists.
Yet, be made the argument must. For the World Cup to be truly global, Asia deserves a bigger role. At the very least, its 4.5 spots must be upgraded to five.
There is no denying that the continent does not have a record to rank alongside the traditional powerhouses. But then there is no denying that it is relatively difficult to do so when, proportionally, South American teams have around five times more access than those from the east.
The more teams play at the World Cup, the better they perform. Japan and South Korea have shown what regular experience can do and after uncertain early appearances are now familiar faces in the knockout stage. Australia were narrowly beaten by eventual champions Italy in the second round in 2006 and were unlucky not to progress from a tough group four years later.
Asia’s best no longer are satisfied with simply making up the numbers and these days aim for the latter stages, the others just need a little more experience. When Europe and South America 60% of the places every time, it is hardly surprising that their battle-hardened teams are the ones left standing. The odds are stacked in their favour.
It’s time for a little redistribution. It is not a question of if but when.About the inspiration:The Cathedral of Learning, a Pittsburgh landmark listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is the centerpiece of the University of Pittsburgh's main campus in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Standing at 535 feet (>163 m), the 42-story Late Gothic Revival Cathedral is the tallest educational building in the Western hemisphere and the second tallest university building (fourth tallest educationally-purposed building) in the world. It is also the second tallest gothic-styled building in the world. The Cathedral of Learning was commissioned in 1921. The Cathedral is a steel frame structure overlaid with Indiana limestone and contains more than 2,000 rooms and windows.Nationality Rooms:The Cathedral is home to 29 Nationality Rooms, twenty-seven working classrooms and two display rooms, on the first and third floors. Each nationality room is designed to celebrate a different culture that had an influence on Pittsburgh's growth...The Nationality Room programs began in 1926 when Bowman decided that he wanted to involve the community as much as he could in constructing the Cathedral, so he proposed that each nationality that had a significant number of people in Pittsburgh would be allowed to design their nationality's room for the Cathedral. Current rooms include:African Heritage Armenian Austrian ChineseCzechoslovak Early American (Display) English FrenchGerman Greek Hungarian Indian IrishIsrael Heritage Italian Japanese LithuanianNorwegian Polish Romanian RussianScottish Swedish Swiss Syrian-Lebanon (Display)Turkish Ukrainian Welsh YugoslavProposed rooms:There are seven nationality rooms currently being planned to add to the current 29.[40]Danish Finnish Iranian KoreanLatin American & Caribbean Filipino Thai[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_learning About the build:Originally created for a LEGO builders competition at a local toy store (S.W. Randall in Squirrel Hill), the building was not built to true scale due to the 10" height limit of the contest. After winning the adult category, the model was redone to the intended height, which is just under 1 foot.After much attention online and at LEGO Kidsfest 2012, I digitally recreated it in LEGO Digital Designer in order to preserve the build as well as produce (~500 pages of) instructions for others to build.More information on the background and design here: http://sixf00t4.com/2012/06/cathedral-of-learning-in-lego-bricks/Every insurgent candidate likes to think he has an establishment somewhere quaking in its boots. But in the case of Senator Rand Paul, the fear seems to be very real.
This isn’t evident from watching cable news, where well-credentialed Republicans tend to regard Paul with equal parts curiosity and dismissal. You have to skirt behind the scenes, to some of the more in-depth political coverage, to get a good view of the freakout.
Thus MSNBC.com this morning:
New York Rep. Pete King knows he’s a long shot for the GOP presidential nomination. He has little national following, no campaign organization, and must constantly remind people he’s considering a run to keep his name in the mix at all. But if King doesn’t make it to the White House, he’ll happily settle for another victory: Making sure Rand Paul doesn’t get there either.
And it’s not just Peter King:
In interviews with msnbc, King and [Fox News contributor John] Bolton each made clear that Paul’s rise within the party loomed large in their thinking.
There’s little precedent for this in recent political contests. Candidates weren’t jumping into the 2012 race because they wanted to counter Rick Perry’s looser immigration position or Rick Santorum’s disregard for libertarianism. And the GOP establishment isn’t tossing and turning at night over Jeb Bush’s support for Common Core or Chris Christie’s signing his state’s own DREAM Act; indeed, one of Republican governors’ constantly touted strengths is their willingness to experiment on domestic policy.
But ask a few questions about forever war and invasive surveillance, and elite Republicans line up around the block for a chance to destroy you.
Problem is, Paul hasn’t gone down easily. He’s statistically tied with Scott Walker to win the Iowa caucus, according to a recent Des Moines Register poll, and he’s grabbed boldfaced headlines for his efforts to reach out to black and Millennial voters, something GOP bigwigs encourage but can’t ever seem to pull off.
Hence the fear.
I’ve mentioned the 2016 race to multiple people I know who work in Republican politics here in Washington, only to have them reflexively start fretting about Paul. You would think he was Republicans’ primary antagonist in 2016, rather than Hillary Clinton.
If the party can’t stop Paul, they seem determined to isolate him. With Scott Walker’s refusal last week to rule out ground troops in Syria, and with nearly every other GOP presidential hopeful—Perry, Christie, Rubio, Graham, Bolton, King, Santorum—having taken a swing at Paul, it’s quite likely that the Kentucky senator will be the only candidate on that debate stage who favors a more modest foreign policy.
And yet still the fear remains—and for good reason. “The one candidate that could potentially bring in new Republicans to the field would be someone like Rand Paul,” a former Obama staffer said last year.
It’s amazing what a little dissent can do.A majority of Americans (54%) say that police departments using military weapons and armored vehicles “goes too far.” Another 46% believe that police using military equipment is “necessary for law enforcement purposes,” according to a new Cato Institute/YouGov survey of 2,000 Americans.
Find the full public opinion report here.
Although Americans of different races and ethnicities vary widely in their perceptions of the police, majorities of whites (53%), blacks (58%), and Latinos (51%) all believe police using military equipment is excessive.
Police militarization divides partisans. Sixty percent (60%) of both Democrats and independents think that police using military equipment “goes too far” and 40% think it is necessary. In stark contrast, 65% of Republicans think police need to use military equipment while 35% think it’s unnecessary. Support for police militarization comes disproportionately from the “strong Republican” wing of the GOP with 71% in support, compared to 57% who agree among “not very strong” Republicans.
Opposition to police militarization brings together Libertarians and Liberals, groups identified according to our ideological typology. Fully 75% of liberals and 60% of libertarians think that police using military equipment “goes too far.” In contrast, Communitarians (social conservatives who support the welfare state) and Conservatives come together in their support for police using military equipment: 60% of Conservatives and 51% of Communitarians think it’s necessary.
Working class Americans, across all races and ethnicities, are more supportive (51%) of police using military weapons and armored vehicles than Americans with college degrees (42%). Instead, a majority (58%) of college graduates thinks it’s excessive.
Americans under 65 oppose militarization by a margin of 57% to 43%. However, seniors (65 and up) stand out with their comfort with police militarization: 61% believe it is necessary and 39% think it’s not.
We find that people disposed toward authority figures are most supportive of police militarization. Americans who score high (57%) on our Respect for Authority Index (RAI) are significantly more likely than those who score low (30%) to believe police need military weapons to do their jobs. Americans with greater skepticism towards authority are far more likely to believe military weapons are excessive (70%).
Notably, Americans who live in cities are no more likely than Americans living in suburban or rural areas to think it’s a good idea for police to use military equipment. Support also does not vary considerably by gender, income, or age for those under 55.
In sum, support for police militarization is less contingent on one’s environment, and more related to people’s dispositions toward authority—and by extension their political ideology. Americans with more respect for authority figures are more likely to believe that police (a trusted authority figure) would only use military equipment if it were necessary.
For public opinion analysis sign up here to receive Cato’s upcoming digest of Public Opinion Insights and public opinion studies.As this weekend’s Values Voter Summit got underway, Jerry Boykin, the executive vice president of the summit’s sponsor, the Family Research Council, said that he hoped the event would help conservative Christians become “comfortable” with the idea of voting for Donald Trump.
The event ended up being packed with references to the importance of voting for Trump over Hillary Clinton. And, on Saturday, FRC members received a direct mail piece from the organization making an argument for conservative Christians to support the GOP nominee and his fellow Republicans in order to fight Democrats who are trying to put “the priority of sexual unrestraint ahead of religious freedom in every area of our lives.”
While never mentioning Trump or Clinton by name, the mailing, signed by the group’s president, Tony Perkins, makes its point clear.
Perkins first boasts of the FRC’s role in shaping the ultraconservative Republican platform, contrasting it with the Democrats’ platform of “sexual unrestraint”:
[T]he major political parties have confirmed their nominees, and in spite of the understandable misgivings of many true conservatives, this election now presents America with a clear choice: · One party has declared in its platform that they will continue putting the priority of sexual unrestraint ahead of religious freedom in every area of our lives. · The other party has committed itself to the most strongly conservative platform of any we’ve seen in a century. And you had a hand in this platform victory. Your support for FRC Action made it possible for us to bring maximum influence to bear on the Republican Party platform-development process. With your strong support, I was able to add eight amendments to the platform and was able to work with other delegates on dozens more, many of them designed specifically to champion and protect religious liberty. Your investment in FRC Action produced a tremendous return.
He then moves on to a defense of Trump, citing the GOP nominee’s promise to appoint judges who will uphold the Religious Right’s priorities, his vow to repeal IRS restrictions on politicking by churches that receive nonprofit tax breaks, and his “support for the freedom to say ‘Merry Christmas’ in the public sphere.”
“This is not an evangelical Christian candidate,” Perkins writes, “but these are connection points with evangelical Christians who have seen their beliefs constantly attacked in recent years. These are starting points for a new administration with a renewed friendliness toward Christian values”:
The candidate of one party has consistently reached out to Christian groups. The other has opposed everything we believe and everything we’ve worked for. · One of these candidates would continue to appoint liberal activist judges and justices who will deny religious liberty for families like the Stormans…continue to use the sexual revolution (new “genders,” redefining marriage, etc.) to attack religious freedom…and will continue allowing the killing of unborn children. · The other candidate has committed to appointing judges who will adhere to the confines of the Constitution. This candidate has also embraced the cause of religious liberty. This candidate has specifically called out the Johnson Amendment, which restricts the freedom of churches to address political issues. This candidate has even expressed support for the freedom to say “Merry Christmas” in the public sphere! This is not an evangelical Christian candidate, but these are connection points with evangelical Christians who have seen their beliefs constantly attacked in recent years. These are starting points for a new administration with a renewed friendliness toward Christian values.
All emphases are from the original.OutKast have spent the summer on a grand reunion tour, playing their hits at an insane number of festivals around the world and generally reminding the world that they are perhaps the greatest rap group that has ever existed. But at various shows, onlookers have noted that André 3000, the more elusive half of the duo, does not appear to have his heart in performing. And as it turns out, they’re right; he doesn’t. André almost never gives interviews, but in a rare, revealing sit-down, he’s just now said some uncomfortably honest things on how he feels about the tour and about the idea of rapping in general.
André was ostensibly talking to The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica about Jimi: All Is By My Side, the new biopic in which he plays Jimi Hendrix. But he also addressed his own absence from the stage, and his answers say a lot. Here’s what he says about the current tour:
Honestly, I never planned to go onstage again in that way. If I feel like I’m getting to a place where it’s mimicking or a caricature, I just want to move on. But I felt like: Let me do it now ’cause these kids [in the audience], it feels good to know that they’re happy. I really don’t actually get anything from performing… I feel good in being able to look at Big Boi and say, “Hey, man, we did it.” Big Boi’s got these great records on his own, but this means something else for him.
About the first OutKast reunion performance at Coachella:
It was foreign. My head wasn’t there. I kind of fluffed through rehearsals. A few hours before the Coachella show, I get a message that Prince and Paul McCartney are going to be there. My spirit is not right, and idols are standing side-stage, so as the show started, I’m bummed. This is horrible. In my mind I was already gone to my hotel room halfway through.
About the idea of rapping in general:
I remember, at like 25, saying, “I don’t want to be a 40-year-old rapper.” I’m 39 now, and I’m still standing by that. I’m such a fan that I don’t want to infiltrate it with old blood… I struggle with the verses. I don’t sit around and write raps, I just don’t. Now the only time I’m really inspired to write raps is if an artist that I enjoy invites me to their party. So if Future calls and says, “Hey man, I want you to do this,” I don’t want to let Future down. I don’t want to let Lil Wayne or Drake down, because I love them.
About the idea of releasing more music in the future:
I’d love to put out an album… I know this may sound morbid, but I was like, if I were to die today, I have all these half-songs on my hard drive, and I don’t want that.
The whole interview is well worth your attention, and you can read it here.
[Photo by Wilson Lee @ BottleRock]We can talk technique, sequencing, and programming, but the truth is, if you want to move better, you need to rest better. Exercise and rest are two sides of the same coin, but few trainers really address rest and leisure.
Just like any instrument, your body needs to be tuned from time to time. Luckily it has its own built-in tuner. Or it did, until we decided to spend our entire waking life in a chair.
The Body Is a Self-Tuning Instrument
When our knowledge of structural anatomy comes from taking apart cadavers, we forget that the body is actually a complex, interconnected system. Like any complex system, it has developed self-correcting mechanisms over time. When a system isn’t allowed to self-correct, problems arise. Individual elements become overused, and we see things like low back pain pop up like weeds.1
"These are natural positions for the human animal. If your body doesn't work the way a body should, movement will suffer."
Complex systems crave variety. They’re true examples of antifragility, meaning they actually thrive from a bit of manageable disorder. Changing up your habits and patterns can have huge benefit for the health of a system. For the human system, something as simple as sitting on the floor can be just the change we need.
5 Resting Positions to Improve Your Movement
Our whole evolutionary and developmental history can be seen as an epic quest to rise from the ground to vertical. This is a vast simplification of course, but as we’ve seen before, spending time on the ground has marked benefits. What we haven’t explored is how mind-bogglingly simple it is to incorporate ground time in your day-to-day life.
Floor sitting requires no additional time in your day. I often tell my students it feels like a cheat code because all you need is a change of position for the things you’d do anyway (reading, eating, watching Netflix, etc). Floor sitting integrates seamlessly into your time outside the gym for great benefit to joint health. Even miniscule changes in body position create a change in joint loading.2
So let’s explore a little variety in our patterns, shall we? The following five resting positions are often called “archetypal postures” because they’re seen in cultures across the globe. They’re an inherent component of natural human rest.
1. Squatting
The full squat is hotly contested, but it’s a fundamental building block of human movement. The full squat puts the legs in the unique position of triple flexion, flexing the ankles, knees, and hips. This brings length to some of the most overworked muscles in the body. Ideally the squat is done with feet facing forward, heels close to the ground, and knees tracking toes without collapsing into the arches of the feet.
This position may elude you for some time if you’re out of practice, so it’s important to approach it wisely. Pain is never a good sign. Ease into the position, using as much padding or propping with pillows as needed. You may need to hang on to an object for additional support. The key here is to give your body permission to release into the position. Savor the small improvements, and you’ll find your squat getting better and better over time.
2. Kneeling
Kneeling gives the body a huge number of options to explore. You can kneel low or tall, with toes tucked under or pointed behind you. These positions are found fairly often outside of Western cultures, but again, if your body is unaccustomed to this range of motion or posture, you’ll have a relearning curve.
Some individuals will need padding under the butt to rest comfortably (particularly if the quadriceps have excess tension). If your knees are sensitive, make sure to pad beneath them as well. From kneeling, you can easily find the fold up position (or child’s pose) to bring more length to the back in global, whole-spine flexion.
3. Long Sitting
Sitting with the legs extended in front of you can be quite revealing. Ideally you should be sitting on our ischial tuberosities, those bony bumps beneath the pelvis. Many folks will find they collapse here and rest on the tail bone. If this is the case, simply prop the pelvis a bit higher and let gravity do its thing. Explore this position with both legs out, or one leg tucked in.
4. Cross-Legged
The prior positions are more linear and don’t take the hips into much rotation. It’s not uncommon for chair-bound individuals to have knees significantly elevated in this position. If that’s you, you know the drill: give the knees some support to release into. From cross-legged you may explore the tailor’s posture, with the soles of both feet together and knees out to the sides.
5. Side Sitting
The last position we’ll cover here is side sitting. In this position, one hip is in internal rotation, while the other is in external rotation. This position may strain the knees if they are forced to compensate for overly tight hips. Pay close attention to differences as you switch from one side to the other.
Wrapping It Up
This is by no means an exhaustive list of resting positions, but it gives you a lot of room to explore. These are natural positions for the human animal. If your body doesn’t work the way a body should, movement will suffer. One surprisingly simple way to improve your movement is to rest better. Use these resting positions to tap into the body’s natural ability to tune itself.
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References:
1. Hoy, D., et al. “The epidemiology of low back pain,” Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology 24 (2010): 769-781.
2. Baumgartner, D., et al. “The spinal curvature of three different sitting positions analyzed in an open MRI scanner,”The Scientific World (2012): Article ID 184016.
Photos courtesy of Chandler Stevens.The churchyard of St Philip’s, Birmingham Cathedral, might be regarded as a useful place to ruminate on the futility of remembrance. Over 60,000 bodies are thought to have been interred here between the church’s opening in the early 18th century until its closure for burial in 1859. So few of these received a memorial and only a tiny fraction of these have survived to be viewed today. Commemorate as we might (as Bill and Ted once said, citing the epic masterpiece by Kansas) all we are is dust in the wind... dude.
However, let’s not be so maudlin; let’s instead celebrate the tenacity of select memorials. St Philip’s churchyard was closed to burial in the mid-19th century and subsequently it was laid out as a park in 1910. You would be forgiven for thinking that the memorials were doomed, but through complex processes, some lucky memorials survived and following recent restoration and demarcation by new railings together they collectively rise like a phoenix in Birmingham’s city centre.
Why do some monuments survive? Quite a few reasons I guess. A key linking theme is that they all become valued and conserved by the communities of Birmingham and adopted as municipal monuments (features within managed public space) rather than as private family plots and vaults.
First, some survived because they were the largest and grandest, and hence the most enduring and difficult to justify removal. These are unsurprisingly the memorials of the wealthiest occupants of the churchyard.
Further monuments are a subset of the above, those particularly honoured over the long term because of the particular civic identities and the honoured war dead. Some individuals represent a combination of these qualities, like the memorial to Crimean War Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Unett.
Others are not particularly monumental but their design – through happenstance as much as intention – renders them physically tenacious. Indeed, such low-lying ledgers and low pyramidal monuments are perhaps more enduring than over-blown and elaborate tombs.
Some memorials have been rendered tenacious following conservation, framed with slabs and laid flat.
A further category of memorial to survive are those that form into groups, and those that have been moved into the ‘protection’ of other memorials.
There are also ‘tragic’ deaths that ensure survival. An obvious of these are the memorial to a pair of workers – Heap and Badger – who were killed during a building accident in 1833 during construction work on Birmingham’s Town Hall, an accident that had lasting implications in safety at work.
Such working class heroes were afforded a shared memorial: a broken classical column, situated at a prominent location on the south side of the churchyard near one of its principal entrances. Apparently it still affords a focus of trades union assemblies and is further protected by the railings that now prevent it being approached from the front.
Then (and I use the word not to venture my prejudice, but to reflect Victorian attitudes) there are ‘freak’ graves. In Birmingham Cathedral’s churchyard, prominent near the western entrance to the church, is the memorial to the Austrian performer Nanette Stocker, who died in 1819 but only reached a height of 33 inches
A final reason for their survival is their association with a series of cenotaphs that have perpetuated the significance of the churchyard as a commemorative environment. I will discuss these in a future blog.
And of course, these memorials are not static, we encountered examples of fragmented memorials, one recently conserved memorial adjacent to another that is no longer present; the pavement around it serving to commemorate its absence. We also witnessed an example of how root movement and the interaction of memorials and trees creates a tension between different kinds of conservation; the need to conserve trees and memorials together.
In summary, these memorials are in an open public city-centre space and so are constantly open to the elements and assaults from the living; graffiti, vandalism or simply accidents. This is after all a rare open space in a busy urban arena. Hence, when we visited, Ruth and I were fascinated with the careful framing of memorials to protect them, assuring they have the longest lease of life of those luck few who have persisted from the 18th and 19th centuries despite being located in such a busy city centre environment. Indeed, these lucky memorials, given their careful conservation, have a far greater chance of survival through the 21st century than far more recent memorials in typical suburban cemeteries and churchyards.
AdvertisementsStory highlights Wildlife officials seek information over a spate of sea otter shootings
(CNN) For years, sea otters have delighted visitors and residents along central California's coastline. They can be spotted grooming, holding each other's paws and enjoying crustacean snacks while floating on their backs.
But not all appear to be pleased with the furry marine mammals. Three male sea otters have been found dead with gunshot wounds in Monterey Bay.
JUST WATCHED Wild sea otter gives birth at aquarium Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Wild sea otter gives birth at aquarium 01:25
Their carcasses washed ashore between August 12 and 19, between the Santa Cruz Harbor and Seacliff State Beach, according to a joint statement from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife Law Enforcement Officials. After examining the otters, authorities say that the creatures probably died days or weeks after they were shot.
Sea otters often rest in groups called "rafts."
Last week, a fourth dead otter washed ashore also with a suspected gunshot wound, a spokeswoman from the US Fish and Wildlife told the Guardian.
Authorities are offering $10,000 in reward for information regarding the shootings that would lead to the arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible. That money comes from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and a private donor.Realtor Judy Ross has seen a lot of unusual listings in her career selling float homes — but the 47-metre former navy vessel turned upscale residence — was a first.
"Minesweepers don't come up that often," said Ross adding, "and you can't get a ship that size for $299,000," the unusual home's current asking price.
A number of curious and prospective buyers have been through the 90-minute tour, many with an eye to list it on Airbnb. But for various reasons, none of the five offers Ross has received in the last year have gone through.
The storied history of the ship, now known as 151 Water St., continued after its days with the Navy. Ross says, in 1971, it was part of a Greenpeace mission to Alaska to stop a U.S. nuclear weapons test.
Owners Mike and Janice Fournier have been enjoying the boat life and their expansive ocean views from their location in the East Vancouver Port Lands — next to Lantic Sugar.
Dream home
The couple had talked about living on a boat for some time and when they saw this larger version of what they had dreamed about — Mike says it just sort of fell into place.
"My wife said, 'I'll give you a year.' We've had it for two."
A number of prospective buyers were interested in renting out rooms on Airbnb (vancouveruniquehomes.com)
Mike and a finishing carpenter took on the renovation adding a bedroom, bathrooms, a kitchen and the outside decking.
But two years later, and with the arrival of their first grandchild, the couple decided it was time to pull up anchor and build a new home on the Sunshine Coast.
"I just think of what we got out of it, what we learned as a family, the fun we had. It was an awesome experience." he said.
However, Mike admits, there was one downside to living next to Lantic Sugar.
"We had to move out about every three months or so, when a sugar ship would come in," he said. "We'd use that opportunity to go do something for a couple of weeks."
But given another chance, he says, he'd do it all over again.
"It was one of those things that was an absolute one-of-a kind opportunity. And if people get a chance to do something like that, they should just leap at it."
It seems that's exactly what's about to happen. An interested couple fell in love with the home after a tour on Thursday.
They've put in an offer with the goal to fully transform it once again — this time into a private luxury yacht.By Bartlett Naylor and Dorry Samuels
Prepare to be ill: Of the 100 highest-paid CEOs in the United States, 25 of them made more money than their company paid in 2010 federal income taxes. In its 18th annual executive compensation survey, the Institute for Policy Studies found that “the people who run corporations... are reaping awesomely lavish rewards for the tax dodging they have their corporations do.”
Simultaneously with today’s release of “The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging,” Rep. Elijah Cummings has called on Chairman Darrell Issa of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “to examine the extent to which the problems in CEO compensation that led to the economic crisis continues to exist today.”
Consider results from Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally. He earned $27 million in 2010 and the company reported income of $4 billion. But the company whose motto is “built Ford tough” decided Uncle Sam had billed Ford enough and paid no taxes in 2010.
How can profitable companies pay so little in federal tax? IPS examines several artful tax dodges, such as tax havens that afford transfer pricing. American firms set up shell companies in foreign countries with low tax rates. The company then assigns ownership for certain assets such as a technology or drug patent to this low-tax country. That division then charges the U.S.-division for the use of that patent, often at “inflated costs,” IPS explains. These inflated costs are then deducted from US taxes, while the profits from the foreign-based division are, by design, hardly taxed. “Adding insult to injury, a coalition of corporate tax dodgers is now asking Congress to reward their tax avoidance with a deeply discounted five percent tax rate if they bring these funds back home where many of them started.”
Insurance company Aon Corp. led the list in foreign tax haven subsidiaries with 128 separate foreign divisions. The company paid CEO Gregory Case $21 million in 2010, which happened to be the same amount of pre-tax profit reported to shareholders. The company paid $16 million in 2010 taxes.
Tax dodging requires lobbying. IPS found that of the 25 companies that paid their CEO more than they paid Uncle Sam, 20 also spent more on lobbying than in taxes. General Electric led this list, spending $42 million on campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. GE infamously paid no taxes in 2010.
In his letter to Chairman Issa, Cummings, who is the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee, explains, “As the principle oversight committee in Congress, we have a unique opportunity and responsibility to examine the extent to which the problems in CEO compensation that led to the economic crisis continue to exist today. We should also examine in detail why CEO pay and corporate profits are skyrocketing while worker pay stagnates and unemployment remains unacceptably high, as well as the extent to which our tax code may be encouraging these growing disparities.”
These IPS reports issue from the experienced pen of Sarah Anderson, who also co-authored the previous 17 annual IPS executive compensation surveys. Anderson directs the Global Economy Project. Scott Klinger and Sam Pizzigati, among other IPS veterans, also provided counsel for this report.
The IPS report highlights that corporate contributions to the federal budget have fallen steadily since the end of World War II, when they accounted for about a third of all revenue. Now, corporations account for less than 10 percent of federal revenue.
The IPS report also reviews remedies, including those meant to empower shareholders to reign in their CEOs. For example, the report found that Stanley Black & Decker led the list of CEO pay among these 25 firms, spending $35 million for the services of John Lundgren. Under his supervision, the company reported a pre-tax loss of $183 million. Shareholders registered their concern with this imbalance through a newly authorized say-on-pay vote (a new policy from the important Dodd-Frank legislation), which is an advisory referendum at every public company on the executive compensation package.
At Stanley Black & Decker, shareholders representing 61 percent of the vote opposed his pay package.
Corporations aren’t sitting quietly in time-out because of such infractions. They’re filing lawsuits to combat shareholder rights. See, for example, the U.S.Chamber of Commerce lawsuit against the proposed rule to allow larger shareholders to nominate directors to corporate boards. Corporate lobbyists have convinced the House financial services committee to abolish a provision, yet to be implemented, that requires the CEOs pay to be listed as a multiple of the median-paid employee in shareholder reports. IPS, along with Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform stand in solidarity to defend these and other executive compensation reforms.
Read Public Citizen’s recent report analyzing some of the over-the-top pay practices we’ve found (i.e. hedge fund manager David Tepper making President Obama’s annual salary every 14 minutes). While you’re at it, sign our petition calling on Wall Street to stop engaging in pay practices that incentivize risk.
Bartlett Naylor is Public Citizen’s financial policy advocate. Dorry Samuels is Public Citizen’s press office coordinator.Do women deserve to get a day off on their first day of period?
A Mumbai-based digital media company has given this query enough thought to announce a 'First Day of Period Leave' policy for all its women employees. They can now opt to stay at home on the first day of their menstrual cycle without the stress of going to work.
Culture Machine, which has over 75 female employees and runs the YouTube channel Blush, introduced this policy.
In a Facebook video, the company said the leave policy is an attempt to fight taboos surrounding menstruation in India.
“First day is obviously a not-so-comfortable day for most. It’s time we face the reality. This is not an embarrassment. This is part of life,” Devleena S Majumder, president of the company's human resources says in the video.
Along with coming up with this policy, the company plans to send a petition to the Minister of Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi and the |
imla Vaghela, 54, flew into a rage and accused her husband Narsinh of having an affair when he turned down sex at their home in Ahmedabad, India.
She picked up a stick and beat him around the head and he died of multiple injuries after the attack in November 2013.
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Copy link to paste in your message +2 A woman has been jailed for life for killing her husband when he refused to have sex with her at their home in Ahmedabad (file picture) in India
Afterwards, Vaghela locked her house and went to the nearby Sardarnagar police station to tell officers about her husband's death.
According to the Times of India, she apparently tried to claim he had killed him in self-defence.
But she was later charged with murder.
As well as being jailed for life, she was fined 2,000 rupees (£20).
If she defaults on the fine, she will have to serve another six months in prison.author: Michael Cheng
Self-driving cars are ultimately designed for senior citizens, individuals with disabilities and children. With increased mobility options, all groups will be able to extend their reach and assert their independency. Kids may not seem like reliable candidates for driverless vehicles, but hear me out for a second.
School kids based in populated cities around the US take the subway without a guardian or parents – that's just the way society works. Sending your children to school in an autonomous vehicle would be exponentially safer, compared to letting them navigate around the city on foot. All you would have to do is set the car to go to school and strap your kid in the seat. For peace of mind, you could track the vehicle on your smartphone. Without steering wheels or gas pedals (in a fully autonomous, SAE L4-L5 vessel), your kid can't tamper with the controls.
"Sharing the roads will be a key stage in the journey towards possible mass acceptance of self-driving cars," explained Matt Burt from MSN News. "16% of those who responded to Ford's questions said they would be happy to let children travel alone in an autonomous car."
No Experience Needed
The scenario above is what motivates developers in the driverless car sector. Automakers predict that, eventually, teenagers will not need to acquire a driver's license when an autonomous vehicle can usher them around safely. According to the CDC, excessive drinking in underage youths causes up to 4,300 deaths per year – now imagine a drunk teenager with limited driving skills trying to get home quickly before his or her curfew expires, it's a reality that keeps worried parents awake at night.
So when will we see self-driving cars chauffer around kids and teenagers? Henrik Christensen, director of the University of California San Diego's Contextual Robotics Institute, predicts it will happen in 10-15 years. During this transition period, human-driven vehicles will get phased out by modern, driverless cars. Road infrastructure must also be updated to accommodate self-driving vessels, which includes vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) networks.
Family Testing
Volvo, a car brand known for having above average safety features, is pioneering the application of driverless vehicles for families. The automaker recently announced that it will start testing its fleet of autonomous vehicles on ordinary families based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Instead of engineers collecting data behind a computer, the company will test how everyday consumers use the vehicles. The program is part of the Drive Me project – a large collaborative effort by private and public groups to pilot up to 100 driverless cars in Gothenburg.
So far, the business has not released any information about the results of the program. But if all goes as planned, Volvo could have a fully autonomous car ready by 2021.
"What's more likely is that some children born today, in some places, will never need to drive a car. That's already true in places like Manhattan, where public transport options have long made it feasible to live car-free, and where a bevy of new car services makes ditching private automobile ownership even easier," said Michael Coren from Quartz Media.Arizona's private prisons are not cost-effective for taxpayers and are more difficult to monitor than state prisons, according to a new report by a prison watchdog group that is calling for a moratorium on any new private prisons in the state.
The report examined the five prisons that have contracts to house Arizona prisoners and six private prisons that house federal detainees or inmates from other states, including California and Hawaii.
'Republic' special report: The Price of Prisons
Based on public-information requests and other data, the report by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that works on criminal-justice reform, concluded that:
Arizona paid $10 million more for private prison beds between 2008 and 2010 than it would have for equivalent state beds.
Arizona's pending plan to contract for another 2,000 private-prison beds would cost taxpayers at least $38.7 million a year, at least $6 million a year more than incarcerating those inmates in state prisons. Plans to add 500 more maximum-security beds in state prisons would add almost $10 million a year to the bill. The report questioned whether those beds are needed, since the state's prison population has declined over the past two years by more than 900 inmates, to 39,854 as of Wednesday.
In the past three years, private prisons in Arizona have experienced at least 28 riots and more than 200 other "disturbances" involving as many as 50 prisoners. Many of these incidents had not previously been reported to the public.
State law doesn't require the six private prisons that hold federal detainees and prisoners from other states to inform state or local authorities in the event of an escape, a riot or other disturbance, or a death in custody. The American Friends Service Committee called for requiring all private prisons to disclose the same information as state prisons.
The report criticized a recent biennial study by the Arizona Department of Corrections that found that the quality and cost of private prisons compared favorably with those of state prisons. The committee noted that the Corrections Department study didn't include data about scores of security flaws found at some prisons after three inmates escaped in 2010 from the private Kingman prison; that the study didn't look at recidivism rates, deaths in custody, suicides or homicides; and that it downplayed the fact that private prisons had consistently higher turnover and staff vacancy rates and higher levels of inmate disciplinary reports.
Corrections officials previously had said inexperienced staff may have been a factor in the escapes from Kingman and in the inability of staff there to control the prison yard during a riot in May 2010. Dante Gordon, a former inmate at Kingman, said that guards there stood by and did nothing as more than 80 White inmates attacked and beat 25 Black inmates during that riot.
The report pointed out that reports every year since 2005 by the Corrections Department, along with others by the state's auditor general, concluded that private-prison beds on average have been more expensive; but that the most recent Corrections Department study changed the way it calculated expenses to include a "range" that it termed comparable.
The report also noted that lawmakers exempted two private prisons -- the Central Arizona Correctional Facility, run by GEO Group Inc., and the Cerbat unit at the Kingman prison, operated by Management and Training Corp. -- from state laws requiring private prisons to provide an equivalent or higher level of quality than the state.
"The state has deliberately obscured information that would cast private prisons in a negative light," wrote Caroline Isaacs, the author of the report and the Friends Committee program director in Tucson.
Corrections Department spokesman Bill Lamoreaux said the director, Charles Ryan, had not had sufficient time to review the report to reply to the issues raised.
"This is stale information peddled by familiar critics," said Steve Owen, spokesman for Corrections Corp. of America, which operates the six private prisons that are not under state jurisdiction. Many of the riots and disturbances took place at those six prisons, according to data the Friends Committee reported it had been provided by correctional officials from California, Washington and Hawaii. The committee also gleaned information from lawsuits filed against CCA by Hawaiian inmates.
Without responding to specific issues raised by the report, Owen said, "the safety and security of our facilities is of critical importance to us, and we take seriously the lives of the inmates and detainees entrusted to our care."
In response to questions during a press conference at the state Capitol on Wednesday, Isaacs said it had been difficult to obtain information about prison operations.
"The fact that this information is so difficult to obtain should give Arizona taxpayers pause about the lack of transparency and lack of accountability of private prisons," she said. Her group is calling for legislation to require stricter state oversight and reporting requirements for private prisons operating in Arizona. House Minority Leader Rep. Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, said he has introduced six bills calling for better oversight and reporting, though he doesn't expect any of his bills to get a hearing.Get the biggest Aston Villa 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
Jack Grealish will NOT be leaving Aston Villa on loan this season.
Grealish has this week been linked with a temporary switch to a Championship club, with Derby said to be interested in him.
But Villa boss Remi Garde has confirmed that the 20-year-old will be staying to take part in the club's Premier League survival battle.
Garde started Grealish in last weekend's defeat at Sunderland but substituted him just after half-time.
Mat Kendrick on Remi Garde's press conference
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“It’s not case with Jack,” said Garde.
“He started the last Premier League game versus Sunderland.
“I wouldn’t start a player a week ago and then say ‘go on loan’.
“I’m relying on Jack, but like other players he could be better.”
ASTON VILLA PODCASTThe Complete Kobold Guide to Game Design is an intimidating and healthy 244 pages of collected musings, thoughts, insights and essays from a collection of industry names that should prove familiar to most gamers or would be designers looking to sit down and read through this book. At first glance, and yes by the assumption made from the books title, it would appear this book is strictly for the designers out there, a how to guide if you will, on how to make a successful game and thereby put your name on the map when it comes to the gaming industry. But looking through the chapters and essays contained within one discovers very quickly there is so much more to this book then first impressions. Written largely by Wolgang Baur, you will be treated to his insight on everything from borrowing concepts from throughout all of media and history, why MtG worked as a game, how one actually defines design, to nurturing one's own creativity. Wolfgang spends a great many chapters walking the reader through the many different aspects behind what makes a great designer, as well as why many will fall flat on their faces. He takes an unblinking look at the industry, and then reflects that here for the readers, which I have to admit, was refreshing. Far too many people are convinced they have the next great idea, and find themselves at a total loss when the whole o f the world doesn't agree with them. He even voices his opinion on Magic Item Creation ala RPG Superstar, he has judged twice now, and is well established to detail what works, and what doesn't. I can't help but think every gamer/designer who's ever considered publishing or submitting would do themselves a great service to spend some time reading at the very least the first section of this book, if not all of it.
Section 2 takes us into what I thought of as the reason gamers would want this book, not that the material and thoughts of the first section were not excellent, but they were aimed more towards designers looking to publish, as opposed to GM's (who in their own right are designers, whether they realize it or not). Here is where this book really starts to attack the concept of how to improve one's game from the ground up. Chapters dealing with topics like plot design, handling city adventures, the underdark and what one can really do with it as an ecological setting as well as a built in monster infested killing field. Hordes, humor, mystery and hardboiled adventures, this section tackles several different topics I can honestly say I wasn't aware I had problems in until I found myself reading through these and realizing that I saw parts of my game in what they were addressing. Again, any GM worth his player's time should spend some time with this section.
Section 3 takes us back to the business side of it again, with Writing, Pitching and Publishing. And again, we find that unblinking eye, which is what is needed in a product of this nature. After all, if you are going to buy a book that is largely a collection of advice and insight on how to succeed, would you want it to be sugercoated? No, you would want exactly what is delivered here, a fantastic collection of industry veterans not only telling you how you can improve your design and game, but how they themselves have improved their own games and designs. And just who are we talking about there when I say industry veterans, take a look:
Colin McComb– Extensive writing credits with TSR, Malhavoc Press, Paizo, and Open Design.
Rob Heinsoo – lead designer for D&D 4e as well as an extensive list of RPG, tabletop roleplaying, board, miniature and card games.
Michael A. Stackpole – Author, Game Designer both within the computer world and RPG industry
Ed Greenwood – The creator of the Forgotten Realms and successful author
Bill Collins - ENnie award winning designer (Tales of Zobeck)
[b]Nicolas Logue – WOTC Voyage of the Golden Dragon, Several credits with Paizo,
Ben McFarland – credits on several Open Design projects, contributor to Kobold Quarterly, and The Breaking of Forstor Nagar
Willie Walsh – Longtime contributor to Dungeon Magazine, AD&D Road to Danger & Dungeons of Despair, Member of the Werecabbage Freelancers Creative Guild, 0one Games
Monte Cook – 1/3 of the design team for D&D 3e, Malhavoc Press, Arcana Unearthed, Ptolus, Iron Heroes, World of Darkness
Wolfgang Bauer – TSR, ICE, Open Design, just to name a few companies he has worked with. Won the eighth annual Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming in 2008.
So, 244 pages looking behind the curtain with some industry insiders. Very very few errors in editing, and by very few, I mean I think I found one. A must have book for both those looking to get into this industry, and those who merely want to play. I will admit, I did not know what to expect than I first saw this book, but by the end I was very happy that I turned the first page and kept reading, and I think you will be also.
I think my biggest fear in tackling this book was page hypnosis, and since it was a fear of mine, I would like to address it. Page hypnosis, as I call it, is that trance state you hit when reading textbook material type writing for hours on end, where you're not really absorbing anything so much as you're just staring at it because it's so boring. Why would I be afraid of that? Because every guide on getting into the industry I've ever seen before this one essentially ended up being one of the most boring reads I ever tried to get through. The Kobold's Complete Guide handles this with a very subtle method, that I think shows a great deal of intelligence on Wolfgang's part. No matter how interesting someone is, when they are teaching the human brain will attempt to go on autopilot eventually, so this book breaks up Wolfgang's writing style by interspersing essays from the other game designers throughout, giving you multiple writing styles to keep it fresh constantly. Now, am I saying that any of the material is boring? No, I am saying that the format of having multiple writing styles, and therefore multiple “voices” in this conversation proactively help to keep the book fresh throughout the entire read.
As I believe every GM and designer should have a copy of this in their library, I am going with a solid 5 star rating, but am adding the clarification, this is a collection of text. There is no pretty artwork breaking up the text, no game mechanics per say. This is a collection of insight into how to make the games we play that much better, and well worth the read, as long as when sitting down to read it, one understands that that is what they are sitting down to read.(That, and my family's TV package doesn't even get Boomerang anymore...)
This is my theory as to why season three has been so awesome. It's actually the same amount of awesomeness that would normally be in a whole season, but squeezed into half as many episodes - leading to what, so far, has been a whole season of episodes that are better than any episode of the previous two seasons.Round of applause for everyone at DHX.I honestly hope they release these seasons over here in the UK, or atleast on Region 2 DVDs or Regionless Blu Rays. Because seriously, I would love to be able to throw money at the show, but the UK doesn't even get iTunes releases, and it's not like we can watch it on TV since the channel that has the rights chooses not to air it.Ponies Featured:Meghan McCarthyDaniel IngramHasbro RepresentativeProgrammers don’t usually spend a lot of time thinking carefully about names and values. As long as we follow a few basic rules, our code will generally behave as expected. As I develop my language Leaf however, I need to give a great deal of consideration to these rules. The separation between names and values, and how things are assigned, form the core of a language. Of course I’d like to get this right. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as deciding between “by value” or “by reference” semantics. There are many situations and programming techniques to consider.
In this article I am going to talk about one such related concept, immutability. An immutable is a special type of value which has the property that after construction it never changes. Immutables can play a significant role in language design.
Note: My use of the term “value” here is similar to the term “object” used in the C and C++ standards. Refer to my previous article for further explanation.
The Obvious Case
When you see the token ‘5’ in source code, you assume it will always have the numeric value ‘5’. Writing a statement like the following doesn’t make sense:
5.set( 6 );
This statement is, generally speaking, syntactically correct: the compiler’s parser will accept it and will form a valid syntax tree. It is when the compiler analyzes the statement semantically that it will be rejected. ‘5’ is an immutable value so the compiler won’t let you change it.
Immutable Values
I’m going to continue now using a vector value. This will help to demonstrate exactly what I mean by the term “immutable”, which isn’t always clear when using trivial data types. I will use a mathematical style vector of integers, which correlates with an array of ‘int’ in C or Java.
Let’s say that in the following code the value ‘[1,2,3]’ is deemed to be immutable and is assigned to ‘a’. Because it’s immutable, any code attempting to modify a part of the value will not be allowed:
a = [1,2,3]; a[1] = 4; //error
Immutables don’t have to be compile time constants however. One may use any variable to construct a new immutable. They may also be used in expressions which result in new values:
t0 = 1; t1 = 2; t2 = 3; a = [t1,t2,t3]; b = 2 * a; //results in [2,4,6] c = a + b; //results in [3,6,9]
In the example above no values change. Rather, new values are created and the variables ‘b’ and ‘c’ are referred to those new values. The original vector is left untouched. Use of immutables entails this rather functional approach to programming. For the time being I will not get into whether this is advantageous or not.
For contrast we should consider what isn’t present in the above code: in-place operations. These are functions which would alter the value of the vector. In code with mutable data, we encounter such functions all the time. The following code uses mutable vectors to produce the same resulting value in ‘c’.
v : mutable_vector[3]; v[0] = 1; v[1] = 2; v[2] = 3; c : mutable vector[3] = v; c.scale( 2 ); c.add( v ); // c is now [3,6,9]
Invariant Names
I’ll come back a lot to these two very different styles of programming over the course of the development of the Leaf language. For now I’ll continue with a concept closely related to an immutable, what I will call an “invariant name”. An invariant name relates to a variable’s name whereas an immutable relates to its value.
a = [1,2,3]; a = [4,5,6];
Recalling my previous article about values and references, even though our vector is immutable, the above code will still work as long as the second assignment refers ‘a’ to a new value instead of changing the existing one: on the first line, the compiler refers ‘a’ to the value ‘[1,2,3]’. On the second line, the compiler refers ‘a’ to a different value ‘[4,5,6]’. The assignment doesn’t actually change any values.
A similiar concept applies to variable names. Post construction an invariant name name may never refer to a different value.
a : invariant = [1,2,3]; // declared to be an invariant name a = [4,5,6]; //error
The line where we declare ‘a’ forever binds it to a specific value. Note that this invariance applies only to the name. While we may not be able to change the name, we can still modify its value. Consider how this looks with our ‘mutable_vector’ from earlier:
v : mutable_vector[3]; a : invariant = v; a[0] = 1; a[1] = 2; a[2] = 3; a.scale( 2 );
In this code ‘a’ always refers to the same mutable vector ‘v’. The value of that vector is changed, but ‘a’ can never refer to a completely different vector. In Java the keyword ‘final’ can be used to create invariant names. In C you can declare a ‘const’ pointer to get a similar result (more on this further down in the article).
Constants
If you combine an immutable value with an invariant name you get a constant. This is something which has an unchangeable value and a name which always refers to that value. The following are examples of constants.
pi = 3.14159 e = 2.71828 ETIMEDOUT = 110 riff_block = "RIFF"
Anywhere the compiler sees the name of a constant, it may freely substitute the value itself. This is possible since the name is invariant and the value is immutable.
Language Examples
Java
Fundamental types like int, and their wrapper objects such as Integer, are immutable in Java. After they are created they cannot be changed. Often it is said that fundamentals are stored “by value”, but I believe it’s easier to think of them as immutable objects. Java does not have any explicit way for you to define your own immutables. At a logical level, defining a class such that no function can modify instance attributes after construction is generally sufficient.
int a = 5; Integer immutableInt = new Integer(5); MyImmutableClass immutableObject = new MyImmutableClass(...); String text = "Hello";
None of the values in the above code can be changed, but the names can be reassigned to a different value.
Invariant names are available in Java with the ‘final’ keyword. The value to which a final variable refers can only be set during construction (either in the declaration or in a class construtor). In the code snippet below, the ‘collection’ name can only refer to a single vector. However, that vector can be modified.
final Vector<int> collection = new Vector<int>(); //the Vector is mutable
Constants are available in Java exactly as I’ve described: simply combine an immutable value with an invariant name.
final float pi = 3.14159; fiinal String riff_block = "RIFF";
C
In C all non-decorated types are mutable and have invariant names. This applies both to fundamental types and to user-defined structures. The names below always refer to the same values (called objects in the C standard).
int a; my_struct ms;
The value of ‘a’ can change, and the internal state of ‘ms’ can also change, but the variables are permanently linked to their values.
There is a way to create variant names in C: use a pointer. Instead of regarding a pointer as a specific memory address, the variant name concept gives us a different way to look at it.
int a = 5; int b = 6; int * c = &a; c = &b; //change the value 'c' refers to
Note however that pointers are used for more than just this purpose, arrays for example.
Immutables can be created with the ‘const’ keyword, though this can be a bit tricky. If a pointer is declared as a pointer to a ‘const’ value, the value itself doesn’t necessarily have to be immutable.
int const a = 5; //a is an actual constant int b = 6; //b is mutable int const * c = &a; //c refers to an immutable c = &b; // c refers to a mutable
The first line ‘int const a = 5’ introduces a true constant. It has both an invariant name, and thanks to the ‘const’ keyword, an immutable value. A pointer to a ‘const int’ can also be pointed to a regular int value as shown on the last line. In this case, even though the target value is mutable, this value cannot be changed via the pointer: The pointer provides read-only access to the value.
It is also possible to create invariant names which refer to a shared value.
int a = 5; int b = 6; int * const c = &a; *c = 7; //post-condition: *c == a == 7 c = &b; //error ('c' is an invariant name)
Here ‘c’ will always refer to the value of ‘a’, but we can still modify ‘a’ via the pointer. Note the difference in the syntax of the pointer declaration here. Reading from right to left, ‘int * const’ is a const pointer to a (mutable) int value, not a pointer to a const int as in the previous example. The value of ‘a’ can be changed using the pointer, but the pointer cannot be re-assigned to a different variable (to create a const pointer to a const int, again reading from right to left, you’d use ‘int const * const’ as the declaration type).
C++
C++ offers a distinct way to create invariant names with what it calls “references”. Post initialization the value to which a C++ reference refers can’t be changed.
int a = 5; int b = 6; int & c = a; c = b; //modifies the value of 'a' //post-condition: a == b == 6
This is actually a syntactic oddity in C++. During construction of a reference, the assignment operator indicates which value it refers to, but afterward the same operator modifies that value. Just as in C, marking an invariant name (a reference) as ‘const’ does not make the target value an immutable. This is particularly relevant for function calls and user-defined objects.
class my_object { }; void func( my_object const & mo ) { //read-only view of'mo' } my_object a; func( a ); // 'a' has a mutable value, but 'func' sees a read-only version of it
Python
In Python several fundamental types are immutable but in general user-defined types are mutable. There also appears to be no way to specify an invariant name. However, given that you can override the `__settattr_` and `__delattr__` functions for a class you could create your own immutable types. This might also allow you to create an invariant name, but only for member variables.
AdvertisementsPolice have launched a homicide investigation into a man's death after 35 adults and children were discovered in a container at Tilbury Docks in Essex.
Survivors are being treated at local hospitals for severe dehydration and hypothermia. No-one is understood to be in a life threatening condition, Essex Police said.
At a press conference after the incident, superintendent Trevor Roe confirmed the death of the man is being treated as a homicide investigation. He said checks are underway on the 50 containers on the P&O vessel, with nearly 30 having been searched so far.
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He said: "All we know at the moment is that we believe them to come from the Indian subcontinent, but it is still early days.
"It is a homicide investigation from the police point of view at this time."
Police were called after the people were found on the container, which arrived on a ship from Zeebrugge in Belgium and was being unloaded at 7.35am by Port of Tilbury authorities.
Superintendent Roe said that crews were alerted to the people inside when they heard "kicking and screaming". Describing them as victims of "people trafficking", Mr Roe said they had been in the container a "significant amount of time" and that now police were working with international agencies to establish their movements prior to arriving in the UK.
The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust said in a statement: “We confirm that 35 patients were involved in the incident at Tilbury Docks, Essex; one patient has sadly been declared deceased at the scene, with others suffering from severe dehydration and hypothermia.
"After initial treatment by ambulance crews, all patients have now been conveyed to surrounding hospitals for further care; seven have been taken to Southend Hospital, nine to London Whitechapel Hospital and 18 to Basildon Hospital."
Natalie Hardy, from P&O Ferries, said the immigrants were in a container on board the Norstream, a commercial vessel which carries freight between Zeebrugge and Tilbury.
Ms Hardy said: "They (port authorities) found 35 on a container in the ferry. They had been in there overnight, because the ship was an overnight freight ferry.
"This morning when they went to unload containers there was a noise heard, a banging. One unfortunately was dead and others were taken to hospital.
"UK Border Agency and all emergency services were called and went to the scene and have been handling it since."
Public Health England said it is not involved at this point and had not been notified of there being any Ebola risk.
The spokeswoman added: "If it was Ebola, health care professionals are so alert at the moment to signs and symptoms that should there have been anyone who was showing symptoms we would have been notified immediately.
"I think we can be confident that we are not dealing with that."
A spokesman for Darent Valley Hospital in Dartford, Kent, said it was "currently on standby to receive cases".
Police are dealing with the incident alongside staff from Port of Tilbury, UK Border Force and the East of England Ambulance Service, the spokesman said, while a casualty bureau is being set up.
Additional reporting by PA
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The Xbox One's first sub-$10 game, puzzle game Nutjitsu, will be available this Thursday, independent developer NinjaBee (A World of Keflings) told GameSpot this afternoon.
The game launches May 8 for $6.49. It is also the second game ever from Microsoft's new indie publishing program, ID@Xbox, to be released, following last month's Strike Suit Zero.
Nutjitsu was originally released last year on PC as a free (but ad-supported) game for Windows 8. So why is the Xbox One version not free?
"The Windows 8 version allows users to purchase the 'acoins' currency used to buy upgrades and consumables. We were experimenting with a free-to-play model. We didn't like what it did to game balance and the user experience so much, so we decided to can the F2P approach, and allow users to get ALL the content with the base game purchase," a company respresentative told GameSpot today. "It just ended up making more sense to monetize the old fashion way than trying our hand at F2P on the console."
In the top-down, arcade-style game, you play as a squirrel who is out to retrieve stolen (and sacred) acorns from enemy foxes.Jessica Beebe has a good eye. The Portland, Maine-based photographer, artist and graphic designer first got into the world of vintage men’s goods when sourcing props for shoots. After a while they began to pile up, and she started Stag Vintage Goods to offer them to like-minded fellows who appreciate classic Americana. Soon she was also selling to Hollywood studios, ad agencies and private collectors around the country looking for the perfect patina’d accessory. These days she also tracks down larger and specialty items by commission and curates goods for photo shoots, ad campaigns, interior designers and others.
It all comes together in this swell vintage camping themed photo shoot she did with Motorland America, a super-cool classic car showroom in Arundel, Maine where you can find everything from a 1942 Ford Super Deluxe Woodie Wagon and a 1950s Willys Jeepster to a drop-dead Jaguar E-Type. Of course there’s plenty of well-worn L.L. Bean to be had from Stag but lots of other New England brands (some long defunct) abound as well, and the prices are more in line with the Pine Tree State than the Lower East Side. As Beebe tells ACL, “I can source pretty much anything a vintage-loving man could want and I love a challenge.â€When answering a question, your accuracy in assessing whether you have gotten the answer right—or wrong—might depend on the volume of gray matter in a certain part of your brain, according to a new study.
Introspection—or metacognition, self-awareness about one's thinking—is a high-level mental process. "Accurate introspection requires discriminating correct decisions from incorrect ones, a capacity that varies substantially across individuals," researchers behind the new findings explained in their study.
For the study, researchers used simple visual stimuli to test 32 healthy subjects' perception—and how confident they felt about their assessment of a geometric image. The tests were customized to each individual's level of perceptual skill, in order to keep each subject's accuracy score at 71 percent, so that the test was consistently difficult for all subjects.
"Someone who has good introspective ability will accurately be able to know" if they were correct in their assessment of an image, explains Steven Fleming, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London and co-author of the new study.
The study team found "considerable variation" in subjects' accuracy in assessing their own evaluations of the images, which was to be expected based on previous research. Fleming and his colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to evaluate the subjects' whole brains for differences in structure and composition in order to look for correlations with introspective ability.
Test subjects' accuracy in assessing their own performance "was significantly correlated with gray-matter volume" in the right anterior prefrontal cortex, the team wrote in their study report, published online September 16 in Science. Subjects with more accurate introspective assessments also tended to have denser connections between that area of gray matter and the axon-filled white matter that connected it.
"We were surprised that we could find differences in the structure in this region that were linked to something high-level like introspective ability," Fleming says.
The difference in gray-matter volume might help clarify the extent to which a person's confidence about his or her introspective abilities is supported. For instance, consider this scenario: Two people see the same scene but quickly come to very different conclusions about the details of what they saw—with both individuals stubbornly clinging to their own judgment even if only one is correct. A third witness might consider his or her own interpretation more deeply but still not be entirely sure that it is correct. Should we trust the most confident witness? Typically, we do. On a day-to-day basis, "we believe that judgments made with high confidence are more accurate," Hakwan Lau and Brian Maniscalco, both of the psychology department at Columbia University and not involved in the new research, wrote in a companion essay in the same issue of Science. "This correlation between confidence and accuracy, although often true, unfortunately is not infallible," they noted.
The new findings bear indirectly on this: An MRI might be able to predict the validity of a person's assessment of his or her own judgments by examining the volume of gray matter in this region. "If you scanned someone's brain, and they show very low gray-matter density in the prefrontal cortex, when they say they are very sure of something, you may not want to take their confidence too seriously," Lau notes.
The brain region tied to metacognition in this study is located behind the eyes; and even though the test itself was based on visual perception, Fleming points out that the anterior prefrontal cortex has been associated with top-level processing abilities that are thought to set humans apart from other animals. Nonhuman brains seem to be less developed in this region. Other researchers see the new finding as a way to investigate the metacognitive abilities of other than healthy adult subjects. "Other animals [and] children have less developed prefrontal cort[ices]," Lau says. "So we may want to test if they are less good in this kind of introspection task." Some animals in studies, |
schedule?) Was it all fine and good that time Nicki Minaj crept in late to a live broadcast of American Idol? How about when your friend Scott (ugh, Scott) showed up a half hour late to your coffee date for the fifth time?
The answer, of course, is no. No, lateness is not cool. Sure, it happens to all of us sometimes. Nobody is perfect. (Except, like, Channing Tatum, who is probably extremely punctual.) But routinely showing up late is a problem, and one that we should stop excusing.
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To paraphrase Tolstoy, all early people are alike, but every late person is late in his own way. With that in mind, let’s take a moment to discuss the 14 worst types of late people:
The Infuriatingly Relaxed Colleague: The person who rolls into the meeting 10 minutes late, holding a coffee that they clearly could have forgone in order to be on time. The Manic Pixie Procrastinator: The person who shows up, breathless, their whimsical flowy skirt fluttering in their wake, thinking their lateness is adorable and bohemian. The Pre-Liar: The person who texts you “almost there!” when you are confident they have in fact just exited the shower. The Post-Liar: The person who arrives late and says “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, the subway was delayed!” when you live in a town without a subway. The Interruptor: The person who comes into the movie right as it’s starting, distracting you from the important opening scenes and/or literally crawling over you. The Hangry-Maker: The person who is so late that you say screw it and start eating brunch alone. The Genetic Latie: The person who blames their personality for why they’re always late. The Empty Chair: The person who shows up late to an event where you’re graciously saving them a seat. Everybody gives you the stink eye, but you’re not the monster here. The Oversharer: The person who always blames their lateness on their significant other. This typically involves an overly detailed story you’re then forced to listen to. The Harried Commuter: The person who blames public transit or traffic every time they’re late. (Sometimes, yes. But every time? No. Build in extra time.) The Overscheduler: The person who is late because they were doing some other fun thing right before and you know because they Instagrammed it. BUSTED. The Eleventh-Hour Overcompensator: The person who sends you a completely overdramatic paragraphs-long text explaining why they’re late. (For example: “OMG I’m gonna be late bcuz a UNICORN was crossing the street so OBVIOUSLY I had to follow it but then my foot hurt so I had to stop and see why my foot hurt and then RYAN GOSLING walked by but it was actually a homeless person LOL so yeah I’ll be there in 45 mins maybe!”) The Spatially Incompetent: The person who is always late because they just can’t seem to figure out how long it takes to get from their apartment to Point B, even though they’ve lived there for three years. The Denier: The person who walks in, hugs you hello and acts like their lateness just never happened.
If you identify as any of those characters, I have a few hard truths for you: Being late is not cute. It’s not quirky. And it certainly doesn’t mean you just “like to stop and smell the roses.” Let’s call it what it is: if you’re routinely late, you are rude and inconsiderate. And, for some reason, you place a higher premium on your time than anyone else’s.
“The life of a late person is great,” wrote a Washington Post columnist in a piece called “In defense of the habitually late.” Um, duh, of course being late is great — at the expense of people who are dumb enough to spend time with you. You get to take your sweet time while your punctual, respectful friend is the one wasting her time, waiting in line, holding the spot, or repeating to the increasingly annoyed restaurant host, “He’s on his way, I promise.”
Infamous latie Marilyn Monroe once said, “I am invariably late for appointments – sometimes as much as two hours. I’ve tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.” That might have worked for Marilyn Monroe (because, well, she was Marilyn Monroe), but it’s not working for the rest of you laties. Sure, the things that make you late are quite pleasing. To you. If you try this crazy thing called “thinking about other people,” you might find that being late isn’t actually all that pleasing.
Look, lateness does happen to everybody once in a while. I was raised by two die-hard earlies who show up to the airport three hours in advance and always build in 20 minutes for traffic, even if it’s a five-minute drive — and even I accidentally arrive late once in a while. Things happen, and of course I won’t go down a rage spiral when an otherwise reliable friend is a little late for dinner. But we should all stop acting like lateness is an acceptable personality trait — and if we do show up late, we sure as hell better show up prepared with a genuine apology.
5 Horrible Habits You Need to Stop Right Now Chris Pecoraro—Getty Images Sam Edwards—Getty Images/Caiaimage Jetta Productions—Getty Images by nacoki ( MEDIA ARC )—Getty Images/Flickr RF Reza Estakhrian—Getty Images 1 of 5 Advertisement
Contact us at [email protected] video captured a brutal beating inside a local Chinese restaurant. Now Police are searching for the suspect. (Published Tuesday, March 10, 2015)
Philadelphia Police are searching for a suspect who was caught on camera brutally beating a man inside a Chinese Restaurant.
The 25-year-old victim walked inside the Golden City Chinese Take Out on the 4000 block of North Broad Street Friday at 2:35 p.m. when he was approached by an unidentified man.
Surveillance video captured the two men briefly talking. The suspect then suddenly attacks the victim, punching him several times. Once the victim falls to the floor, the suspect repeatedly kicks and stomps him. At one point he even jumps up and lands on the victim’s head.
Police said the suspect then dropped brass knuckles on the floor, picked them up and left the restaurant, fleeing in an unknown direction.
The victim survived the beating though police have not yet revealed his condition.
The suspect is described as a stocky, light-skinned African American male in his mid to late 20’s standing 6-foot-1 with a long beard and a tattoo of a tear drop and a cross inside a circle under his eye. Police also say he is missing two front teeth. He was last seen wearing a black knit hat, green hooded sweatshirt, light-colored blue jeans and black, blue and white sneakers.
If you have any information on the man’s whereabouts, please call Philadelphia Police.Copyright Office Intent On Changing The Part Of Copyright That Protects Libraries & Archives, Even Though No One Wants It Changed
from the what's-up-guys? dept
[T]he very fact that these discussions are confidential takes a lot of nerve. We have never heard of an instance where a government agency seeking public comment does not provide public access to the comments. This is not a national security issue after all. Section 108 is about interlibrary loan, preservation and replacement of library resources, and copies that libraries can make for users, not global surveillance programs.
We oppose an effort to overhaul Section 108 for four reasons. First, although Section 108 may reflect a pre-digital environment, it is not obsolete. It provides libraries and archives with important certainty with respect to the activities it covers. Second, as the recent decision in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, 755 F.3d 87 (2d Cir. 2014), makes clear, fair use supplements Section 108 and thus provides a sufficient mechanism for updating it when necessary. For example, fair use provides a sufficient basis for website archiving. Third, amending Section 108 could have the effect of limiting what libraries do today. Again using website archiving as an example, the Library of Congress’s Section 108 Study Group proposed a complex regulatory scheme for website archiving, an activity already routinely performed by libraries as well as commercial search engines. Indeed, some rights holders see the updating of Section 108 as an opportunity to repeal the fair use safe harbor in Section 108(f)(4) and restrict the availability of fair use to libraries. Fourth, based on the highly contentious and protracted deliberations of the Section 108 Study Group, it is clear that any legislative process concerning Section 108 would be equally contentious and would demand many library resources just to maintain the status quo, let alone improve the situation of libraries. A Section 108 reform process would consume significant Congressional resources as well. Accordingly, we urge the Committee to leave Section 108 as is.
In contrast to the opinion expressed in the Notice of Inquiry, SAA does not consider Section 108 to be obsolete or in need of serious reform. It is used every day by practicing archivists all across the country. To the extent that the Section contains specific conditions and restrictions, it has perhaps not aged well. Fortunately there are many Sections that express a general goal without imposing unreasonable conditions. Furthermore, the “Fair Use savings” clause, Section 108(f)(4), ensures that actions that are not otherwise authorized in Section 108 may, under appropriate conditions, still be undertaken by archives.
Although there are aspects of Section 108 that could be updated, the benefits of doing so are likely to be small while the cost of getting agreement on the changes is likely to be high. SAA would prefer to see the Copyright Office focus on other areas of greater concern, including reform of statutory damages (a serious impediment for archives that may own published unclaimed copyrighted works) and implementation of an international treaty that would support fuller engagement by American archivists with those international communities whose heritage is often found in U.S. archives.
We are extremely concerned that Congress could take the Copyright Office’s proposal seriously, and believe that libraries are actually calling for these changes. That’s why we flew to Washington, D.C. to deliver the message to the Copyright Office in person: now is not the time for changes to Section 108. Libraries and technology have been evolving quickly. Good things are beginning to happen as a result. Drafting a law now could make something that is working well more complicated, and could calcify processes that would otherwise continue to evolve to make digitization efforts and web archiving work even better for libraries and content owners alike.
In fact, just proposing this new legislation will likely have the effect of hitting the pause button on libraries. It will lead to uncertainty for the libraries that have already begun to modernize by digitizing their analog collections and learning how to collect and preserve born-digital materials. It could lead libraries who have been considering such projects to “wait and see.”
It's no secret that the US Copyright Office has been acting pretty nutty lately. For decades, the office has basically carried the water of the legacy copyright/entertainment industries, but at least they would sometimes try to appear marginally balanced. Now it appears that all caution has been thrown to the wind and the entire office is actively looking to suppress and attack user rights and innovation. In just the past few weeks and months, we've pointed out a series of really bad ideas on reforming the notice-and-takedown safe harbors of the DMCA, a separate plan that would effectively strip tons of websites of their DMCA safe harbors by requiring them to remember to keep re-registering, and a disturbing willingness to totally misrepresent the copyright issues at play with regards to the FCC's set-top box proposal.So, perhaps, we shouldn't be all that surprised that the Copyright Office appears to be making a move to screw over libraries now, too. Section 108 of the Copyright Act has explicit carve-outs and exemptions for libraries and archivists. These are stronger than fair use, because they are clear exemptions from copyright, rather than fuzzy guidelines that have to be adjudicated in court. Section 108 is super important for libraries and archives (including the Internet Archive). So why does the Copyright Office want to change it? That's a bit of a mystery in terms of public explanations, but it's not hard to take some guesses.The Copyright Office started exploring this issue a few years back, insisting that Section 108 was "outdated" for the digital age. And while there are many aspects of copyright law that are obsolete for the digital age, the exemptions for libraries and archives were not among them. And everyone let the Copyright Office know that. And... the Copyright Office has basically ignored them all. Back in June, the Copyright Office announced via the Federal Register that it was moving forward with putting together recommendations on changing Section 108, and anyone who had comments could "schedule meetings in Washington, DC to take place during late June through July 2016."Yes, you read that right. In an effort to -- it claims -- update the law for, the Copyright Office demanded that anyone who had comments needed toin DC to discuss. Eventually, after there was pushback, the Office agreed to set up some phone meetings as well. And, of course, all of these meetings were secret, because nothing says good government like backroom meetings in secret with folks who happen to be in DC. As the American Library Association wrote about this, it seems like a very sketchy way to go about policymaking.Either way, basically everyone is asking why the Copyright Office is even doing this, as the library and archivist worlds say that the current law is working fine. Here's the Library Copyright Alliance (which includes the American Library Association and others) pointing out that libraries don't think the law is obsolete or in need of a refresh:And then how about the Society of American Archivists? They don't like it either.And, then, there's the digital archivists over at the Internet Archive. They are concerned about possible changes as well:So, just who is the Copyright Office serving in trying to update Section 108?
Filed Under: archivists, copyright, copyright office, libraries, section 108
Companies: internet archiveA proposed gondola connecting Georgetown and Rosslyn across the Potomac River won’t be funded with money from Arlington because other transportation projects, such as Metro and Columbia Pike transit, take priority, the Arlington County Board said Friday.
“Given our identified and pressing transportation needs, along with some ongoing concerns about the long-term value of the gondola, the Board is not in favor of any further funding of the gondola project,” the board’s chairman, Jay Fisette (D), said in a letter to the gondola study committee.
But the project — which has been touted by the Georgetown Business Improvement District, among others, as a cheaper way to get mass transit access between the two booming neighborhoods — is far from dead, Joe Sternlieb, president of the Georgetown BID, said.
[A gondola connecting DC and Virginia? It’s feasible, study finds]
“People on this side of the river will continue to have conversations for the next year or so, and if a coalition of regional leaders decide to go forward, we’ll try to re-engage Arlington at that point,” Sternlieb said. “By no means is this a death knell.”
A cable-propelled transit system, like those in Portland, Ore., and connecting New York City’s Roosevelt Island to Manhattan, could serve as an alternative to a Metro station, Sternlieb said.
The six-tenths of a mile between Georgetown and the Rosslyn Metro station attracts 50,000 vehicles per day over the Key Bridge. The bridge’s sidewalks are Arlington County’s busiest, and bicycle commuters often use the bridge as well. Currently, DC Circulator buses, Georgetown University and hospital buses, and Metro and Arlington County buses shuttle over the river multiple times per day.
In truth, the participation of the Arlington County Board was extremely unlikely. Even when the board agreed a year ago to kick in $35,000 for a feasibility study, several board members expressed deep skepticism.
The study, which came out in November, estimated an $80 million to $90 million construction cost for the system over the Potomac at the Key Bridge, as well as $2 million to $3 million in annual operating costs. That weighed heavily on the board, said Vice Chair Katie Cristol (D). But she said it couldn’t compete with more-pressing priorities.
“We want to send a strong signal to folks that Metro and Columbia Pike — that’s where our priorities are in the years ahead,” she said. “If this goes forward with private investment money, we’d be happy to have a conversation about easements, et cetera.”An Australian-based Chinese professor who has been critical of Beijing flew back to Sydney Sunday, a week after he was blocked from leaving China at the end of a visit.
Feng Chongyi, a permanent resident of Australia who has a Chinese passport, had been barred from flying out of the southern city of Guangzhou and was questioned by authorities.
His lawyer said at the time he was “suspected of harming national security and could not leave China”.
Lawyers, activists and academics in China are often accused of being in cahoots with foreign organisations trying to undermine national security and stir up opposition to the communist government.
Feng, who teaches at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), said it was “still a mystery to me” why he had not been allowed to depart China.
He was the head of Chinese Studies at UTS for 11 years and conducted research into China’s pro-democracy groups.
More recently the former newspaper publisher has criticised Beijing’s influence on Australia’s Chinese-language media outlets.
“They (authorities) said that I was requested to assist some sort of investigation,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald on Sunday.
“(But) because the conversation passed so many topics I could not figure what exactly triggered that action for them,” he added.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that as a condition of his departure, Feng was required to sign a document promising not to detail his questioning by authorities or where it took place.
Feng was welcomed home at Sydney Airport on Sunday morning by supporters. His return was also hailed by the Australian government and UTS.
“The University of Technology Sydney is very pleased that the matter with Associate Professor Chongyi Feng has been resolved,” the tertiary body said in a statement.ZEHST (Zero Emission High Speed Transportation) Role Supersonic transport Manufacturer EADS Designer EADS Status In development Primary user EADS Program cost n/a Unit cost n/a
The Zero Emission Hyper Sonic Transport[1] or ZEHST[2] is a planned supersonic passenger jet airliner project by EADS and JAXA.[3] It can be seen as a descendant of the Concorde airliner capable of flying at more than Mach 4 (four times the speed of sound).[4] The aircraft is projected to carry 50 to 100 people 32 km above the ground.[5] Zehst would be able to fly from Paris to Tokyo in 2.5 hours, or from New York to London in an hour.
Unveiled on 18 June 2011 by EADS at Le Bourget air show, it would combine three propulsion systems: two turbofans for take-off and up to Mach 0.8, then rocket boosters up to Mach 2.5, then two underwing scramjets would accelerate it to Mach 4. The aircraft is envisaged to be propelled by biofuel made from seaweed[1] and by oxygen/hydrogen.[5]
Using turbofans for take off would make ZEHST no more noisy than current-day airliners. ZEHST is envisaged to fly by 2050 and would fly from London to Japan in less than 3 hours.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]I know that title is enough to warrant a sizable nerdgasm from our diehard Battlefront fans, but I want to warn you, this is strictly based on a bit of mongering from our friends at Kotaku.
Apparently, they’ve a super secret source at Lucasarts who claim that Star Wars Battlefront 3 is in development, and that it’s production relies entirely on the success of Star Wars First Assault, a first person shooter set to release this fall. Based on the brief bit of video footage we’ve managed to sneak, Assault looks like a traditional Call of Duty clone, you know… just with stormtroopoers and laser guns. Even though this game is meant to mirror the classic Battlefront series, it seems more alike Republic Commando, a highly praised one-off starring clone troopers and squad based gun play.
While I’d love nothing more than to see Battlefront 3 released for the next gen of consoles, we can’t vouch for the veracity of this report. Although, Kotaku isn’t exactly known to peddle rumors for pageviews. Here’s the proper quote from the site:
Star Wars: First Assault, our source says, would lead up to Battlefront III. This new Battlefront would use nothing from the Battlefront III that has already been in production at studios like Free Radical and Slant Six, our source says. Instead, LucasArts would build Battlefront III based on code from First Assault.
I’d still like to play the Free Radical version (evil Sith Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Yoda!), if it ever sees the light of day, but I’d be more than happy with a COD copy cat. What say you?
SOURCE: KotakuMERKEL (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): I’m delighted to be able to welcome today, for the sixth time, the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, to Germany. In his capacity as president of the United States, let us remind ourselves after visiting us in his capacity as candidate here in Berlin, we then met in Baden-Baden. We then we then met in Placen (ph) and Buchenwald. We saw each other when he gave a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Elmo (ph). We met again at the G7 Benhenover Fair (ph) comes to mind. And today he is again here in Berlin. So eight years are coming to a close. This is the last visit of Barack Obama to our country, to Germany.
I am very glad that he chose Germany as one of the sort of stop- overs on this trip.
MERKEL (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): And thank you very much. Thank you for the friendship you’ve always demonstrated. Thank you for the reliable friendship and partnership you demonstrated in very difficult hours of our relationship.
So, let me again pay tribute to what we’ve been able to achieve to what we discussed, to what we were able to bring about, difficult hours come to mind, as I said, those that had a bearing on the cooperation of our intelligence services. And I’m very grateful that Barack Obama as president very much put protection of privacy on the agenda today, due to the fact of Islamist terrorism all over the world. Through the threat of IS, we recognize how important the cooperation with intelligence services (inaudible) first and foremost also with the services of the United States is.
We need this cooperation. Let me say this from a German perspective, very clearly and unequivocally. Our bilateral relations are very good, they are very close in the areas of business, of the economy. The United States of America last year were our most important trading partners. Both for Germany and the European Union. The European Union and the United States of America are the big important economic areas for us, which is why I always have come up strongly in favor of concluding a trade agreement with the United States of America.
We have made progress, quite a lot of progress that cannot be stopped, those negotiations, what we’ll keep, what we have achieved so far and I’m absolutely certain that one day we will come to what we have achieved and build on it, because — that is my deep conviction. Globalization — and I think we share this conviction — is that globalization needs to be shaped politically, it needs to be given a human face, but we cannot allow to fall back into plagued (ph) globalization times.
So this conclusion of trade agreements that go beyond the scope of mere tariff agreements, customs agreements, are most important and I’m very pleased we were able to bring this to fruition between Canada and the E.U. We’ve made great progress, particularly if we look at one of the great global issues, namely climate protection, without the engagement of the current administration under the leadership of Barack Obama, this Paris agreement would never have come about.
There has been a change in the attitude in the United States towards that agreement, but there is also a better cooperation with China. So last year, we were able to conclude a Paris climate agreement, which will lead the way for the rest of the world, which is groundbreaking. And together we’ll see development goals of the agenda 2030 for the whole world. This is indeed sea change, I think, that we see it, and step by step will be implemented.
There’s another point that I wanted to mention here, particularly the engagement and commitment to Africa. For us Europeans, Africa as a neighboring continent is of prime importance. The development of African countries is in our very own bested interest. We as Germans, but also we as members of the European Union will have to deal with this, it will be at the very top of our agenda.
There are a lot of areas where we cooperate, fight against ISIL, for example. Here, Germany was able to contribute to a certain extent in certain areas. We’ll continue to do so, for example, in supporting the Peshmerga, in air policing, but we also have to acknowledge that the United States of America bear most of the burden. They bear the brunt of this responsibility.
So I take your remarks very seriously, Barack, that the European Union as a whole, but also Germany needs to recognize that this is our alliance, our common alliance, our trans-Atlantic alliance that we to step (ph) out our engagement, because in the long run we will not be allowed to accept this imbalance as regards to the contributions we gave to this alliance, and we have understood this message and we have started to react. We have worked very closely together, for example, in Afghanistan, we are continuing to do so.
I’m very pleased this military engagement together with a political road map that we developed, we were able to continue. We want to bring about a political solution there. We worked very closely together on the issue of annexation of Crimea and Russia’s attempt to actually conquer Ukraine and actually, they did so, conquer part of the territory. We tried to come to a peaceful settlement here on this.
So our interests are very much aligned. Our intents of cooperation are very much aligned. We continue to build on what we’ve already achieved in these last months of the administration and we will continue also with the new administration. This is the end of an eight-year cooperation that was very close indeed.
MERKEL (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): From a German point of view, German, American and European American relations are a pillar of our foreign policy. Foreign policy that is obviously guided by interests, but that is very much also committed to shared values, so we have a platform, democracy, freedom, respect of human rights that we would like to see respected all over the world and also, a peaceful world order.
We have shared those values, we continue to share those values and obviously, we will continue to cooperate with the new administration. But today, I think a word of gratitude is at hand, thank you very much for this very close, very intensive cooperation.
OBAMA: It is wonderful to be back in Berlin. This is my sixth visit to Germany. It will not be my last. I have somehow, continued to miss Oktoberfest so that’s probably something that is better for me to do as a former president rather than as president, I’ll have more fun.
It’s also wonderful to be back with my great friend and ally, Chancellor Merkel. As I reflect back over the last eight years, I could not ask for a steadier or more reliable partner on the world stage, often through some very challenging times.
So I wanna thank you for your friendship, for your leadership and your commitment to our alliance. And I wanna thank the German people for the incredible partnership that our countries have been able to establish all these years.
You know, last week marked the 27th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The United States was proud to stand with the people of Germany as this nation and this continent reunited and rebuilt and reached for a better future.
And it’s a reminder that the commitment of the United States, to Europe is enduring and it’s rooted in the values we share, the values that Angela just mentioned; our commitment to democracy, our commitment to rule of law, our commitment to the dignity of all people in our own countries and around the world.
Our alliance with our NATO partners has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for nearly 70 years, in good times and in bad and through presidents of both parties because the United States has a fundamental interest in Europe’s stability and security.
The commitment that Angela and I share to this guiding principle has formed the basis for our conversations this afternoon. We discuss our efforts to keep our countries competitive and to create jobs and opportunity on both sides of the Atlantic.
The negotiations on agreements like T-TIP have been challenging and obviously, at a moment when there’s concerns about globalization and the benefits that accrue to particular people.
It is important that those negotiations and channels of communication remain because ultimately, what we have shown over the last several decades, is that markets and trade and commerce can create prosperity in all of our countries, that its not a win/lose situation but it can be a win/win situation.
And at a time when the European project is facing challenges, it’s especially important to show the benefits of economic integration by continuing to invest in our people and working to reduce inequality, both within and across our countries.
I reiterated our hope that negotiations over the United Kingdom’s exit from the E.U. will be conducted in a smooth and orderly and transparent fashion and preserve as closely as possible the economic and political and security relationships between the U.K. and E.U.
And I continue to believe when I said in Hanover, that the E.U. remains one of the world’s great political and economic achievements, and that those achievements should not be taken for granted.
That they need to be nurtured and cultivated and protected and fought for because the achievements that we’ve seen on this continent, in contrast to a divided Europe of the previous century, are ones that remind us of how important it is that we work together.
And that we are willing to uphold principles that have resulted in unprecedented prosperity and security throughout Europe and around the world. With the threat of climate change only becoming more urgent, Angela and I focused on the need for American and E.U. leadership to advance global cooperation.
OBAMA: Both of our nations were proud to join the Paris Climate Agreement which the world should work to implement quickly. Continued global leadership on climate in addition to increasing private investment and clean energy is gonna be critical to meeting this growing threat. Of course we discussed our commitment to meeting shared security challenges from countering cyber threats to ensuring that Iran continues to live up to the terms of the Iran nuclear deal.
I commended Angela for her leadership along with President Hollande in working to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. We continued to stand with the people of Ukraine and for the basic principle that nations have a right to determine their own destiny and we discussed the importance of maintaining sanctions until Russia fully complies with the Minsk Agreement.
As part of the coalition against ISIL, we are putting that terrorist network under tremendous pressure. Here in Berlin, this week, coalition are meeting to ensure we remain unified and focused on our mission to destroy ISIL. We are very grateful for the vital contributions Germany has made to this fight, training local forces in Iraq, sharing intelligence providing reconnaissance aircraft including the recent deployment of additional NATO AWACS.
And as Iraqi forces continue the liberation of Mosul, I’m pleased that NATO will be meeting the commitment we made in Warsaw to begin training additional forces in Iraq, which started this January. We also continue to stand united with Germany and our NATO allies in our ongoing efforts to build peace and stability in Afghanistan. On Syria, it’s clear that the indiscriminate attacks on civilians by the Assad regime and Russia will only worsen the humanitarian catastrophe and that a negotiated end to the conflict is the only way to achieve lasting peace in Syria.
Angela and I also agreed the need for a comprehensive and humane response to the devastating humanitarian crisis in Syria and for the influx of migrants and refugees from around the world. We need to build on the progress achieved at the U.N. Refugee Summit, which yielded new commitments from some 50 nations and organizations. The United States is doing our part by increasing the number of refugees we resettle and I want again to commend Angela, and more importantly, the German people for the extraordinary leadership and compassion that you have shown in the face of what I know is a very difficult challenge.
You are not alone in trying to deal with this challenge. This is not an issue that any one country should bear but is in need of an international response and I not only intend to make sure that we have put in place more robust support from the United States but I’m hoping that that continues beyond my administration. On this final visit, I am reminded of the visit I made here before I became president. It was eight years ago, I had no gray hair but I believe today what I said then.
If you want a model for what is possible, if you want to see how to build a peaceful and prosperous and dynamic society, then look at Berlin and look at Germany. Look at Chancellor Merkel, her personal story helps to tell a story of incredible achievement that the German people have embarked on and I think is something that you should be very proud of. It is not inevitable that we make progress. It requires hard work. Sometimes it may seem as if progress is stalled but what history of post-war Germany shows is that strength and determination and focus and adherence to the values that we care about will result in a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
And on behalf of the American people, I want to thank the German people, I want to thank Chancellor Merkel for your deep friendship and your steadfast partnership.
So, (SPEAKING IN GERMAN).
QUESTION: Thank you very much.
QUESTION: Mr. President, you and the president-elect have very different views on Russia. After your meeting with him last week, can you assure Chancellor Merkel that a Trump administration would also support strong sanctions against Moscow?
Similarly, what have you told President Putin about Russia’s influence on the U.S. election and how would you advise European countries to deal with the same threat?
And lastly, if I may, would you like to see your friend Chancellor Merkel run for re-election next year?
OBAMA: Oh wow, your German, showing off.
(LAUGHTER)
QUESTION (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Has the American president calmed you in the sense that on the policy of his successor on climate change and Russia, he has allayed your fears? And are you concerned that the common European policy towards Russia will collapse, and after the election of Mr. Trump, would you, as a sign of civility, wouldn’t you actually have to declare that you are going to be a candidate again?
OBAMA: Well, I try to make it a rule not to meddle in other people’s politics. All I can say is that Chancellor Merkel has been an outstanding partner. And you know, Chancellor Merkel is perhaps the only leader left among our closest allies that was there when I arrived. So in some ways we are now the veterans of many challenges over the last eight years.
And although we have not always been in sync on every issue in terms of our core values, in terms of her integrity, her truthfulness, her thoughtfulness, her doing her homework, knowing her facts, her commitment to looking out for the interests of the German people first, but recognizing that part of good leadership on behalf of the nation requires engaging the world as a whole, and participating effectively in multilaterally institutions, I think she’s been outstanding.
So it’s up to her whether she wants to stand again and then ultimately, it’ll be up to the German people to decide what the future holds. If I were here and I were German and I had a vote, I might support her.
(LAUGHTER) OBAMA: But it’s — I don’t know whether that hurts or helps. With respect to Russia, my principal approach to Russia has been constant since I first came into office. Russia is an important country. It is a military superpower. It has influence in the region and it has influence around the world. And in order for us to solve many big problems around the world, it is in our interest to work with Russia and obtain their cooperation.
I think we should all hope for a Russia that is successful, where its people are employed and the economy is growing and they are having good relationships with their neighbors. And participating constructively on big issues like climate change. So I’ve sought a constructive relationship with Russia, but what I have also been is realistic in recognizing that there is some significant differences in how Russia views the world and how we view the world.
The values that we talked about, the values democracy and free speech and international norms and rule of law, respecting the ability of other countries to determine their own destiny and preserve their sovereignty and territorial integrity. Things are not something that we can set aside.
OBAMA: And so in — on issues like Ukraine, on issues like Syria, we’ve had very significant differences. And my hope is that the president-elect coming in takes a similarly constructive approach, finding areas where we can cooperate with Russia, where our values and interests align. But that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia where they are deviating from our values and international norms.
And I don’t expect that the president-elect will follow exactly our blueprint or our approach, but my hope is that he does not simply take a real-politik approach and suggest that, you know, if we just cut some deals with Russia, even if it hurts people or even if it violates international norms, or even if it leaves smaller countries vulnerable or creates long-term problems in regions like Syria, that we just do whatever is convenient at the time.
And that will be something that I think we’ll learn more about as the president-elect puts his team together.
I am encouraged by the president-elect’s insistence that NATO is a commitment that does not change. And his full commitment to NATO as the foundation for our international security I think is very important.
And finally, in terms of my conversations with President Putin, these are conversations that took place before the election. As I indicated, there has been very clear proof that they have engaged in cyber attacks. This isn’t new. It |
be helpful to write down the procedure.
Rooting your Nexus 7 tablet
I now give brief instructions on how to root a tablet; this was required in my case, as I couldn’t even perform a chmod on my OCaml programs to make them executable! This is actually the most complicated part. After that, setting up an OCaml cross-compiling environment is really easy.
OEM Unlocking
The “OEM Unlock” step is required before doing any sort of serious hacking with the device. This unfortunately erases all user data; but if you have chosen to sync your installed apps, after a reboot, there shouldn’t be too much stuff left to configure. Plug your device to the computer, unlock the device’s screen, enable “debugging” in the device’s options if not done already, then, on the computer, run:
sudo apt-get install android-tools- { adb,fastboot } adb reboot bootloader fastboot oem unlock
Please note that the tablet will ask you to confirm your computer’s RSA key the first time you use adb, so you will need to press a button on the tablet’s screen.
Becoming root on the device
The OEM unlock step does very little: it just allows you to move on to the next step: becoming root. Being root means being able to access /data/local/, put stuff in it, perform the actuals chmod, etc.
There are extra steps required to become root on the device. Several guides are available, but as usual when it comes to Android hacking, the XDA Forums contain the best source of information.
The procedure consists in installing a custom “recovery mod”; i.e. a small program that we can run before the actual operating system boots up. The whole point of it is that it has enough rights on the device so as to write anywhere; in particular, it can unzip into the sytem a “su” program that is able to make you root on the device.
Download the latest “Clockwork Mod Recovery” from the website. Also download the latest ZIP version of SuperSU (search for.zip in the forum post). Then, on your computer, with the device still connected:
adb push UPDATE-SuperSU-v1.25.zip /sdcard/ adb reboot bootloader fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-6.0.2.3-grouper.img
These steps send the to-be-installed “su” program onto the device; they reboot the tablet into the “bootloader” mode. The fastboot flash command will write the infamous “recovery mode”. Once the device is flashed, use the volume keys and the power button to switch into the said recovery mode.
At this stage, the only step left is installing the “su” program. This can be achieved using the volume keys and the power button, again. Select “flash ZIP from SDCard”, navigate, and pick the SuperSU ZIP file you previously uploaded to the device. Reboot. Voilà, you’re done.
Setting up a nice little home
After your device has rebooted, if you run adb shell, followed by su, you will gain root access to the device. You can make a little home in /data/local/, creating bin and home directories.
adb shell su # device will prompt you the first time for confirmation cd /data/local/ mkdir bin mkdir home
Setting up the OCaml cross-compiler
That is actually the easiest part! Jérôme Vouillon has set up an extra opam repository. The repository contains a README file that explains it all. For me, it was as simple as typing in my shell:
opam repo add android https://github.com/vouillon/opam-android-repository.git opam update opam install ocaml-android
Sample program: unison
The reason why I wanted to do all this was to run the excellent unison on my tablet, to easily synchronize music and movies. There are other programs that seem to perform a similar task, but they are either not available for Linux, or use a cloud-storage system that seems overkill / makes me uneasy.
The good news is, you can use OPAM to easily cross-compile unison.
opam install android-unison
I was then able to copy on my device the unison binary (which, fortunately, has zero external dependencies).
adb push ` opam config var prefix ` /arm-linux-androideabi/bin/unison /data/local/bin
After that, I can open up a shell and check that unison actually works:
adb shell # this opens up a shell on the device su cd /data/local/bin export PATH = $( pwd ) : $PATH export HOME = /data/local/home unison --help
To make sure we won’t have to perform these extra steps in the future, let’s put unison in /system/xbin where it will be available for everyone to run.
adb shell # this opens up a shell on the device su mount -o remount,rw /system cp /data/local/bin/unison /system/xbin/ mount -o remount,ro /system
You can then install an SSH server on your tablet (e.g. DropBear SSH), and use unison as usual.
Please note that if you want to run the unison command from an adb shell, remember to set the HOME environment variable to a suitable location, i.e. one where you can write. This is done in the sample commands above. You don’t have to worry about that when ssh’ing onto the device, as the SSH server will take care of setting a proper HOME variable.
Compile other programs
The compiler is called arm-linux-androideabi-ocamlopt. Go ahead and play with it!
Thanks and acknowledgements
The repository of Jérôme Vouillon was tremendously helpful; without it, it would’ve been probably much longer to set up a development environment.It’s easy to be cynical about the Bowers & Wilkins P9. It costs $900, far more than many great-sounding headphones we’ve heard in the past. Where most of its competitors have utilitarian, futuristic design, the P9 looks unserious and reminiscent of the past. Instead of a minimalist, performance-driven chassis, the P9 has leather in places that don’t touch the head for what B&W describes as “luxurious” experience. It’s easy to assume that the P9 is just another “lifestyle” product aimed at people with money to burn, where sound was an afterthought. After some time with the P9, we found that it’s also easy to be wrong. The P9 is a fully developed over-ear headphone that earns its price tag with exquisite build quality and great sound.
Out of the box, the P9 hits the eye in much the same way as a mint-condition vintage sports car. Rounded metal meets squared leather, and chrome accents transition between different materials and textures. The P9’s seams are clean, and its parts fit together with the kind of tight tolerances one would expect for a product this expensive. We might have preferred a black leather option, but the light brown looks classy and will likely gain character with age. The P9 feels substantial, and close inspection reveals B&W’s attention to detail. The included travel case, made of alcantara and Saffiano leather, is equally classy and perfectly sized for the P9. The only departure from this high-quality aesthetic is the P9’s cables. While we appreciate that three cable options are included — 1.2-meter with iOS controls, 1.2m plain, and a comically long 5m cable — we have seen more substantial cables included with much cheaper headphones.
We don’t mean to suggest that luxury materials alone justify the P9’s high price. Plenty of companies have added value (or just cost) by wrapping their products in leather and chrome, and it rarely results in a better headphone. The P9 is set apart by the high degree of engineering effort apparent in its build. The cups pivot, but do not creak. The sizing mechanism and folding joints move silently and smoothly. Magnetized ear pads — unique to this headphone — separate from the P9 to reveal a cleverly-hidden cable jack, then re-attach like magic. The driver cups are “suspended” in a flexible rubber surround, a design that B&W claims will eliminate unwanted vibration. Though we’ve never had a problem with that kind of vibration, we love how effortlessly the P9’s contact points interface with the head and ears.
The P9’s luxury materials and high-quality moving parts come at a significant weight penalty. The P9’s stout aluminum frame and thick leather upholstery weighs in at 0.92 pounds with the standard 1.2m cable; this headphone won’t be part of your daily carry without some planning. On the head, however, we found the P9 to be surprisingly comfortable. The wide, soft padding on the headband distributes the P9’s weight broadly and evenly, and the large ear pad openings and strong clamping force keep the headphone in place without bothering the ears. Even after hours of use, the P9 seems to disappear on the head; its weight is really only felt in the form of inertia during a quick head turn. In addition to comfort, we found the P9’s ear pads to provide excellent isolation, even compared to other closed-back headphones. The P9’s 40mm drivers are set back far and angled towards the ear; we can’t say that this provided a “speaker-like” experience, but we do like the P9’s imaging and sense of space.
The P9 is very easy to drive. We were able to achieve painfully loud volume from both from the iPhone 6’s headphone jack and through the iPhone 7’s Lightning adapter. The included iOS cable has familiar controls that work flawlessly with the iPhone. The P9’s high sensitivity, folding frame, great isolation, and a slick carry case makes it a worthy travel companion, though they might be a bit large for a commuter. Notably absent here is the lack of a Lightning-compatible cable, but B&W says a free Lightning cable will be available in early 2017. The P9 may be the last flagship headphone wearing the “Made for iPhone” badge to get a pass for not including a Lightning cable, or even a Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter in its box.
Two words sum up the P9’s sound signature: dark and relaxed. Like a luxury car with a comfort-tuned suspension, the P9 deliver detail, but with a smoothness that makes listening easy. The P9’s bass presentation is rich and boomy, with a slam that can often be felt. On the other side of the spectrum, there may be a spike in the P9’s treble, as female vocals occasionally came through with a bit too much energy. We enjoyed the P9 with most genres, especially multi-layered rock and electronic tracks, where the P9 brought out small details with a good sense of space and imaging. The P9’s colored sound can, however, present a slight dullness to the midrange. The tone and decay of snare drums, for example, are undeniably lower and shorter on the P9 compared to some similarly-priced flagship cans. At its best, the P9’s relaxed character makes long listening sessions easy and fun. There are times, however, when the P9 crosses the line into dullness; this is most apparent with dense metal music, which can sound muddy on the P9.
It’s sometimes difficult to justify the price of a headphone like the P9. There are many headphones in every price range that sound good enough and, unlike a laptop or phone, there is no simple number or test to quantify the diminishing returns offered at the higher end of the spectrum. When we reviewed the Audeze EL-8 Titanium last month, we found that it was a competent headphone, but in our opinion, not an $800 headphone. The P9, however, does not have that problem. The P9’s sound might be a little warm for some users, and it won’t be the headphone of choice for detail junkies, but we have no doubt that there is real value here. B&W calls the P9 their “Signature” headphone, and we believe it. With impeccable build quality, slick engineering, and high-quality sound, the P9 is a true luxury experience.Facebook will now display ads to web users who are not members of its social network, the company announced Thursday, in a bid to significantly expand its online ad network. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook will use cookies, "like" buttons, and other plug-ins embedded on third-party sites to track members and non-members alike. The company says it will be able to better target non-Facebook users and serve relevant ads to them, though its practices have come under criticism from regulators in Europe over privacy concerns. Facebook began displaying a banner notification at the top of its News Feed for users in Europe today, alerting them to its use of cookies as mandated under an EU directive.
"Publishers and app developers have some users who aren’t Facebook users," Andrew Bosworth, vice president of Facebook’s ads and business platform, tells the Journal. "We think we can do a better job powering those ads."
"we have a greater opportunity than other companies."
Targeted advertising has become commonplace across the internet, but Facebook believes it can more accurately target non-members using the vast amounts of data it already has on the nearly 1.7 billion people who use the site. The company says it can use that data to make inferences about the behavior of non-members, an approach known as "lookalike" targeting. "Because we have a core audience of over a billion people [on Facebook] who we do understand, we have a greater opportunity than other companies using the same type of mechanism," Bosworth tells the Journal.
Facebook and Google continue to dominate targeted online advertising, as a report from Princeton University showed last week, though Facebook's use of cookies has come under fire from European regulators who say it violates consumer privacy laws. An independent report from the Belgian Privacy Commission last year criticized Facebook for tracking users who had logged out, as well as those who didn't even have an account. (Facebook disputed the report's findings, and attributed the tracking to a bug.) Earlier this year, the French data protection agency ordered the company to allow users to opt-out of sharing their personal data with advertisers, and to better inform non-users that their behavior was being tracked when visiting Facebook pages.
Facebook updated its cookies policy page on Thursday to reflect the changes to its ad network. Users with a Facebook account can opt-out of the ad scheme by adjusting their settings, while non-Facebook members can opt-out through the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US, the Digital Advertising Alliance in Canada, and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe.
How Facebook decides what’s trendingRed Cloud is known to freestyle at his live shows. Last month, Hawthorne, California emcee freestyled for 18 hours, one minute and 14 seconds – long enough to break the previous Guinness World Record of 17 straight hours.
Red Cloud says his inspiration came from an altruistic place.
“We put on an event every quarter at the Airliner in LA called Indigenous Angels,” Red Cloud says during an exclusive interview with HipHopDX. “Every time we do this show, we pick a different charity to donate our proceeds to. We choose to focus on Indigenous issues. This time [my girlfriend] Crystle Lightning said, ‘Lets do it for our missing sisters in Canada’…and I thought this is perfect…If I can honor these women and bring awareness to the epidemic in Canada using my attempt to break the world record then it would be perfect.”
Red Cloud Was Inspired By Supernatural
On the rap side, Red Cloud’s inspiration to break the record came from his freestyle hero Supernatural, who broke theGuinness World Record at nine hours in 2006. When Red Cloud decided to attempt to break the record, his training included jogging and rapping, swinging his nunchucks while rapping and swimming. He developed this regimen in an attempt to get both sides of his brain working at the same time as much as possible. Red Cloud also used rosemary oil as aroma therapy, as it reportedly attaches to the part in your brain which controls memory when inhaled.
On November 29, 2014 at approximately 2:45 a.m., at the Airliner in Los Angeles, Red Cloud embarked on what would be a defining moment live streamed for all to see via First Nations Television. According to Cloud, the jump off was one of two easier time periods because he was so eager. Once he arrived to the ninth hour, he said he saw some of his crew starting to drift off and a nap became tempting, but he pushed through because he wanted to break Chiddy Bang’s record. The second easiest time period was when the crowd began arriving to the show at approximately 9 p.m. because his instinct to rock the crowd kicked in and he was going for crowd reaction every four bars.
Some of his supporters in the crowd included Ras Kass, featured artist of MTV’s Rebel Music Nataanii Means and previous freestyle opponent Quese IMC.
”His ability to freestyle and control a crowd is what inspired me the first time I ever met him out here in Ventura,” says Rayce, an emcee who attended the Airliner event. “Been a fan of his dedication and craft ever since.”
After breaking the record, Red Cloud says that he is interested in trying to break the record again by freestyle rapping for 24 hours straight. He also says he is working on a new LightningCloud album – a venture with his girlfriend – and that he wants to tour as much as possible.Council tax rises due to come into force from April will not be sufficient to avoid deep cuts to services including road repair, parks, children’s centres, leisure centres and libraries, local government leaders have warned.
The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils across the country, said authorities will have to continue cutbacks to essential services to plug growing shortfalls in adult social care.
English social care system for elderly facing 'complete collapse' Read more
The body said it believes 147 out of 151 authorities responsible for social care will raise £540m more over the next financial year through a local precept, but on council tax this will be swallowed up by the extra cost of paying the national living wage to care workers.
They are allowed to raise council tax by almost 2% in 2017/18 to fund local services and a further 3% specifically for social care. Any rises beyond that would mean the council having to seek permission through a local referendum. The LGA said 108 councils were considering a 3% social care precept and 39 were looking at a 2% precept for social care.
It said this would not be sufficient to avoid cuts elsewhere, and councils would have to divert money currently allocated for other local services, including filling potholes, maintaining parks and green spaces and running children’s centres, leisure centres and libraries.
Lord Porter, the Conservative chairman of the LGA, said services supporting very vulnerable people are “at breaking point and many councils are increasingly unable to turn down the chance to raise desperately needed money for social care and other local services next year.
Councils 'at breaking point' due to budget cuts and rising social care bills Read more
“But extra council tax income will not bring in anywhere near enough money to alleviate the growing pressure on social care both now and in the future. The social care precept raises different amounts of money in different parts of the country.
“Social care faces a funding gap of at least £2.6bn by 2020. It cannot be left to council taxpayers alone to try and fix this crisis.”
The prime minister has stood firm against demands from councils and medics for more money for social care, despite warnings that stretched services are putting unsustainable pressure on the NHS. Instead, she has pledged to seek a “long-term solution” to the challenge of funding social care for older people, and said local authorities would be allowed to bring forward increases in council tax to ease the pressures.
Philip Hammond, the chancellor, is likely to come under renewed pressure to help councils and the NHS at the budget next month.Like I said, too much fun working on this picture. There needs to be more pictures of Applejack wearing pretty dresses. "Simple Ways" has ruined my perception of this Apple loving farm pony.
Art by James Corck. Treating her right, written by Rated R Ponystar.
Commission for This one was a lot of fun to work on. It was originally a black and white picture, but I upgraded it to a full colored picture because it wouldn't have looked as interesting in just grey scale. I wouldn't have been able to make it look as interesting anyways. It also gave me the chance to work on some mirror effects, which is a first for me. I'm not used to work on that!If you want the know the context of this picture, what better than a scene from the fic it's based on?Hear the radio version of this story.
As you approach Mount View Road, while driving down Hickory Hollow Parkway, you see train tracks to your left and trees growing out of a hill on your right. This is Nashville's most dangerous intersection.
For months, the Larry R. Williams law firm pored through Tennessee Department of Transportation's 2015 collision records. It found accidents at the intersection of Mount View Road and Hickory Hollow Parkway had a 60 percent injury rate.
Jonathan Williams, one of the attorneys who worked on the project, says that's the highest rate in the entire city, even though it does not have the most traffic.
Roads like this are found throughout Antioch. Although many are two lanes, they are frequently used as back ways to avoid traffic on I-24. This rural road design is not friendly to the rush hour traffic flow.
Last April, Mayor Megan Barry announced a project to improve intersections around Nashville. But the one dubbed most dangerous is not included in the project.Airbnb quietly removed 1,000 listings in New York City — potentially illegal rentals of entire units — from its platform in early November, just before a significant, well-publicized release of its own data, according to a pair of independent researchers who collected data over a one year period.
Murray Cox and Tom Slee, independent researchers who published the data to InsideAirbnb.com, tracked Airbnb listing data for almost all of 2015. They took monthly snapshots of all the Airbnb listings in New York and tracked the data over time.
As New York City rules currently read, it is illegal to rent out an entire unit in the city for 30 days or less — exactly the kind of rentals that are a key part of Airbnb’s business. Airbnb wants to draw up a formal agreement with the city to “legalize” short-term home rentals, but New York City lawmakers have resisted, saying that the company is far too lax on Airbnb hosts who have multiple listings on the service.
In today’s release, Cox and Slee say that in an early December Airbnb disclosure of NYC listing information, the company “extrapolated from an artificial and unrepresentative one-time event.” The research suggests Airbnb removed about 1,000 listings of “entire unit” rentals from its platform right before it released data to the public.
“Airbnb removed listings in New York City belonging to [hosts with multiple Airbnb listings] so that the November 17 data set would fit the message the company wanted to deliver,” the pair wrote. “The percentage of traffic going to [hosts with multiple Airbnb listings] has been a constant 30 percent of the total during all 2015 until the days before the November purge, when it dropped to only 20 percent.”
For New York City authorities, the concern is that an oversupply of entire-unit Airbnb listings would effectively take available housing off the market by turning those apartments into full-time short-term rentals.
Officials say Airbnb doesn’t do enough to remove these listings from the platform, and Airbnb says that it is working to be more transparent with cities about how it regulates the service. In November, it published a “Community Compact” outlining broad-stroke promises about transparency with local governments, and on Dec. 1 it released a trove of data about NYC listings.
The crux of Cox and Slee’s charge of misdirection against Airbnb is how the purge affects the data released in December.
When asked if Airbnb intentionally removed 1,000 listings prior to releasing the NYC data on Dec. 1 (and whether such an action would be unusual for the service), spokesperson Chris Nulty said, “We routinely review our listings to ensure guests are having the quality, local experience they expect and deserve.”
Airbnb’s early December data dump included figures on Airbnb listings from November 2014 through Nov. 1, 2015 alongside a more detailed snapshot of listing data on the day of Nov. 17, 2015. The disclosures were a move to demonstrate Airbnb’s transparency to long-skeptical New York lawmakers, attempting to “make clear that illegal hotels are not welcome on Airbnb.”
The larger, year-long data set was made available for viewing to journalists and interested parties by appointment at Airbnb’s New York City office. The Nov. 17 snapshot has much more useful information than the other data, providing raw numbers and percentages of Airbnb listings, and whether their hosts operated multiple entire units on the service. The single-day snapshot reflects data that happened post-purge, and Cox and Slee contend that it’s an “artificial and unrepresentative sample” of how many entire-unit listings were listed on Airbnb for most of 2015.
Airbnb: We’re Playing by the Rules
In response to Cox and Slee’s allegations, an Airbnb spokesperson told Re/code that listing numbers frequently drop because of the constant “churn” of people posting and removing listings on the platform. In a statement, Airbnb affirmed that the vast majority of hosts on the platforms are hosts who play by Airbnb’s rules, renting out entire units when they’re not home as supplemental cash. They aren’t, Airbnb says, de facto landlords who rent out multiple listings on the service:
The facts are clear for all to see — the vast majority of our hosts are everyday people who have just one listing and share their space a few nights a month to help make ends meet. Airbnb is an open people-to-people platform where listings come on and go off throughout the year. We’ve also done significant work to educate our community about what is in the best interest of their city and we routinely review our listings to ensure guests are having the quality, local experience they expect and deserve.
What Airbnb has maintained all along, and maintained loudly in its December NYC data release, is that the overwhelming number of hosts who rent out units on the platform do so in a quasi-kosher way: They only rent out one unit. Though it’s assumed that if Airbnb is formally legalized in New York that renting out a single whole unit will be permissible, the law currently on the books says that it’s illegal do that for less than 30 days at a time. And to be clear, lawmakers don’t seem to care much about targeting people who are renting out their entire primary residences to make some money on the side.
Some New York City council members — notably Helen Rosenthal and Jumaane Williams — and other dogged critics of Airbnb say that the company’s “most of our hosts only rent out one unit” defense doesn’t hold water. They argue that it doesn’t take into account the big portion of revenue generated by the small portion of hosts who operate multiple entire-unit listings.
A few days after the Dec. 1 data dump, The Verge found that hosts with three or more listings (less than two percent of the total host population) accounted for 24 percent of the revenue generated between November 2014 and Nov. 1, 2015. A week later, Quartz reported that Airbnb expects “by this time next year, entire-space hosts with one or two listings will be earning 93 percent of revenue.”
So What About Those 1,000 Missing Listings?
Between Nov. 1 and Nov. 15, 2015, Cox and Slee’s data show that Airbnb culled 1,438 listings belonging to hosts with two or more units from its platform, from a total of 3,331 such listings the two had recorded. They say that, accommodating for month-to-month churn, roughly 1,000 units were intentionally removed. There was no corresponding decrease in private room rentals, as opposed to entire-unit rentals, during that month, according to their information.
Cox and Slee charge that Airbnb purged the 1,000 listings in order to present a more favorable portrait of its NYC data in its Dec. 1 release. They argue that the only logical conclusion to draw is that the listing bloodletting was timed to substantially change the Nov. 17 snapshot that was released, and that Airbnb will “only expel [multiple listing operators] when their presence is a nuisance to the company.”
The two also say that Airbnb’s pledge to reduce the revenue generated by multiple-listing hosts from 25 percent to 7 percent is unrealistic, as “levels of multiple-listing entire homes have already jumped back to 13 percent [from an immediately-post-purge 10.3 percent] of total listings, only two months after the purge.” Airbnb provided Re/code with data showing that the number of single-listing hosts stayed at around 94 percent of the total population between Nov. 17, 2015 and Feb. 8, 2016, which Airbnb spokesperson Christopher Nulty says is proof that there isn’t a glut of multiple-listing operators:
Our community in New York has evolved to a point where 94 percent of hosts have just one listing and where there is no material presence of illegal hotels, which is why accusations from the same elected officials who called for there to be no illegal hotels on the platform and now want to fine middle class families $50,000 is akin to asking someone to walk on water and then, when they do, fining them for not swimming.”
Nulty also pointed out that Airbnb doesn’t ever disclose when listings get pulled from the platform, excepting a 2014 removal of 2,000 listings that was forced by a legal battle with New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman*. As for what kind of policies guide which listings Airbnb pulls when it decides to yank them, Nulty directed Re/code to the Nov. 11 “Community Compact,” which spells out broader transparency commitments to the communities in which Airbnb operates.
95 Percent Might Be Okay. But What About the Other 5?
Cox and Slee, whose report was circulated widely by NYC officials critical of Airbnb, say they believe Airbnb is “confused about its own data.” Cox, a New York-based Australian photojournalist (Slee is an ex-tech industry employee with a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry), says that “when they talk about 95 and 94 percent of all listings being for single units, they’re trying to hide the fact that there are hosts with 3, 4 or 5 listings.
“Talking about the number of hosts avoids the number of homes that are taken off the market,” Cox said in a phone interview with Re/code. “Ninety-five percent of hosts may be okay, but how are the 5 percent doing? How many houses [listed on Airbnb] do they have?”
* When reached for comment on the Inside Airbnb report, Schneiderman spokesman Matt Mittenthal said, “Just as it did in wiping 2,000 illegal listings after we confronted the company in 2014, Airbnb once again appears to have manipulated data to conceal illegal activity.”The Mercedes-Benz logo is seen before the company's annual news conference in Stuttgart, Germany, February 4, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Owners of Mercedes diesel cars filed a new class-action lawsuit in the United States saying the vehicles likely contained a “defeat device” used to cheat emissions testing, an accusation that Daimler (DAIGn.DE), which owns the carmaker, denied.
U.S. law firm Hagens Berman, which had already filed a complaint in February, said new tests had shown that Mercedes BlueTEC cars produced nitrogen oxide emissions in virtually all road tests that were far higher than in controlled lab tests.
“The fact that Mercedes passed the dynamometer test in all tests, but failed the real world test, is suggestive that like VW (VOWG_p.DE), Mercedes is implementing a ‘defeat device’,” it said in its complaint filed in the District Court of New Jersey.
Daimler said in a statement on Friday: “We consider this class action lawsuit to be unfounded. Our position remains unchanged: A component that inadmissibly reduces emissions is not used in Mercedes-Benz vehicles.”
BlueTEC is a filter system which uses urea to help rid exhaust fumes of health threatening nitric oxides. It is fairly costly and used mainly in heavier cars like Diamler’s large limousines or sports utility vehicles, which are equipped with powerful diesel engines.
The complaint previously filed by Hagens Berman was more limited, alleging that Daimler knowingly programmed its so-called clean diesel vehicles to emit illegal levels of nitrogen oxide in low temperatures.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said at the time it had requested information from Daimler in light of the lawsuit but had not opened an official investigation.
VW, Europe’s biggest carmaker, is facing its biggest crisis in recent memory after it acknowledged last September that it had rigged exhaust emission tests for up to 11 million vehicles worldwide.January 23, 1868
A Steam Man
Mr. Zadock Deddrick1, a Newark machinist, has invented a man; one that, moved by steam, will perform some of the most important functions of humanity; that will, standing upright, walk or run as he is bid, in any direction, and at almost any rate of speed, drawing after him a load whose weight would tax the strength of three draught horses. The history of this curious invention is as follows: Six years ago Mr. Deddrick, the inventor, who is at present but twenty-two years of age, conceived the novel idea of constructing a man that should receive its vitality from a perpetual motion machine. The idea was based on the well-known mechanical principle that, if a heavy weight be placed at the top of an upright slightly inclined from vertical, gravitation will tend to produce a horizontal as well as vertical motion. The idea was unsuccessful. However, by observing carefully the cause of failure, persevering and perfecting the man-form, and by substituting steam in place of the perpetual motion machine, the present success was attained.
The man stands seven feet and nine inches high, the other dimensions of the body being correctly proportioned, making him a second Daniel Lambert2, by which name he is facetiously spoken of among the workmen. He weighs five hundred pounds. Steam is generated in the body or trunk, which is nothing but a three-horse power engine, like those used in our steam fire engines. The legs which support it are complicated and wonderful. The steps are taken very naturally and quite easily. As the body is thrown forward upon the advanced foot the other is lifted from the ground with a spring and thrown forward by the steam. Each step or pace advances the body two feet, and every revolution of the engine produces four paces. As the engine is capable of making more than a thousand evolutions a minute, it would get over the ground, on this calculation, at the rate of a little over a mile a minute. As this would be working the legs faster than would be safe on uneven ground or on broad street cobble stones, it is proposed to run the engine at the rate of five hundred revolutions per minute, which would walk the man at the modest speed of half a mile a minute.
The fellow is attached to a common rockaway carriage, the shafts of which support him in a vertical position. These shafts are two bars of iron, fastened in the usual manner to the front of the carriage, and are curved so as to be joined to a circular sustaining bar, which passes around the waist, like a girth, and in which the man moves so as to be faced in any direction. Besides these motions, machinery has been arranged by which the figure can be thrown backward or forward from a vertical nearly forty-five degrees. This is done in order to enable it to ascend or descend all grades. To the soles of the feet spikes or corks are fixed, which effectually prevent slipping. The whole affair is so firmly sustained by the shafts and has so excellent a foot-hold, that two men are unable to push it over, or in any way throw it down. In order to enable it to stop quickly it is provided with two appliances, one of which will, as before stated, throw it backward from the vertical, while the other bends the knees in a direction opposite to the natural position.
An upright post, which is arranged in front of the dash-board, and within easy reach of the front seats, sustains two miniature pilot wheels, by the turning of which these various motions and evolutions are directed. It is expected that a sufficiently large amount of coal can be stowed away under the back seat of the carriage to work the engine for a day, and enough water in the tank under the front seat to last half a day.
In order to prevent the “giant” from frightening horses by its wonderful appearance Mr. Deddrick intends to clothe it and give it as nearly as possible a likeness to the rest of humanity. The boiler, and such parts as are necessarily heated, will be encased in felt and woolen undergarments. Pantaloons, coat and vest, of the latest styles, are provided. Whenever the fire needs coaling, which is every two or three hours, the driver stops the machine, descends from his seat, unbuttons “Daniel’s” vest, opens a door, shovels in the fuel, buttons up the vest and drives on. On the back, between the shoulders the steam cocks and gauges are placed. As these would cause the coat to set awkwardly, a knapsack has been provided that completely covers them. A blanket, neatly rolled up and placed on top the knapsack, perfects the delusion. The face is molded into a cheerful countenance of white enamel, which contrasts well with the dark hair and mustache. A sheet iron hat with a gauge top acts as a smoke stack.
The cost of this “first man” is $2,000 3, thought the makers, Messrs. Deddrick & Grass, expect to manufacture succeeding ones, warranted to run a year without repair, for $300. The same parties expect to construct, on the same principle, horses which will do the duty of twelve ordinary animals of the same species. These, it is confidently believed, can be used alike before carriages, street cars and plows. The man now constructed can make his way without difficulty over any irregular surface whose ruts and stones are not more than nine inches below or above the level of the road.
http://logiston.com/oddends/2004/05/a-steam-man/ 21/8/07
Wikipedia
Oregon State University
From the records Z P Dederick was something of a serial patenter.
The Steam Man was a steam powered pair of |
libraries bookshelves. Made of recycled flowerpots, they are simultaneously fireproof and economic, and accompany the visitors through the building by taking on the functions of banister, parapet, information desk and bar. Bookshelves out of reach house the library archive.
Total budget incl. parking: 30 million (I’m guessing euros)
Start project: 2003
Start construction: May 2009
Opening: October 2012
Amount of books: 70,000 with space for another 80,000.
Information from the MVRDV website. Photography by Jonas Klock and Jeroen Musch. Via Dezeen.
My kind of library.Consumer protection responsibility for financial products has been scattered across seven different agencies, and is a low priority for them. To remedy this problem the Administration proposed creating a new independent consumer regulator that would consolidate and streamline this authority, and focus on establishing and enforcing fair rules for banks and other lenders when they deal with American families. The agency they proposed would be independent, with authority and enforcement over all lenders. The proposal was weakened in the House, due to industry opposition, but the final House bill still created a new, consolidated and independent protector for consumers and is a major improvement over what we have today.
This recent revised proposal would establish a much weaker consumer regulator that would not have the autonomy or the authority it needs to effectively protect consumers from abusive financial practices. We are particularly troubled by the following proposed changes:
-Loss of Independence. Under the proposal, the agency would be reduced from an independent free-standing agency to a bureau within the Treasury Department. Moreover, the same regulators who failed to stop abuses for years would have veto power over the bureau's protections. The regulators whose decisions need to be overseen are the banking regulators who have been protecting banks while consumers suffer and American taxpayers pick up the bill.
-Loss of Enforcement. As we saw in this crisis, protections only work if they are enforced. The few protections that were on the books before this crisis were routinely ignored by the existing regulators who refused to enforce them. The revised proposal substantially cuts back the already reduced enforcement authority in the House bill over most banks as well as cutting back enforcement authority over other creditors such as payday lenders.... This creates loopholes for predatory lenders and also disadvantages responsible lenders who play by the rules.
We urge the Senate to stand up to the special interests and pass a financial reform bill that has a strong, independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency with the authority to make and enforce protections for American Families."The Book of Woe": Psychiatry's last stand An account of the making of the new DSM questions whether psychiatry is -- or should be -- a science
"Psychiatric diagnosis is built on fiction and sold to the public as fact." So writes psychotherapist Gary Greenberg in "The Book of Woe: The Making of the DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry." That's an explosive assertion but also one that doesn't quite mean what most of you are probably thinking. Scientologists, settle down: Greenberg is not on your side. And talk-therapy pooh-poohers, spare us all those chortles of vindicated scorn; he doesn't agree with you, either.
"The Book of Woe" is an account of the compiling of the fifth edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders." The DSM was first published in 1952, and in the years since it has been subject to epochal revisions in which the foundations of the mental health professions have been reconceived and revamped. The DSM-5, plans for which were begun as early as 1999, is set to be published this month. The process of assembling it has been anything but smooth, as "The Book of Woe" relates.
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Not that controversy is anything new for the DSM, for despite its dull, acronymic title and the eye-glazing professional jargon in which it is written, this manual has always been a battleground. The most famous war fought in its territory pitted old-school shrinks against gay-rights activists over the issue of whether homosexuality ought to be categorized as a mental illness. In a feat of diplomacy brokered by the legendary psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, the "disorder" once dubbed "sexual orientation disturbance" was removed from the DSM-III, published in 1980.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, the DSM's publisher, the bold new DSM-5 will be "based on sound scientific data" derived from a "comprehensive review of scientific advances." This sounds good, and as everyone knows, a wealth of new research in neuroscience as well as revolutionary developments in psychopharmacology have placed our understanding of the biological basis of the human mind on ever-firmer empirical footing -- right?
Wrong. According to Greenberg, despite these much-ballyhooed advances, there is still "not one biological test for a DSM disorder." The terms that many of us bandy about so blithely (for the DSM has always had a significant lay readership) -- major depressive disorder, borderline personality disorder, even schizophrenia -- are not actually diseases with detectable causes or origins. They're collections of symptoms that may or may not respond to any one (or more) of a spectrum of treatments. Not all clinicians can even agree on which diagnosis to bestow on any given individual's symptoms, and certainly there is no test to substantiate their diagnoses, "nothing," as Greenberg puts it, "like the CT scan that confirms that the patient with a persistent cough and fatigue has a tumor in his lung."
Greenberg argues -- persuasively -- that this fifth edition of the DSM arises not out of any new scientific understanding but from one of the periodic crises of psychiatry. In the most notorious recent scandal, Joseph Biederman, a child psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, decided in the late 1990s that some children he'd been asked to treat for particularly severe attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder were in fact suffering from bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder, a serious, probably genetic and lifelong condition, had previously been thought to emerge in early adulthood.
BD can be managed with powerful, mood stabilizing drugs, but those drugs have significant side effects. Although there were no substantive studies supporting the existence of pediatric BD, and his child patients did not display one of the key symptoms (manic episodes), Biederman used his considerable prestige to advance his theory. The 2000s saw a boom in pediatric diagnoses of BD and the prescription, to young children, of medication that carried risks of cataracts, diabetes, obesity and a spastic-movement disorder called tardive dyskinesia.
In 2006, a scathing front-page exposé in the New York Times revealed Biederman to be, as one of Greenberg's psychiatrist sources bluntly put it, "a crook." He had received $1.6 million from drug companies in exchange for promoting his diagnosis and solicited even more to fund research that he promised would "support the safety and effectiveness" of their drugs. These and many other revelations of Big Pharma subsidies to the psychiatric profession led to a series of Senate hearings and, eventually, a purge of drug-money funding from the APA. The organization's revenues plummeted, which left it, as Greenberg points out, not only in the midst of a credibility crisis but also in sore need of income. A new edition of that cash cow, the DSM, would solve both.
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So the APA heralded a DSM-5 that would represent a "paradigm shift" away from the DSM-IV. The new edition would offer a scientifically based system to quantify the degree of a patient's disorder or suffering while providing a more precise and accurate category for her condition. The only problem with this excellent plan is that there was no impetus for it beyond the self-serving needs of the APA and no real body of evidence to support such claims. As another of Greenberg's sources remarks, a paradigm shift cannot be "forced."
Several of the psychiatrists who worked on the DSM-IV were shut out of the project, and the most prominent among them, Allen Frances, became a relentless critic of the new edition. Much of "The Book of Woe" consists of clashes and duels between the various interested parties, with Greenberg's own skepticism of the "claim that psychological suffering is best understood as a medical illness" as a persistent drumbeat. The specialist and bureaucratic intricacies of these debates can be hard to follow, but their impact is very real; Frances' greatest anxiety about the DSM-5, as he protested over and over again, was that it would lead to overdiagnosis and overmedication. Rumors leaked from the secretive APA suggested that the new DSM would label such ordinary experiences as bereavement or childhood temper tantrums as disorders requiring the administration of potentially dangerous drugs.
Greenberg characterizes himself as a working "talk therapist," but he also seems to aspire to the philosophical psychology of William James. "The line between health and illness," he writes, "can't be drawn without deciding how a human life is supposed to go, how it ought to feel and what it is for -- questions for which science, no matter how robust, is no match." That's aptly put, but Greenberg's sentences can also sometimes lapse into Jamesian abstraction and generality as they unfold over multiple clauses and must be worked out like equations. Since so much of what he's writing about involves specialist jargon or outright obfuscation, there are times when more simplicity and clarity in making his own points -- or explaining the meanings of others' -- would have been welcome.
Nevertheless, seeing how this particular sausage got made is invaluable enough to merit the extra effort demanded. Much of the public regards the DSM as a body of proven medical knowledge, rather than, as Greenberg puts it, a collection of "useful constructs that capture the ways people suffer." Those constructs, however provisional (and, among themselves, most psychiatrists acknowledge the DSM to be just that), can help a patient to a sense of certainty, provide a community of fellow sufferers (as was the case with the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, deleted from the DSM-5), inspire confidence in the therapist and -- last but far from least -- justify insurance coverage for any treatment. But the disorders that trip so authoritatively off of everyone's tongues are not diseases in the same way that cancer or strep throat are, and until and unless we learn a whole lot more about the human brain and its workings, they never will be.Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were each fined after they failed to submit financial reports required by the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) on time, McClatchy reported Tuesday.
This is the second time Kushner has missed the deadline to file the forms and his second fine for doing so. Kushner and Trump were fined $200 each over the most recent missed deadline.
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The financial disclosure forms submitted by Trump and Kushner also included different values for their personal assets. Some of those values had discrepancies of hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to McClatchy.
For example, Trump reportedly listed a partial stake in a New Jersey shopping center as being valued at less than $1,001, while Kushner said it was worth more than $1 million.
Kushner had amended his financial disclosure forms 39 times after receiving an 18-day extension, according to McClatchy.
Federal employees are rarely fined over submitting forms late.
Employees can be fined if they submit a form more than 30 days after the deadline.Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon called out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) winless streak in 2017 on Tuesday evening and said the D.C. establishment is terrified of the economic nationalist movement that is gaining momentum from Alabama to Arizona and poised to send more of McConnell’s allies packing.
Bannon addressed a reception for conservative Arizona Senate candidate Kelli Ward, who is challenging establishment Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), before speaking at her rally. Bannon said the “populist revolt” is an “incredibly powerful movement” of “working-class and middle-class people” who are fed up with the “permanent political class and the globalist set of elites that want to rule over you from an imperial city like a new aristocracy.”
“They can care less about your economic well-being. They can care less about your family. They can care less about your children and grandchildren,” Bannon said of the D.C. elite, pointing out that seven of the nine richest counties are around D.C. because “they have a business model that works for them — the consultant, lobbyist, donor, corporatist, and politician class.”
“They’re afraid of you,” Bannon told the raucous crowd. “You are an existential threat to their business model.”
He said President Donald Trump gave up his private life because “he had a duty to the people and the citizens of the United States of America,” and Bannon reminded the crowd that when the establishment attacks Trump and Ward, they are actually “trying to shut you up.”
Bannon said the D.C. establishment holds working-class Americans in “total and complete contempt” and added that he would rather be governed by the first 100 people who showed up at the rally than the top 100 partners at Goldman Sachs.
The Breitbart News Executive Chairman also mocked McConnell’s statement on Monday about how “winners make policy and losers go home.”
Before the Third Saturday in October, Bannon said “Mitch is 0-2,” referring to the Senate Majority Leader’s losses in Alabama and Tennessee.
He said McConnell’s candidate lost in Alabama and he “lost in Tennessee,” referring to establishment Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who was so terrified of losing in his primary that he somehow announced that he will retire from the Senate before embattled Tennessee football head coach Butch Jones resigned or was fired.
“Note to self, Mitch: Big Luther Strange and Little Bobby Corker are both going home,” Bannon heckled McConnell at the rally. “The people of Alabama and the people of Tennessee have spoken. Your folks are going home, and their folks are making policy.”
Bannon blasted the D.C. establishment’s “disrespect” for Trump along with their backstabbing and bickering. He accused the establishment of thwarting Trump’s economic nationalist agenda that will make America great again.
“They have sown the wind, and they’re going to reap the whirlwind,” Bannon said. “And that whirlwind is Kelli Ward.”
Bannon said Ward believes in securing the border, fair trade deals, and bringing back good-paying manufacturing jobs to Arizona
“We’re building a grassroots army,” Bannon said. “It’s going to be their money versus your muscle.”
Influential conservative host Laura Ingraham invited Bannon to speak at the event, and she said Bannon is “the man in black” who “riles up all the right people” and is a “warrior for populism and economic nationalism.”SWAT: Swat has witnessed the murder of 44 women in the name of “honour” during the current year, many of which have been concealed under the name of suicide, non-government organisation Awakening has revealed in a study.
Speaking with Pakistan Today, the NGO’s director Irfan Hussain Babak said that the rate at which “honour killings” were being carried out this year had increased sharply from last year. The year 2016 had seen 53 cases of honour killings in Swat. The NGO, which works for women’s rights in Swat and provides legal aid to families of the victims, has revealed that a lot of these cases are disguised as suicides.
Swat police have denied the reliability of these reports. Figures taken by Mingora superintendent of police (SP) claim that there had been 11 instances of honour killings this year, while there had been 6 cases in 2016.
Mingora Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Habibullah told Pakistan Today that Swat police were working hard to tackle the issue of honour killings in the district. He said that cases of honour killings would be filed by the state now, expressing his hopes that this would deter the evil practice and bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice. According to the police, three cases have been filed by the state and are all under hearing at court.
The police said that members of the victims’ families were usually involved in honour killings and to prevent themselves from disgrace, the other aggrieved family members did not bring the cases to the police, preferring the local jirgas to resolve the matter instead. If the police did make arrests, people did not appear before court to testify. This allowed criminals to escape readily from punishment, they said.
Swat bar senior lawyer Sohail Sultan observed that Swat came under the provincially administered tribal areas and therefore many laws which safeguarded women’s rights had not been extended to the area, which was a direct cause of the growing number of honour killings in Swat.
According to the Swat’s women jirga head Tabassum Adnan, the main reason for the rise of honour killings in Swat was the lack of effective legislation, which allowed criminals to run free without fear of punishment.
According to a woman social worker, the strong grip of traditions over the people was the main cause of such practices in the district, since the traditions barred women from gaining higher education and practising their choice in marriage. When a woman tries to marry by her own choice, she becomes a victim of honour killing, she said.
The civil society of Swat has expressed concerns and recorded protests against the rising incidents of honour killings in the district, subjecting NGOs, government policies and law enforcement agencies to sharp criticism for failing to prevent such events from happening.EXCLUSIVE: Jamie Foxx is back in tune with Ray helmer Taylor Hackford. Foxx has just joined the cast of Signal Hill, the working title of the drama that will star Anthony Mackie as attorney Johnnie Cochran,.and Elizabeth Banks as Mary Neiswender, an investigative newspaper reporter for the Long Beach Press-Telegram who investigated and broke stories on the coverup. Long before he defended O.J. Simpson in the trial of the century, Cochran established himself as a legal superhero because of his unrelenting pursuit of justice in the Signal Hill police brutality case in 1981. Foxx, who won the Best Actor Oscar for the Hackford-helmed Ray, here will play Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt. Cochran represented the former Black Panther party leader and Vietnam vet in helping to overturn a murder conviction that sent Pratt to prison for 27 years for a crime he said he didn’t commit. Cochran helped Pratt to settle a false imprisonment suit for $4.5 million in 1992.
The script is by David McMillan. Mackie and Jason Spire will produce with Robbie Brenner, Kevin McKeon and Jeff Kwatinetz. Hackford will also be producer. McMillan is exec producer and the hope is to go into production in January. UTA and CAA are co-repping domestic rights.How Cloud HR Software Is Changing the Workplace
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Cloud HR software gives your company the agility it needs to survive the rough-and-tumble environment of today’s competitive HR management practices. The workplace is changing dramatically due to evolving worker attitudes, advanced technologies, cultural diversity and globalisation. Online HRIS has become increasingly critical to deliver better user experiences for employees, job applicants and the executive suite. Executives demand more from HR management than passive record-keeping and workforce management. HR departments must increasingly deliver strategic business goals through their recruitment, management and forecasting policies while cutting costs. That’s why companies are willing to invest in technology – the prospect of generating greater efficiencies for fewer dollars. About 84 percent of organisations have plans to upgrade how they handle HR management functions, and many companies upgrade their online HR abilities through cloud based HR delivered as Software-as-a-Service.
Online HR can improve stakeholder experiences, expand usability options, cut paperwork, save time and reduce bad hiring decisions. A ‘survival of the fittest’ approach easily applies to every business process, industry, product and company in today’s business jungle. Recruiting the best applicants has become more competitive in today’s environment of digital empowerment and faster hiring decisions. Cloud HR software gives companies the edge they need to process reams of data to find golden kernels of talent and to charm those applicants who demonstrate the necessary skills.
Cloud HR Software Offers the Best HR Management Benefits
Any objective analysis of the cost-value and performance benefits of HR management software favours cloud HR technology over in-house systems. Proprietary systems are expensive, hard to implement, less efficient and less agile unless you can afford the development costs of full integration. The other side of the equation concerns adaptability and scalability. In-house systems can become obsolete before they’re fully deployed. That’s why cloud-based SaaS applications are such an attractive alternative in today’s rapidly evolving business environment. You can simply upgrade your software or choose another vendor to conform to developing HR management trends.
Technology costs have dropped dramatically over the past decade, but proprietary software still generates hefty capital investment and development costs. However, SaaS applications are bargains for small-to-medium-sized enterprises with limited investment budgets. You only need to pay for those applications and services that you need, and the monthly usage costs are affordable for most businesses. The benefits of SaaS and cloud HR include:
Ease of Deployment
You can avoid the high costs, downtime and long development periods of most software implementations by choosing cloud-based SaaS. Even basic ERP software can take up to two years to implement, test and debug. SaaS online HR programs are ready to use, easy to understand, thoroughly tested and ready for one-click HR management implementations.
Cost-Value Benefits
The total cost of HR management proprietary software ownership can be staggering when you consider the developmental and implementation costs, training expenses and the costs of maintaining, safeguarding, upgrading and testing your software. Ready-to-go cloud HR software immediately begins generating returns on your investment dollars without prolonged waiting and development periods. Online HR software also provides hidden cost savings by generating greater value for your employees, hiring prospects, customers and executives who increasingly use cloud HR to pursue company business objectives such as expanding to new markets, introducing new products and changing a company’s focus or concept.
It’s critical to manage perception of value in today’s recruiting. Your company’s brand perception fosters or hinders employee engagement, brand continuity and successful recruiting. A Glassdoor study found that 84 percent of workers would leave a company to work for one with a better corporate reputation. SaaS applications can be implemented specifically to address many types of value perceptions based on employee, customer and industry profiles.
Mobile-Friendly Access
Cloud HR is inherently mobile-friendly, which is critical in today’s smartphone culture – especially among millennials who are often the targets of a company’s strongest recruitment efforts. About 90 percent of organisations are using at least one cloud application, and online HR is increasingly common for recruiting, vetting, prequalifying and keeping millennials and other employees.
Mobile-friendly cloud HR applications empower faster recruiting, steady submissions of résumés, multiple communication options, online HR translations and fast connections with anyone in any location. Cloud HR can empower employees and company stakeholders to access their records 24/7 and helps to ensure faster corrections to company databases and employment records. Workers can request time off and shift changes or warn their supervisors when they’re running late or stuck in traffic without playing telephone tag. Mobile-friendly access ultimately benefits employers and HR departments even more than employees.
More Support Options
Support options are critical in today’s HR management practices because companies often employ multiple generations of workers from generation Xers to ageing baby boomers. Millennials are usually comfortable using online HR applications and digital technologies for training, onboarding, collaborating and managing their administrative requests, but older people might lack these digital skills. Each generation has its own unique concerns about jobs, the workplace, pay and benefits. Online HR support options can offer each employee profile group answers to their questions, options for connecting with third-party business associates, customer service from in-house and SaaS representatives and expert advice from a wider community of people who use the software.
Better User Experiences
Employees, hiring prospects, new hires and customers share similar views in one area: their appreciation for brilliant user experiences. Weaned on consumer-friendly shopping apps, universal access to their personal information in the cloud and customer-centric apps, people expect more from their employers including user-friendly website features, easy online HR access, faster onboarding processes and cloud HR forums where they can get answers to administrative questions or file complaints.
Workers want to understand their net pay amounts, which deductions apply, how big their tax bite is and what benefits they’re receiving. If withholding takes too little or too much, people want to adjust their tax deductions immediately. Analysing and correcting deductions in the past often generated a bureaucratic nightmare that could only be done during working hours when someone from HR was available to help. Getting excused from work duties for administrative tasks created its own set of problems. Cloud HR allows workers to view and change contact information, apply for benefits and change their authorised deductions 24/7.
Easier Upgrades
Upgrades can prove challenging even for companies with skilled IT staffs. Regardless of promises to the contrary, every upgrade to proprietary software generates extra work, glitches, security risks and other issues even if it’s only extra time to monitor the system. Upgrades can also create problems in SaaS applications, but these tend to be rare exceptions instead of endemic problems. Most SaaS upgrades are thoroughly tested and monitored, and support staff can usually troubleshoot any problems and issues that occur quickly and efficiently. Proprietary system glitches can result in downtime, lost revenue, troubleshooting costs and time-consuming adjustments to business processes.
The other side of upgrades is that it’s ridiculously easy to add new features based on company growth and new recruiting trends. You can add the features you need, scale your operation and respond quickly to competitors’ actions.
Third-Party Resources for Better Strategic Decisions
HR management duties increasingly involve meeting strategic objectives instead of just processing employee transactions. Cloud HR can collect and disseminate information that empowers long-term business decisions such as whether to enter new markets, expand into other regions or change the company’s focus, workforce and products.
Competitive Advantages
The wealth of business intelligence and information that automated online HR applications can collect provide extraordinary insights into industry trends, recruitment best practices, organisational HR management practices and competitor behaviour. Cloud HR offers strong competitive advantages, and without an agile way to incorporate new HR management features, your company could be at an extreme disadvantage. Online HR offers a wealth of competitive advantages such as streamlining the onboarding process, providing focused training and job-advancement resources and prequalifying applicants through online HR testing and surveys.
The Future of cloud HR Software
Cloud based HRIS is at the forefront of paradigm changes in the workforce as companies switch to a service economy from manufacturing. People will soon be able to print any component or product through affordable 3-D printing technology. Accountancy, law and engineering jobs are likely to become redundant when people can research these issues and manage those tasks with technology. However, people and leadership skills will play even more important roles. Most routine HR management tasks can be automated, which places greater emphasis on people. Cloud based HRIS will deliver a more holistic picture of job applicants based on each person’s social media profile, community involvement, outside interests and participation in worthy causes, online communities, conferences and peer-to-peer interactions.
SaaS Makes Sense for HR Management
SaaS technology offers your organisation efficient, affordable and sustainable ways to expand. About 74 percent of companies plan to replace their HR management systems to deliver better user experiences according to Bersin by Deloitte research. If your organisation is expanding into global markets or outgrowing its current HR management system, cloud HR could provide an extraordinary range of benefits that include fostering better user experiences for all company stakeholders.
The statistics overwhelmingly support cloud HR systems in an increasingly interconnected world. For example, companies with ‘best in class’ HR management programs are more than 25 percent more likely to use performance management software, and 75 percent of HR departments employ recruiting and/or tracking software. Job applicants usually research potential employers through social media, and 64 percent of workers use mobile devices to increase on-the-job productivity. SaaS systems can provide online HR management that connects, empowers and streamlines IT operations, and the need for complex integrations and extensive investments in proprietary software that could become obsolete in just a few years.
Nobody can accurately predict exactly what the future holds, but clever managers can anticipate trends and prepare for them. Darwin defined evolution as a continuous struggle where adaptability rewards species with survival. Surviving the exponential growth and change of HR management could well depend on how quickly your company adapts to online HR practices.Some Everton fans have called for Roberto Martinez to leave the club as they have gone seven games without a win
Everton manager Roberto Martinez says he is "ready to fight more than ever" as dissent grows among some of the club's supporters.
The Toffees have taken three points from the last 21 available, while they were defeated by Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-final last Saturday.
Fans have held banners in recent games calling for the Spaniard to leave.
He said: "We are all hurting together. I understand their passion. Football without passion makes no sense."
Martinez added: "I always encourage huge expectations and drive for silverware. When you are not in those positions then scrutiny should be there."
The Spaniard's cause was not helped by a 4-0 defeat at neighbours Liverpool in the Merseyside derby on 20 April.
Everton are 11th in the Premier League table, 10 points above the relegation zone with four games remaining.
After Saturday, they travel to leaders Leicester City on 7 May before finishing the campaign against struggling Sunderland (away) on 11 May and Norwich (home) four days later.Late nights after a brew day, Laffler spends a good deal of time closing down shop on his own, seeing few, if any visitors for the day. He's alone with his process and his thoughts the way a painter or a writer might want to be. He seems to be energized by these long, but satisfying days of productive solitude until he heads out for a drink and starts Tweeting at Boulevard's Jeremy Danner like pen pals at summer camp. Bleitner, on the other hand, splits his time with accounts in the field. Hardly the salesman type, he simply tries to establish relationships with bars and restaurants that align with the Off Color approach — smart, playful recipes that reward curiosity. He's learned a lot about the particular challenges of getting your product noticed in a booming market where consumers have more taphandles to choose from than ever before.
"With as much press and exposure that we've gotten, there's still a helluva lot of people that have never heard of us. And you find that out really quickly visiting accounts. The market is just so competitive on-premise, even from a year ago" explains Bleitner. "The challenge for the small producer is that your typical neighborhood bar won't put in the time to do research. But they know they have a Lagunitas rep that comes by every week and chats them up. Revolution has done a really good job with that too. They're everywhere. And there's an arms race with distributors right now so they're trying to rep 50 brands. They can't sell every brand with the same commitment at the same time."
Competing in a Growing Market
The competition isn't quite as simple as traditional press would have us believe. The Big Beer vs Little Beer ignores the complexities of a market where many new craft-focused bars might not even have a Budweiser handle to steal anymore. And if they do, it's one of 75, backed by a bottle list that goes into the 100s.
"The dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about is that the number of breweries opening up is not on pace with the number of new accounts and new tap handles. We're not all taking handles away from fucking AB as much as everyone wants that to be the ethos and the story. They think we're all in this together and we're fighting the big guys. That story died in the early 2000s" explains Laffler. "And so you get brands like Deschutes selling in Chicago because it's impossible for them to continue growing in their own market any further, partly because there's little guys like us there now. So they look for markets like ours where we're still developing. They're just trying to figure out where they can sell beer."
Telling a story from grain to glass is a challenge for any brewery. Every pitch is like a game of telephone, from the distributor, to the sales rep, to the beer buyer, to the bartender — sometimes the important stuff gets lost in translation. And selling beers with a bit of an obscure edge to them doesn't make things easier. In recent weeks, Bleitner has stopped trying to teach many accounts what a Gose is. He just refers to it as a "tart wheat ale" and things smooth out.
"We're doing stuff that isn't well know. Everybody that knows what a gose is, already knows that this is a gose. So there's really no point in continuing to tell other people because they don't know what that is. For every one person that asks what it is, there's a dozen that never ask and maybe find it off-putting that they don't know. Some people just don't like to ask questions or feel left out and avoid it completely. So we focus on the process rather than the technical style. Big Star put it on their board as Off Color Wheat Beer and it was our number one account for weeks. So we call it a blended wheat beer. Then they ask what it's blended with and we can start talking about our lacto fermentation and blending process. That's been a lot more approachable."Persons using assistive technology might not be able to fully access information in this file. For assistance, please send e-mail to: [email protected]. Type 508 Accommodation and the title of the report in the subject line of e-mail. Cigarette Smoking-Attributable Morbidity --- United States, 2000 Each year in the United States, approximately 440,000 persons die of a cigarette smoking-attributable illness, resulting in 5.6 million years of potential life lost, $75 billion in direct medical costs, and $82 billion in lost productivity (1). To assess smoking-attributable morbidity, the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Research Triangle Institute, and CDC analyzed data from three sources: the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III (NHANES III), and the U.S. Census. This report summarizes the results of that analysis, which indicate that an estimated 8.6 million persons in the United States have serious illnesses attributed to smoking; chronic bronchitis and emphysema account for 59% of all smoking-attributable diseases. These findings underscore the need to expand surveillance of the disease burden caused by smoking and to establish comprehensive tobacco-use prevention and cessation efforts to reduce the adverse health impact of smoking. Data on the number of persons by sex, age group (18--34 years, 35--49 years, 50--64 years, and > 65 years), and race (white or other race) for each state and the District of Columbia were obtained from the 2000 U.S. Census. National estimates of the prevalence of current, former, and never smokers* were derived from the combined data from the 1999, 2000, and 2001 BRFSS surveys. Estimates of the prevalence of smoking-related conditions were obtained from the NHANES III survey for 1988--1994 for current, former, and never smokers for each demographic group to estimate the smoking-attributable fractions of morbid conditions. The smoking-related conditions for which data were collected are those categorized by the U.S. Surgeon General as caused by smoking (2) and addressed in NHANES III. Respondents reported whether a "doctor ever told" them if they had any of the following conditions: stroke, heart attack, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and specific cancer types, including lung, bladder, mouth/pharynx, esophagus, cervix, kidney, larynx, or pancreas. Smoking-attributable morbidity estimates were obtained in two ways. For one estimate, each person was considered as the unit of analysis, and persons with at least one smoking-related condition were counted as having a condition. For the second estimate, the condition was treated as the unit of analysis, so persons with multiple conditions were counted more than once. Estimates were derived separately for each condition, and the total of all conditions was summed. The number of persons with a smoking-attributable morbid condition was estimated by state and demographic subpopulations from the following five steps: 1) BRFSS smoking status estimates by demographic group were applied to census data to estimate the number of current, former, and never smokers in each demographic group in each state; 2) NHANES III smoking-related disease frequency data were applied to the numbers from the first step to estimate the number of adults with a smoking-related condition; 3) attributable fractions for current and former smokers in each demographic group were multiplied by the number of persons with a smoking-related disease to yield an estimate of the number of persons with a disease that is attributable to smoking (attributable fraction = [disease prevalence rate exposed -- disease prevalence rate unexposed ] / disease prevalence rate exposed ); 4) the numbers obtained from the third step were summed across all demographic categories in each state to yield an estimate of persons with smoking-attributable conditions in each state; and 5) the numbers of smoking-attributable morbid conditions obtained in each state from step four were summed to yield an overall U.S. estimate. Survey design-adjusted variance estimates were calculated for each smoking and disease prevalence by using SUDAAN. The variance estimate for the attributable fraction was calculated by using standard methodology (3), and a joint 95% confidence interval (CI) was obtained for each attributable fraction by using Bonferroni's adjustment method (4). In 2000, an estimated 8.6 million (95% CI = 6.9--10.5 million) persons in the United States had an estimated 12.7 million (95% CI = 10.8--15.0 million) smoking-attributable conditions. For current smokers, chronic bronchitis was the most prevalent (49%) condition, followed by emphysema (24%). For former smokers, the three most prevalent conditions were chronic bronchitis (26%), emphysema (24%), and previous heart attack (24%). Lung cancer accounted for 1% of all cigarette smoking-attributable illnesses (Table). Reported by: A Hyland, PhD, C Vena, J Bauer, PhD, Q Li, MS, GA Giovino, PhD, J Yang, PhD, KM Cummings, PhD, Dept of Cancer Prevention, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York. P Mowery, MS, Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. J Fellows, PhD, T Pechacek, PhD, L Pederson, PhD, Office on Smoking and Health, CDC. Editorial Note: This report provides the first national estimates of the number of persons with |
Mat); return baseMat; } if (!baseMat.HasProperty("_StencilReadMask")) // <= { Debug.LogWarning(".... _StencilWriteMask property", baseMat); return baseMat; }
The programmer must have copy-pasted a code fragment but forgot to change the condition.
Based on this typo, I'd say that the second check was meant to look like this:
if (!baseMat.HasProperty("_StencilWriteMask"))
Instantiating an exception class without further using the instance
V3006 The object was created but it is not being used. The 'throw' keyword could be missing: throw new ApplicationException(FOO). AssetBundleDemo AssetBundleManager.cs 446
if (bundleBaseDownloadingURL.ToLower().StartsWith("odr://")) { #if ENABLE_IOS_ON_DEMAND_RESOURCES Log(LogType.Info, "Requesting bundle " +....); m_InProgressOperations.Add( new AssetBundleDownloadFromODROperation(assetBundleName) ); #else new ApplicationException("Can't load bundle " +....); // <= #endif }
Class ApplicationException is created but not used in any way. The programmer must have wanted an exception to be thrown but forgot to add the throw keyword when forming the exception.
Unused arguments in a string formatting method
As we all know, the number of {N} format items used for string formatting must correspond to the number of arguments passed to the method.
V3025 Incorrect format. A different number of format items is expected while calling 'WriteLine' function. Arguments not used: port. AssetBundleDemo AssetBundleServer.cs 59
Console.WriteLine("Starting up asset bundle server.", port); // <= Console.WriteLine("Port: {0}", port); Console.WriteLine("Directory: {0}", basePath);
Judging by the logic of this code, it seems that the programmer forgot to remove the argument in the first line. This typo is not critical from the technical viewpoint and it won't cause any error, but it still carries no meaning.
A loop that may become infinite under certain conditions
V3032 Waiting on this expression is unreliable, as compiler may optimize some of the variables. Use volatile variable(s) or synchronization primitives to avoid this. AssetBundleDemo AssetBundleServer.cs 16
Process masterProcess = Process.GetProcessById((int)processID); while (masterProcess == null ||!masterProcess.HasExited) // <= { Thread.Sleep(1000); }
The programmer must have intended the loop to iterate until completion of an external process but didn't take into account the fact that the masterProcess variable might initially have the value null if the process was not found, which would cause an infinite loop. To make this algorithm work properly, you need to access the process using its identifier at each iteration:
while (true) { Process masterProcess = Process.GetProcessById((int)processID); if (masterProcess == null || masterProcess.HasExited) // <= break; Thread.Sleep(1000); }
Unsafe event initialization
The analyzer detected a potentially unsafe call to an event handler, which may result in throwing NullReferenceException.
V3083 Unsafe invocation of event 'unload', NullReferenceException is possible. Consider assigning event to a local variable before invoking it. AssetBundleDemo AssetBundleManager.cs 47
internal void OnUnload() { m_AssetBundle.Unload(false); if (unload!= null) unload(); // <= }
In this code, the unload field is tested for null and then this event is called. The null check allows you to avoid throwing an exception in case the event has no subscribers at moment when it is being called.
Imagine, however, that the event has one subscriber. At the point between the null check and the call to the event handler, the subscriber may unsubscribe from the event, for example, in another thread. To protect your code in this situation, you can fix it in the following way:
internal void OnUnload() { m_AssetBundle.Unload(false); unload?.Invoke(); // <= }
This solution will help you make sure that testing of the event for null and calling to its handler will be executed as one statement, making the event call safe.
Part of a logical expression always true or false
V3063 A part of conditional expression is always false: connId < 0. UnityEngine.Networking ConnectionArray.cs 59
public NetworkConnection Get(int connId) { if (connId < 0) { return m_LocalConnections[Mathf.Abs(connId) - 1]; } if (connId < 0 || connId > m_Connections.Count) // <= {... return null; } return m_Connections[connId]; }
The connId < 0 expression will always evaluate to false the second time it is checked in the get function, since the function always terminates after the first check. Therefore, evaluating this expression for the second time does not make sense.
The analyzer found one more similar error.
public bool isServer { get { if (!m_IsServer) { return false; } return NetworkServer.active && m_IsServer; // <= } }
You surely know that this property can be easily simplified to the following:
public bool isServer { get { return m_IsServer && NetworkServer.active; } }
Besides these two examples, there are 6 more issues of that kind:
V3022 Expression'm_Peers == null' is always false. UnityEngine.Networking NetworkMigrationManager.cs 710
V3022 Expression 'uv2.gameObject == null' is always false. UnityEngine.Networking NetworkServer.cs 1731
V3022 Expression 'newEnterTarget!= null' is always true. UnityEngine.UI BaseInputModule.cs 147
V3022 Expression 'pointerEvent.pointerDrag!= null' is always false. UnityEngine.UI TouchInputModule.cs 227
V3063 A part of conditional expression is always true: currentTest!= null. UnityTestTools TestRunner.cs 237
V3063 A part of conditional expression is always false: connId < 0. UnityEngine.Networking ConnectionArray.cs 86
Conclusion
Just like any other project, this one contains a number of errors and typos. As you have probably noticed, PVS-Studio is especially good at catching typos.
You are also welcome to try our static analyzer with your own or someone else's project in C/C++/C#.
Thank you all for reading! May your code stay bugless!Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have mimicked pulmonary edema in a microchip lined by living human cells, as reported today in the journal Science Translation Medicine. They used this “lung-on-a-chip” to study drug toxicity and identify potential new therapies to prevent this life-threatening condition.
The study offers further proof-of-concept that human “organs-on-chips” hold tremendous potential to replace traditional approaches to drug discovery and development.
“Major pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of time and a huge amount of money on cell cultures and animal testing to develop new drugs,” says Donald Ingber, founding director of the Wyss Institute and senior author of the study, “but these methods often fail to predict the effects of these agents when they reach humans.”
The lung-on-a-chip device, which the team first described just two years ago, is a crystal-clear, flexible polymer about the size of a memory stick that contains hollow channels fabricated using computer microchip manufacturing techniques. Two of the channels are separated by a thin, flexible, porous membrane that on one side is lined with human lung cells from the air sac and exposed to air; human capillary blood cells are placed on the other side with medium flowing over their surface. A vacuum applied to side channels deforms this tissue-tissue interface to re-create the way human lung tissues physically expand and retract when breathing.
Wyss Technology Development Fellow Dongeun Huh, who also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Boston Children’s Hospital, studied a cancer chemotherapy drug called interleukin-2 — or IL-2, for short — in the lung-on-a-chip. A major toxic side effect of IL-2 is pulmonary edema, which is a deadly condition in which the lungs fill with fluid and blood clots.
When IL-2 was injected into the blood channel of the lung-on-a-chip, fluid leaked across the membrane and two tissue layers, reducing the volume of air in the other channel and compromising oxygen transport — just as it does in lungs of human patients when it is administered at the equivalent doses and over the same time course. Blood plasma proteins also crossed into the air channel, leading to the formation of blood clots in the air space, as they do in humans treated with IL-2.
But one result came as a surprise.
It turns out the physical act of breathing greatly enhances the effects of IL-2 in pulmonary edema — “something that clinicians and scientists never suspected before,” says Ingber, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at HMS.
When the team turned on the vacuum attached to the chip to simulate breathing, it increased fluid leakage more than threefold when treated with the clinically relevant IL-2 dose, and the Wyss team confirmed that the same response occurs in an animal model of pulmonary edema. This result could suggest that doctors treating patients on a respirator with IL-2 should reduce the tidal volume of air being pushed into the lungs, for example, in order to minimize the negative side effects of this drug.
Most exciting for the future of drug testing was the Wyss team’s finding that “this on-chip model of human pulmonary edema can be used to identify new potential therapeutic agents in vitro,” Ingber says. The pulmonary edema symptoms in the lung-on-a-chip disease model could be prevented by treating the tissues with a new class of drug, a transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) channel blocker, under development by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). In a separate study published by the GSK team in the same issue of Science Translation Medicine, the beneficial effects of TRPV4 inhibition in reducing pulmonary edema were independently validated using animal models of pulmonary edema caused by heart failure.
“In just a little more than two years, we’ve gone from unveiling the initial design of the lung-on-a-chip to demonstrating its potential to model a complex human disease, which we believe provides a glimpse of what drug discovery and development might look like in the future,” Ingber says.
The cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional team that was led by Ingber and Huh also included Wyss postdoctoral fellow Daniel Leslie; Benjamin Matthews, assistant professor of pediatrics in the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Wyss Institute researcher Jacob Fraser; Samuel Jurek, a researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School; senior Wyss staff scientist Geraldine Hamilton; and senior scientific investigator Kevin Thorneloe and investigator M. Allen McAlexander from GlaxoSmithKline. Ingber is also a professor of bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
“Organs-on-a-chip represents a new approach to model the structure, biology, and function of human organs, as evidenced by the complex breathing action of this engineered lung. This breathing action was key to providing new insight into the etiology of pulmonary edema,” said James M. Anderson, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives, which provided partial support for the research through the Common Fund’s Regulatory Science program. “These results provide support for the broader use of such microsystems in studying disease pathology and hopefully for identifying new therapeutic targets.”
The work was funded by the NIH, the Food and Drug Administration, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.A boy born without ears has had a pair created from his own ribs at Great Ormond Street hospital.
Nine-year-old Kieran was born deaf and also had a rare condition which meant he did not have fully formed ears – only small lobes where his ears should have been.
Last week's procedure was primarily cosmetic but, thanks to several previous operations and a hearing aid, Kieran has gradually been able to hear. Without help he is still about 90% deaf, but, when using hearing aids, he could "hear the wind blow and the birds tweet", David Sorkin, his father, said.
Before the surgery, Kieran, from Bushey, Hertfordshire, said: "I've always wanted big ears, and now I'm finally going to have them." Following the procedure his parents helped him to take a photograph of his newly crafted ear, or a "side selfie". Sorkin said he and his wife, Louise, were "on cloud nine" after the procedure. "We could not have wished for a better result," Sorkin said.
Kieran struggled at his first school because he looked different to the other children. He has since moved to a school with a deafness unit in every year group.
"They are a little bit more receptive to deafness and to a child looking different. But this will boost his confidence no end," Sorkin said. "His reaction was just a 'wow', he is very happy." The 44-year-old IT manager added: "It's been heart-wrenching for us and we've had the moral dilemma all along of whether it's right to change the features that Kieran was born with. But Kieran has talked about having ear surgery ever since the age of six when he saw a TV programme about it.
"It was very important that this was Kieran's decision, and I think it's happened at exactly the right time for his development."
He also described Kieran's difficulties at school, saying: "He had problems at school in that he didn't gel very well in the groups because he looked different to other kids and he only had one or two friends at his previous school. He has now moved to a different school now and they have a deaf unit in every year so they are a little bit more receptive to deafness and to a child looking different."
Kieran was born with bilateral microtia, a congenital deformity where the external ear is underdeveloped. It affects one in 100,000 babies.
Medics, led by Neil Bulstrode, GOSH consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon, have now turned his fortunes around.
During the six-hour operation Bulstrode harvested the rib cartilage from both sides of Kieran's chest and then carved and shaped it into frameworks for Kieran's ears. When designing them he used an outline of Mrs Sorkin's ears as a "family template" to make them as close as possible to the ear shape that he might otherwise have had.
He then grafted the ears on to Kieran's head under pockets of skin and then used a vacuum to shape the skin to the contours of the new ear.
"Bilateral reconstructions are sometimes done one at a time, but for Kieran we have created both of his new ears at the same time," Bulstrode said. "This allows us to ensure the ears are balanced and achieve the best result
"It's a major operation but it brings a significant improvement in quality of life for children with microtia. Their confidence improves exponentially and their performance at school improves," he said. "If you can improve a young person's confidence, you can alter their whole trajectory in life."
Kieran will have a follow-up operation in six months' time, and hopefully he will not need to have any more, Mr Sorkin added.
"These should last because they are cartilage and not prosthetics," he said
A hospital spokeswoman said that researchers were working with the University College London Institute for Child Health to try to perform ear reconstructions for children like Kieran by growing new ear frameworks and other skeletal structures from a child's own stem cells.
They hope to be able to use stem cells from a child's own fat to create a new ear. Experts say that the approach would be far less invasive than the current treatment.
• This article was amended on 12 August 2014. The original headline stated: "Boy born without ears can hear thanks to pioneering procedure". As the story says, Kieran could already hear "thanks to several previous operations and a hearing aid". The headline has been corrected.Kendo is literally the "Way of the [Japanese] Sword." It is derived from kenjutsu, the sword techniques developed by Samurai warriors throughout Japan's history of feudal warfare. Kendo is always practiced with two dueling opponents and on a smooth, pliable wooden floor. To prevent injuries, shinai (bamboo swords) and bogu (fencing armor) are used in place of the sharpened katana and yoroi (samurai armor).
Like most Japanese forms today, kendo has both a traditional martial art component and a sport/tournament component. Most kenshi will inevitably participate in tournaments for the exhilaration and potential for glory. However, kendo is first and foremost a martial art. Kendo is more than just a sport, it places emphasis on spiritual development and technical discipline as well as the practical application of using a sword on the medieval battlefield.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
GRANDVIEW, Mo. -- A Pleasant Valley, Mo., house in the 6800 block of Sobbie Road had literally been left to the birds. When Carol Fisher entered the home her ex-husband used to live in, she discovered six parrots roaming the back of the home with little food, no water and no heat.
"It was a deplorable mess as far as I'm concerned," she said. "I think a bird should be treated like a dog or cat."
The Excelsior Springs woman believes the two cockatoos and four macaws had literally been eating the walls since October to survive. That's when her divorce was granted, but the judge told her she had to wait 120 days before she could enter the home her husband had been living in for 11 years. Fisher says the home looked like an episode of "Hoarders" and was surprised the birds were still alive.
Dr. Julie Burge and two volunteers with Burge Bird Services rescued the birds and brought five of them to Burges Bird Rescue clinic in Grandview, Mo.
"I've done disaster response, and I've seen mouse and cockroach infestations, but this is the first one I think where no one was even living there," Burge said.
Burge said all of the birds appeared to be malnourished and in poor health. She's treating them with antibiotics and says they'll need a month of recovery before they can be adopted.
Fisher decided to keep one of the cockatoos, but if you're interested in adopting one of the other birds contact Burge Bird Service at 816-356-4700 or email the clinic at [email protected] camp: Sanders' debate request a ‘stunt’
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at a rally March 26, 2016, in Madison, Wis. (Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images)
Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Monday brushed off a request from Sen. Bernie Sanders that she debate him in her home state of New York.
Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon told CNN that the campaign considers the request a “stunt” by a campaign “struggling” for attention and an effort to “get back on people’s radar.”
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver sent a letter to the Clinton camp on Sunday making the request.
“Our campaign continues to believe that the people of New York, the largest April primary, deserve to have the debate held in their state, and that it should be held prior to the New York primary,” Weaver wrote.
Clinton strategist Joel Benenson told reporters Monday that that would be unlikely at this point.
“We’re still in the month of March, we’ve got real estate to go before New York,” he said.
Wisconsin is scheduled to hold a Democratic primary April 5, and Wyoming will have caucuses April 9. New Yorkers will have their primary April 19.
The campaigns had agreed to at least one debate each in March, April and May. March debates were held in Flint, Mich., and Miami. The May debate is slated for California, according to Weaver’s letter.
“Can you please explain why New York should not host the April debate?” he wrote. “Is the Secretary concerned about debating before the people who twice elected her to the U.S. Senate?”
Benenson suggested that the Clinton campaign also has been concerned with the tone of Sanders’ campaign and that negativity – which he had foresworn earlier in the race – could lessen the chances she will debate.
“We think that this party is strong when we have a good strong healthy debate, but the tone of the campaign has become increasingly negative and personal in some places,” he said. “They spent a lot of money on radio and TV in some states calling out Secretary Clinton, so, you know, I just think we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Clinton is leading Sanders by whopping margins in New York – 34.5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average. But the Vermont senator is hoping to capitalize on the momentum from his three big wins on Saturday in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington state. His campaign said it has raised $4 million since the victories.
Contributing: Nicole Gaudiano
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1MwHIlaIn an ocean of music sameness there are not many artists and groups who can claim a distinct sound and original approach in their work. More often than not is not because of lack of talent or skill. There are many talented and accomplished musicians yet what elevates some above the rest often comes in the form of a few unexpected notes, an interesting tempo, inventive harmonies, a phrasing that is personal and captivating. Sylvan Esso possess those qualities and much more. Without resorting to flashy pyrotechnics but staying committed to making music they have created ten gems that glisten, each one in its own unique way. The music is wonderfully and intricately layered, the vocals are fluid and immediate. There are many discoveries that surface with every listening. The intimacy of the vocals at times is as if you are told a secret in your ear and other times it is as if the voice comes from the listener's body. If Sylvan Esso continue to write music at this level of creativity and inventiveness we’ll be rewarded with amazing music for years to come. I look forward to their second album.Yo-Kai Watch, Level-5's 3DS Ghostbusters-meets-Pokémon battler, will hit the small screen before making its way to American consoles this fall.
The anime based on the titular game series debuts on Disney XD next month. Starting Oct. 5, the show will premiere a new episode each day at 5 p.m. Afterward, it will air weekly in the same time slot. The series' American YouTube channel uploaded a trailer that introduces the story and the dub to those already familiar with the anime.
The animated Yo-Kai Watch follows Nathan Adams who joins up with the friendly Yo-Kai Whisper, to find and catch the ghosts and goblins hiding around the world using his trusty watch. After capture, he can summon them at will.
It's a synopsis that will sound familiar to Pokémon fans, and the games follow a similar storyline. Just like Nintendo's kid-friendly role-playing game, Yo-Kai Watch has become an enormous franchise in its home country and is angling to do so abroad, as well.
The Disney XD premiere will be American audiences' first exposure to the breakout Japanese hit. The franchise has sold more than 7 million copies since it first launched in 2013.
Hasbro will also work with Dentsu Entertainment and TV Tokyo, who produce the television series, to bring toys to the West next year, such as the hero's spirit-capturing watch. The official website also promises comics, DVDs and other "consumer goods" to entice consumers.
American fans of the anime will have their chance to try out Yo-Kai summoning for themselves when the first game in the series launches this holiday season. Japanese gamers will receive the newest Yo-Kai Watch installment sometime next year, which is, interestingly enough, set abroad.Before the advent of the uber-popular show Mythbusters or the push for more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in schools, parents and their kids were doing at-home science experiments. Now, the trend continues to blossom, although many of the experiments have remained somewhat the same…and always awesomely exciting!
If you’re a parent and you want to do something with your kid that isn’t related to cleaning the toilets or forging through homework, check out these 20 great science projects that you can complete in the confines of your humble abode. Most of them use around-the-home items that you probably have on hand, although some will require a little bit of shopping ahead of time. To help you decide which are best for your children’s needs, the 20 have been divided into projects for younger students and projects for older ones.
11 Cool Science Projects for the Younger Set
1. Now You See It, Now You Don’t!
Want to visually explain how bleach works? This is as easy as it gets!
What you’ll need for this project:
Two clear plastic cups
Food coloring (red is great to use)
Bleach
Water
Directions:
Fill one plastic cup three-quarters of the way with water Add several drops of food coloring to the water and mix it up until it is red/pink Fill the other plastic cup one-quarter of the way with bleach Slowly add the bleach to the water mixture Watch as the bleach expands the molecules of dye attached to the water molecules, thereby making the water look clear again
WARNING: Do not under any circumstances drink the bleached water!
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2: Buoyancy “Magic”
For this project, you’ll need only a ketchup packet and a one- or two-liter plastic bottle filled about three-quarters of the way to the top with water. Pop the ketchup packet into the bottle, and then squeeze the bottle to see if you can make the packet move up or down. Try different packets, such as those of mustard or soy sauce. Do they move the same way as the ketchup packet did?
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3. Rain, Rain, Don’t Go Away!
Make it rain inside your house.
You’ll need:
A plate
A glass mason jar
Ice cubes (about one or two cups)
Very hot water
Place the hot water into the glass jar, about a third of the way up. Put the plate on top of the jar. Place all the ice cubes carefully on the plate. Watch the inside of the jar start to exhibit rain!
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4. Sunscreen Importance 101
Do your kids whine about wearing sunscreen? Show them the value of it with some sunscreen and black construction paper. Put a dab of sunscreen onto the paper and then smear it around. Place the black construction paper into direction sunlight for a few hours. Notice how the construction paper fades where the sunscreen wasn’t applied.
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5. What Color is Your Celery?
Little kids love to see how foods can be used for the purpose of science. In this experiment, they’ll play with celery and food coloring.
You’ll just need some celery stalks, water, clear glasses and several shades of food coloring. Fill each glass halfway with water and then add some food dye to each glass. Cut the celery stalks so the leafy part is at the top. Place the other end directly into the glass. Over several hours, the colored water will begin to move up into the stalk. After a period of time, the kids will see how the porous celery has absorbed the colored water.
NOTE: Some children are allergic to certain food dyes, so it’s best not to eat this experiment as a snack!
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6. Make Your Own Jellyfish
This experiment is mostly for pleasure, but kids really do love the results.
You’ll only need a one- or two-liter clear bottle (cleaned), a clear plastic grocery bag, dyed water (blue is nice), scissors and a white string. First, fill the bottle halfway with the dyed water. Then, lay out your plastic grocery bag. Start cutting it into small strips (you may need to do some trial runs with this.) Tie the strips together to form a jellyfish-like shape.
Now, push the plastic “jellyfish” into the dyed water. Gently add more dyed water on top of it, leaving at least two or three inches of air at the top of the bottle. Tightly secure the top to the bottle, and then allow your children to play with the “jellyfish in a bottle”.
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7. Magnetic Magic
Want to show a little one the power of magnets? Get an empty, clear two-liter soda bottle. Fill it with half-inch long pipe cleaner bits. (You can just cut them to this size.) There should be about 3-4 inches worth at the bottom of the soda bottle when you’re finished.
Now, let your child use a larger magnet to run along the side of the soda bottle. The metal-based pipe cleaners will be attracted to the magnets.
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8. Will It Dissolve?
This is another fast experiment that doesn’t take much time to set up, but can provide a lot of fun discussions. You’ll just need a clear bowl filled with water, and several other bowls each filled with a variety of items: salt, sugar, baking soda, rice, tea, coffee, spices. Allow your child to put one ingredient into the bowl of water. Then, see if it dissolves. Continue with the experiment, removing the old water and re-filling the bowl each time.
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9. How Does an Elephant Brush His Teeth?
Have you ever wondered what elephant toothpaste might look like? Tell your kids that you’re going to make some together.
What you’ll need for this project:
A two-liter soda bottle, cleaned
Hydrogen peroxide solution (at least 6% or greater)
Dishwashing soap (liquid)
Warm water
One yeast packet
Food coloring
A cooking pan (such as for a roast)
Directions:
Place the soda bottle upright in the middle of the cooking pan Fill the bottle with a half cup of hydrogen peroxide, a few drops of the food coloring, and a few drops of the dishwashing soap In another bowl, mix together two tablespoons of the warm water and the yeast, allowing the yeast to dissolve Allow your child to SLOWLY pour the yeast mixture into the soda bottle mixture and watch the elephant toothpaste come to life
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10. The Twisted Candy Cane
Have too many candy canes after the holidays? Don’t pitch them or force yourself to eat them – turn them into science projects instead!
For this experiment, you’ll need several candy canes (any flavors or sizes should do), a baking sheet, an oven and some aluminum foil. Carefully unwrap the candy canes and place them onto pieces of aluminum foil that are shaped like they are. Put the aluminum foil and candy canes onto the baking sheet.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. When the oven is hot, pop the baking sheet into the oven. After two or three minutes, check on the candy canes. Don’t allow them to melt; they should just be malleable, not drippy! Test them with tongs, not your fingers. When they seem bendable, take them out of the oven and wait a minute so they won’t burn your hands. At the point that they can be safely touched, allow your children to twist them into shapes. Make pretzels and circles and curlicues!
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11. Make Giant Gummies
Who doesn’t love a gummy bear? It’s even better when you see your favorite gummy treat expand to twice its size… or greater. Simply drop a gummy into a clean mason jar filled with water and wait. The porous gummy will absorb the liquid and expand.
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9 Amazing Science Experiments for Older Kids and Teens
1. It’s Conductive!
This experiment tests the electrical conductivity of several water-based liquids. It’s fascinating to see which conduct electricity and which don’t.
What you’ll need for this project:
One conductivity board (you can make your own or buy one online)
A glass bowl
Water
Different water-soluble liquids and solids (bleach, laundry detergents, food coloring, glycerine, salt, sugar, baking soda)
Directions:
Hook up the conductivity board Pour water into the glass bowl Test the conductivity of the water alone Add one of the water-soluble liquids or solids to the water and then retest, making note of any differences or similarities
NOTE: This makes a fun classroom experiment for homeschoolers.
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2. It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a Hovercraft!
Create a simple hovercraft that’s cool to operate using only a CD (make sure it’s one you don’t want to use again), a push-up top from a water bottle (cleaned), a balloon (round is best) and some superglue.
Directions:
Superglue the push-up top to the middle of the CD After the glue is dry, blow up the balloon Affix the balloon over the push-up top Place the CD onto a non-carpeted, bare floor and watch as the CD hovers from the escaping balloon air
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3. How Egg-cellent!
Did you ever want to walk on eggs, just to see what would happen? This project is hilarious, and great for groups of kids. While it’s fine for the younger set, it’s probably more impactful for older children.
You’ll need plenty of egg cartons filled with large eggs to create an eggy “walkway”, so if you’re doing this as a group, ask for donations. Lay down a layer of plastic garbage bags under the cartons of eggs, and line the cartons up lengthwise two cartons deep. Two-by-two, you can create long walkways.
Have all the kids remove their shoes and socks, and then line them up. Two kids can assist the child who is walking on the eggs. He or she should be asked to keep his or her foot as flat as possible to make this work. The assistants should help by alleviating some of the weight. Ideally, the child should be able to walk across all the eggs without breaking any.
NOTE: Be prepared for some eggs to break during the project. This means you’ll need some way to wash off goopy feet!
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4. DIY Tornado
You can easily show how a tornado works with a mason jar, water and dishwashing detergent. Simply fill the mason jar about three-quarters of the way full with water, and add a few drops of the dishwashing detergent. Secure the top on the jar, and then shake it hard. Place the jar on a table, and a funnel should appear. Voila! Instant tornado!
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5. Oobleck Fun
If you’ve never heard of Oobleck, it’s a creation of two cups of cornstarch mixed with one cup of water. When you play with it, it’s like a solid. When you allow it to rest, it becomes a liquid. Have fun trying some different ways of making it turn from a solid to a liquid and back again. This can make a really intriguing science fair project.
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6. Help a Plant See the Light
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Plants will always try to seek the sunlight, and you can show how this happens by making a maze out of shoebox, and then adding an everyday bean plant to the bottom of the maze. As the plant stretches and grows, it will twist and turn throughout the maze in order to reach the sun.
NOTE: This experiment takes place over several weeks. Again, it’s great for a science fair project or classroom experiment because of its length.
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7. Eeek! That Egg Is Naked!
When most eggs are without their shells, they certainly can’t be easily handled. But what would happen if you allowed an uncooked egg to sit in a glass filled with vinegar for about a day? Try it and carefully remove the shell, which will already been partially removed from the acidic solution. The egg should feel rubbery. See if it will splatter when you drop it from a height of a few inches.
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8. Make Fireflies with a Glow Stick
Tired of waiting around for summer to come and the fireflies to make their presence? Buy some glow sticks at the dollar store and open them up very carefully. Put the contents of the sticks into cleaned mason jars. Seal the jars, and then shake them well. The glow stick chemicals will affix to the jar sides and provide a soft glow. This is actually a nifty experiment if kids are going to have a classroom party and want a cool effect for table lanterns.
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9. It’s “Snot” Funny!
Okay, it really is funny. Snot, that is. So why not create your own? Yes, it’s disgusting… but it’s an unforgettable experiment.
What you’ll need for this project:
Boiling water
A cup
Plain, unflavored gelatin
Corn syrup
Directions:
Fill the cup half-full of the boiling water Add three teaspoons of gelatin to the water Allow the gelatin to soften, then stir it with a fork Add a quarter of a cup of the corn syrup to the gelatin mixture Stir the new mixture with the fork again Check out the strands of “snot” that have formed
As the mixture continues to cool down, add small amounts of water to it. Then, gross out everyone. What’s not to love?
ADDED BONUS: Put some green food coloring into the boiling water.
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Remember that you don’t have to go hog-wild with science projects. Even uncomplicated ones can pack an amazing wallop of fun.“Cut yourself some slack” aka 10 things all beginners should know.
The road from beginner to professional creative is a rocky one. We can’t be there to hold your hand and guide you through the learning process, but we can give you this list of 10 things all beginners should know.
1- See your failures as a learning curve
It’s ok, we all make mistakes when we’re just starting out. It makes us feel like idiots but, making mistakes is the best way to learn, so cut yourself some slack! If you never make mistakes, you’ll never move forward. Then, the next time you make something, it will be a little better. Contrary to popular myth, Newton did not come up with the theory of gravity the instant the apple struck his head. It takes a lot of mistakes to create something great.
2 – Don’t compare yourself to others
We all have people in the industry that we aspire to be. It can be really tempting to compare yourself to them, but this is the fastest way to get discouraged and unhappy. Those people have already been through this process: they made mistakes, failed and got back up again and now they’re pros. If you’re just starting out, your work is never going to be as good as your peers. It takes years of hard work and practice. But, you will get there, it just won’t be by tomorrow.
3 – Do more with less
Ever hear the phrase ‘all the gear but no idea’? Loads of shiny |
roughly twice as fast as the next best alternative, that costs less, that is safer, that is not subject to weather and is more convenient,' Mr Musk said.
'If there were such a thing, I think most people would take it. In fact, it would increase the travel between the city pairs because of the increased convenience.'
Experts say Musk's track record could help the plan become a reality.
'Hyperloop is quite an old science fiction idea but Elon Musk is the sort of man who could make it work,' said physicist Martin Archer from Imperial College London.
Space-like: This conceptual design of the machine shows that it will have a futuristic look
Built to last: The inventor boasted that the tracks would be immune to weather and earthquakes, though it is not immediately clear how so
Creature comforts: The legroom is said to give would-be passengers a disruption-free ride
'He's the guy who made electric cars go fast with Tesla, which many people didn't think would be possible; and he's the head of SpaceX which is the only commercial rocket builder that has managed to hook up with the International Space Station.'
Musk says he will leave it to others to build the system initially.
'I have to focus on core Tesla business and SpaceX business, and that's more than enough,' he told investors of Tesla, his electric car firm.
'If nothing happens for a few years, with that I mean maybe it could make sense to make the halfway path with Tesla involvement,' Musk said.
He admits the scheme came from a disdain for current systems.
'When the California 'high speed' rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too.
'How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world's knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world?'
Musk claims the scheme can power itself through solar energy.
'By placing solar panels on top of the tube, the Hyperloop can generate far in excess of the energy needed to operate.
'This takes into account storing enough energy in battery packs to operate at night and for periods of extended cloudy weather', he claims.
Appealing to environmentalists: This graph shows the energy cost per passenger on different modes of transportation for the specific San Francisco-Los Angeles journeyAntisa Khvichava, who lived in the remote mountain village of Sachino in Georgia, held Soviet-era documents which said she was born on July 8, 1880, but her age was contested and never proven.
The woman, who lived with her 42-year-old grandson in an idyllic vine-covered country house in the mountains, retired from her job as a tea and corn picker in 1965, when she was aged 85, the 'Daily Mail' reported.
Khvichava was said to have had 12 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren, and four great-great grandchildren - and attributed her good health to drinking a small amount of local brandy every day.
Her 72-year-old son Mikhail was apparently born when his mother was 60.
However, experts doubted her claim, substantiated on birth documents much younger than her.
Khvichava lived through two world wars along with the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.
Officials, neighbours, friends, and descendants have backed up her claim as the world's oldest living person.
Her birth certificate was lost - one of many in the past century amid revolutions and a civil war which followed the end of the USSR - but she had two Soviet-era documents which attested to her age.These parasitic buildings commandeer wasted urban space, often siphoning utilities from their host buildings. Some are additions that make no attempt to blend into the original structures, some are serious solutions for making the most of existing space, and others make artistic statements on fringe society and sustainable growth, but all illustrate that there are still many corners and crevices of our cities that could be put to use.
ParaSITE Inflatable Shelters
Michael Rakowitz creates inflatable ‘paraSITE shelters’ for the homeless, often specifically designed to suit individual needs, which narrowly fit within the definitions of legal temporary structures since they’re not much larger than a sleeping bag. They’re often made on a budget of less than five dollars using trash bags, ziploc bags and clear waterproof packing tape, and attached to the ventilation systems of adjacent buildings. One man, for example, requested as many windows as possible, because “homeless people don’t have privacy issues, but they do have security issues. We want to see potential attackers, we want to be visible to the public.”
Urban Tree Huts by Tadashi Kawamata
Tadashi Kawamata’s rustic pine tree houses are normally found where you would expect them – in trees (though sometimes in unexpected places, like New York City’s Madison Square Park.) But sometimes, they’re attached like man-made bird nest to urban locations, like lamp posts, bridge trusses, scaffolding and luxury apartment buildings.
Stone Villa on Top of a Chinese Condo Tower
An eccentric Chinese man spent six years creating his very own mountain paradise – on top of a Beijing high-rise – illegally. It has everything you’d expect from a luxury residence including boulders, trees, gardens, winding paths, viewing platforms and pools, hauled up through the building to adorn his private penthouse retreat. Unsurprisingly, other residents in the 26-story building have complained about construction noise and even flooding. The Chinese government has ordered the professor to remove the 800-square-meter villa.
Prefab Parasite
Empty vertical surfaces could become the basis of parasitic living spaces made out of prefab panels. The dwellings could be affixed to any wall or pylon strong enough to support them using a mountain plate. This particular design, by Lara Calder Architects, features paneling made of compressed bamboo and recycled paper. It measures about 400 square feet, and features an open-air rooftop terrace. A combination staircase and service shaft connecting the home to power, sewer and water is the only part touching the ground.
Excrescent Utopia: Parasite Architecture for the Homeless
British architecture graduate Milo Ayden De Luca envisions parasitic structures for the homeless that could cling to the sides of lamp posts. Made of cheap and readily available materials like pulleys, nylon and rope lines, the structures are translucent and nearly weightless.I have managed to avoid yoga for most of my adult life. But I’ve taken a sudden interest in it recently.
And not for the reasons I assume most people do yoga. I’m trying to get better at pooping.
This isn’t information I wanted to share with the rest of the class.
During my first experience with yoga, at a YMCA in Chicago, I tried to remain inconspicuous, huffing and puffing my way through poses in the back.
Related: The Men’s Health Big Book Of Uncommon Knowledge—thousands of DIY tips, how-to articles, and awesome skills every modern man must master
But after a few sessions, the other students started noticing me. They introduced themselves and tried to be friendly, offering encouragement and asking what had brought me to try yoga for the first time.
“Toilet posture,” I told them.
I was admittedly being an asshole. I wanted to be left alone, and I’ve found that most people don’t want to hear about the bathroom habits of strangers. But not these people.
“You’re squatting?” they asked. “I’ve been trying that, too. What do you think? Is it working for you?”
They talked about poop research they'd read online, friends and family whose fecal lives had been dramatically improved with a toilet posture realignment, and far too many intimate details about their bathroom experiences.
Related: The Yoga Move That Will Help You In the Weight Room
Before long, even the instructor had wandered over to debate the finer points of modern pooping. He suggested the Garland Pose, his favorite yoga exercise to help enhance squat-pooping. “It really tightens your core,” he said.
I did not ask what “core” he was referring to.
The Great Squat-Pooping Experiment
We live in a strange era of mainstream poop awareness. It’s no longer a topic that teens giggle about and adults only bring up with their doctors.
People have opinions about their bowel movements, and how those bowel movements could be better. A few weeks ago, Cameron Diaz went on The Dr. Oz Show to talk about poop—hers specifically, and how everybody could be having movie-star poops if they followed her digestive advice.
Dr. Oz handed out clay to the audience and asked them to mold it into their “most recent poop.”
And they did it! Because that’s the world we live in now: a world where people reconstruct their fecal output in front of millions of strangers without giving it a second thought.
We all want better poop.
We want poop that Dr. Oz would hold up triumphantly and call the “pièce de résistance.”
Or that Cameron Diaz would smile at flirtatiously and claim it’s “very familiar,” as if somehow its shape and texture reminded her of a former lover she’s never been able to forget.
This Quixotic quest for poop perfection is what convinced me to try the Squatty Potty.
Related: 10 Foods You Should Eat When You’re Constipated
It’s a simple little contraption. The Squatty Potty is essentially a step stool, costing between $24.99 (for white plastic) and $74.99 (for the bamboo version), that slides against the base of a toilet.
You place both feet on the platform and your knees are pushed above your hips, creating a natural “squatting” position.
It’s how people used to crap before the invention of the modern toilet, back when we were still doing our business in the woods or any open hole with a modicum of privacy.
But the Squatty Potty is not just about getting back to our pooping roots.
Squatting is apparently more healthy than the antiquated “anorectal angle” style of pooping, which puts “upward pressure on the rectum,” according to the company’s website.
This “creates the need to STRAIN in order to eliminate.”
Compare sitting on the toilet to a kinked garden hose: It just doesn’t work properly. In a squatting posture, the bend straightens out and defecation becomes easier.”
It gets scarier. According to statistics shared by a Squatty Potty publicist, most people are carrying “5 to 20 pounds of fecal matter in their digestive system day to day.”
At first glance, this number sounds preposterous.
But then again, I’ve heard rumors that John Wayne had 40 pounds of poop impacted in his intestines after his death. And Elvis Presley reportedly had in the ballpark of 60 pounds.
These stories are almost certainly both bunk, but the very idea that I could have any amount of feces trapped inside me gives me the heebie jeebies.
There are a lot of people, some of them famous, who swear by the Squatty Potty.
It’s been enthusiastically endorsed on The Howard Stern Show, TMZ, and The Doctors. Ben Greenfield, a fitness author and personal trainer, tweeted this peculiar Squatty Potty compliment: “Totally not trying to be gross, but I just pooed almost 10lbs, No joke. I feel freaking awesome.” Good for him, I guess.
If the Squatty Potty website is in any way accurate, he’s halfway to being poop-free.
Related: 5 Easy Ways to Strengthen Your Stool
I contacted Robert Edwards, the Utah-based creator of Squatty Potty, and he gave me even more reasons to think I’ve been living in a bowel-movement prison.
“By opening the colon, pooping in the natural squat position makes elimination faster, more complete, and reduces straining,” he said.
Squatting rather than sitting could help prevent things like constipation, hemorrhoids, colon cancer, appendicitis, IBS, hernias, diverticulosis, and pelvic organ prolapse.
But just as important, he said, “Squatting feels better. The excellent feeling that comes from a complete elimination is ubiquitous. Everyone likes a good poo, and with the Squatty Potty, you are rarely denied a full complete elimination.”
He had me at “a good poo.”
As I get older, these things are forefront on my mind. In my 20s, I never thought twice about bowel movements. But now that I’m in my 40s, I think about it every day, and I worry.
Have you heard that Louis C.K. joke about his unpredictable poops, how he tells his doctor that “every shit is an emergency”?
I listen to that routine and it fills me with white-knuckled dread. Louis C.K. is 46, and I’m heading his way fast.
Related: The Best Weight Lifting Advice For Men Over 40
I don’t want to share in his poop shame. I want to be like Keith Richards, a 70-year-old former junkie whose bloodstream is more polluted than the Mississippi River.
And yet, according to his own 2010 memoir, Life, his poops are unremarkable and unalarming.
“First we have the bowel movement,” Richards wrote of his daily routine. “Cool, that’s that out of the way. Seen a friend off to the coast.”
I want to grow old and become like Keith Richards. Not all of it; just the way he poops.
My wife was not pleased by the news that our toilet would soon be equipped with a bench that forced our knees upwards. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, her voice tinged with panic.
“It’s healthy,” I told her. “It’s how cavemen used to poop.”
“They also ate mastodons,” she shot back. “Since when are you taking health advice from people who died before they turned 30?”
I didn’t tell her when the Squatty Potty arrived.
Even though the package came with an “I POOPED TODAY” button, a bottle of Turdle Loo deodorizing spray, and a hand-written note from Edwards promising that I'd soon be “poopin’ like a champ,” I thought it best to keep her in the dark.
My wife might never have noticed that my defecation physics had changed at all, if not for an unfortunate toilet mishap.
Related: Weird Reasons You Can’t Poop
Changing your defecation physics isn’t as easy as the brochure illustrations would makes it appear.
It’s like trying to drop a load while sitting criss-cross applesauce.
It feels unnatural and wrong. During my first attempt, peeing on my shoes didn’t just seem plausible but extremely likely. I tried leaning forward, like the relaxed-looking fellow in the illustration, and almost took a nose-dive onto cold linoleum.
After almost a week of trying and failing to have a successful bowel movement by squatting—I always eventually returned to the shame of sitting—I went to my first yoga class.
By day 10, thanks to the Garland Pose, I was successfully maneuvering a “dry run.”
By day 14, I launched a full-scale number two. I was so shocked that I almost ran out into the living room, my pants still around my ankles, to share the good news with my wife. I thankfully resisted this urge.
Does the Squatty Potty Actually Work?
After a few weeks, the initial excitement wore off and I began to wonder, am I poop-healthy now?
Have I added years to my life by including a plastic step-stool to my bathroom excretions? I needed the help of an expert.
So I emailed Dr. Stephen Hanauer, the medical director of the Digestive Disease Center at Northwestern University. He referred me to his colleague, Dr. Darren Brenner, a specialist in gastroenterology who Hanauer described as a “real expert on defecation.”
When I received his email, I stared at this sentence for several minutes.
I suppose it was meant as a compliment, but it still struck me as weird. There’s such a fine line between “he’s an expert on defecation" and "he’s full of shit.”
I called Dr. Brenner, and immediately realized just how ill-prepared I was to talk to another human being about my poop.
“A lot depends on what your bowel movements usually look like,” he said.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. It suddenly made sense why Dr. Oz gave his audience clay and asked them to sculpt their poop.
It’s so much easier to do it with art than with words.
Brenner told me about the Bristol stool scale, a medical chart listing the seven categories of human feces.
If you’re reading this from a computer that isn't being monitored by an employer, it’s worth checking out.
Related: Can You Die By Pooping?
My bowel movements, if you must know, are somewhere in the 3 to 4 range.
“That’s perfectly normal,” he assured me.
“Could the Squatty Potty improve that?” I asked.
“Improve it how? You’re already normal.”
“But could it be... more normal?”
I asked about the 20 pounds of impacted fecal matter supposedly trapped in our respective colons.
Related: Why You Shouldn’t Sit On the Toilet Longer Than 15 Minutes
Could squatting rather than sitting get rid of some of that unwanted waste?
Turns out, that number may be exaggerated. By a lot. “We do not usually carry 20 pounds in our colon,” Dr. Brenner assured me. “Stool is continuously cleared.”
He told me about the bowel prep necessary for a safe and effective conoloscopy. Any residual stool could alter the results, and hide potentially serious problems like polyps and lesions. If your colon isn't clean, they can't detect much.
“My healthy patients for colonoscopy screening who complete a bowel prep usually lose a few pounds,” Dr. Brenner said. “With constipation it may be more.”
I was grasping at straws now. Maybe, I told him, squatting could protect me from a dystopian future of anal and digestive horrors.
Maybe I was being proactive against a coming digestive apocalypse riddled with constipation, hemorrhoids, colon cancer, appendicitis, etc.
“Maybe,” he said.
“But not definitely?”
“If you’re a normal healthy person, I don’t know if it’s going to change anything in the short term or the long term,” he said. “Maybe by changing your position, in 20 or 30 years down the line you’ll reduce your likelihood of developing constipation. But there’s no data to suggest that whatsoever.”
“But squatting isn’t bad, is it?”
“No, no, it’s not bad at all,” Dr. Brenner laughed. “It’s a harmless, potentially healthy sort of thing.”
I’m still using the Squatty Potty.
I’ve gotten used to it, weirdly enough. And I swear it feels like my poop has improved. I’m a little closer to that Keith Richard ideal.
I'm at a predictable one crap a day, and it's a consistent Bristol No. 4, but prettier, like it was written in Ukrainian cursive. Sometimes it’s so exquisite, I’ll wear my “I POOPED TODAY” button, just because I want to brag.
Related: How to Stop Your Butt from Burning after Eating Spicy Foods
My wife continues to not be impressed.
I don’t know if I’m doing my colon any favors.
But as an expert on defecation told me, it's “potentially healthy.” And sometimes that’s the best we can hope for.shadow
FIRENZE - Una piantina di cannabis coltivata non di nascosto, nel chiuso di un armadio, ma alla luce del sole, nel suo ufficio istituzionale in Consiglio regionale. Tommaso Fattori, neo consigliere e capogruppo di Sì Toscana a Sinistra, ha annunciato che nei prossimi giorni pianterà un seme della sostanza vietata dalla legge, e conserverà il vaso nella sua stanza di Palazzo Panciatichi, come «gesto simbolico per aprire una discussione sulla legalizzazione della canapa e sostenerne l'uso terapeutico».
Tutto comincia sabato scorso, in piazza del Duomo, quando Fattori — che non solo non ha mai fumato uno spinello in vita sua, ma da «salutista convinto e anche un po’ all’antica» neppure una sigaretta — aderisce a uniniziativa dei radicali. Al banchino, a distribuire semi di cannabis come da trent’anni a questa parte, c’è l’ex deputata Rita Bernardini. Che denuncia: «La Toscana è la Regione più avanzata d’Italia in tema di cannabis terapeutica, ma la legge del 2012 è inefficace».
«Sto istigando alla disobbedienza tutti quelli che sono nelle istituzioni — prosegue — ho troppi riscontri da parte di persone malate che non riescono ad accedere ai farmaci, che ricevono medicinali inefficaci o addirittura farmaci con effetti collaterali». Tommaso Fattori va in piazza, si fa avanti e si unisce all’iniziativa. «È il primo ad aderire al di fuori del partito radicale», spiega Bernardini.
Così, ieri, il consigliere di Sì Toscana a Sinistra annuncia che la coltivazione simbolica avverrà in un «orto» di eccellenza, ovvero nel suo ufficio di Palazzo Panciatichi. «Lo so, è illegale — spiega Fattori — lo faccio perché in questo momento è in corso una caccia alle streghe attorno al tema della cannabis. Siamo ancora legati a vecchi pregiudizi culturali: alcol e nicotina fanno assai più danni della cannabis, e ora sarebbe il caso di portare avanti una battaglia antiproibizionista».
«Ma in questo momento la vera urgenza non è la liberalizzazione ma l’uso terapeutico — aggiunge — la legge non è pienamente attuata, i pazienti si scontrano con mille difficoltà pratiche». Fattori, sulla base di testimonianze dirette da lui raccolte, parla di medici impreparati che non prescrivono le nuove medicine, spiega che questi farmaci sono ancora troppo pochi e quindi «costosissimi», e che sono il risultato di una «diluizione» che li rende poco efficaci.
Per questo, la piantina coltivata in ufficio diventa il simbolo del «vero passo avanti che servirebbe alla legge toscana: consentire ai malati l’autocoltivazione».
Il neo assessore alla Sanità, Stefania Saccardi, mette le mani avanti: «Nei 25 punti della campagna elettorale di Enrico Rossi (quelli da realizzare nei primi 100 giorni di mandato, secondo i piani del governatore, ndr) parliamo di estendere la rosa di patologie da curare con la cannabis, di semplificare le procedure di accesso e di potenziare la formazione dei medici — dice —; quanto alla disponibilità delle medicine, è chiaro che questa è una legge innovativa in Italia e per tale ragione ha bisogno di tempo per entrare pienamente a regime».
Ma Saccardi ammonisce Fattori: «L’autocoltivazione non va bene, non può essere un’opzione: e non perché si tratti di cannabis, ma perché per qualsiasi tipo di terapia serve il controllo delle autorità mediche. Sarebbe pericolosissimo se ognuno di noi si curasse come vuole, senza regole».
Da parte sua, Enrico Rossi, in campagna elettorale dedicò il quarto dei suoi 25 punti a questo argomento: «#TosCannabis, combatteremo il dolore sempre», recitava il manifesto, decorato con il disegno delle foglie di canapa, riconoscibili dal tipico profilo a zigzag.
Rossi annunciò anche che presto lo stabilimento chimico farmaceutico militare di Firenze diventerà l’unico fornitore nazionale di farmaci a base di thc. Ora, il governatore respinge la fuga in avanti della sinistra per riprendersi la primogenitura sulla cannabis terapeutica: «Fattori arriva a far sua una battaglia di civiltà che la Toscana ha condotto per prima in Italia», dice Rossi. Che ringrazia i due promotori della legge del 2012: Enzo Brogi e la scomparsa Alessia Ballini.
© RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATAFasting and calorie restriction can slow and even stop cancer progression, tumour growth and metastases. Both can kill cancer cells in their own right and significantly improve chemo and radiotherapy uptake and effectiveness. Fasting has also been shown to boost the immune system, de-fat the liver and pancreas and significantly reduce chemotherapy side-effects. A fast is also something to seriously consider when having chemotherapy - from three days before to the day after.
Leading cancer centres and experts such as Dr Valter Longo of University of Southern California, Professor Thomas Seyfried of Boston, Dr Dominic D’Agostino, Assistant Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, University of South Florida, and the Max-Plank Institute show that fasting can play an important therapeutic role in the treatment of cancer. (Chris Woollams, CANCERactive)
Fasting has been a part of the treatment of illness since Hippocrates and Plutarch was quoted as asserting, ‘Instead of using medicine, rather fast a day’. Between 2008 and 2013 there have been a number of research studies suggesting fasting can have significant beneficial effects with people trying to beat cancer, halting cancer progression and improving survival. It is also becoming clear that when fasting, your healthy cells respond to hormones that shut them down. So a fast 2 days before, the day of chemotherapy and the day after, for example, means less uptake of the drug by healthy cells, leaving more free to be taken up by the cancer cells. The net result is less side-effects, but more cancer cell death from the chemo drug. It’s a win-win situation.
One final benefit is that fasting and juice fasting can help detoxify and de-fat the liver, regenerating its power. By de-fatting the liver, two British Professors (Taylor and Lean) have shown you can clean up the pancreas too.
Go To: The CANCERactive Liver Detox and cleanse
Calorie Restriction, fasting and better health
Calorie restriction (a reduction in energy intake without malnutrition - usually involving a reduction by 15% of carbohydrate calories consumed) is an interesting concept in the health field. It is linked to increased lifespan, better metabolism and reduced risk of chronic illness. (For example, Ref 1). Calorie restriction is good for you!
In real life, during the second World War it was noted that populations such as the Belgians and Norwegians became healthier, with less cancer and heart disease, when they had calorie-restricted diets simply because of a lack of food.
Research studies with animals have shown longevity improvements of up to 40 per cent by reducing the intake of daily calories consumed to 10 to 15 per cent below ideal levels. There is some evidence that the effect is stimulated because calorie restriction causes the body to produce sirtuins, hormones that protect it in times of stress such as starvation might produce.
A 2007 report on research evidence by Krista A Vardy and Marc K Hellerstein showed that Alternate Day Fasting (where every other day, there is a fast consisting only of a 400 calorie meal for women and a 600 calorie meal for men) was associated with reduced blood levels of glucose, insulin, IGF-1 and ‘bad’ fats, with a long-term reduced risk of chronic diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
In 2014 Dr Valter Longo of University of Southern California showed that fasting caused ’old’ white immune cells to die. These were replaced from stem cells as soon as the subject recommenced eating. Thus a three day fast could regenerate a strong immune system.
Dr Dominic D’Agostino has done a considerable amount of work on Calorie Restriction, fasting and the Ketogenic Diet. He confirmed that carbohydrate restriction per se will reduce levels of blood glucose, insulin and IGF-1, all implicated in the cancer development process. But when you have your next meal containing carbohydrates, the glucose and hormone levels will spike. This causes mood swings and the spikes can still aid cellular inflammation and cancer development. While we talk about the Ketogenic diet below, there is little hard evidence to suggest it is better for you with chemo and radiotherapy than calorie restriction, fasting, or a straight forward, no-empty-glucose/fructose Rainbow Diet.
Calorie Restriction, fasting and cancer
In early 2013, The Oncologist magazine commented in the Editorial on research from Chicago that showed restricting calories in patients having radiotherapy produced better results. It suggested the same might be true of chemotherapy and calorie restriction. Clinical trials have confirmed this. So much for the NHS booklets telling you to pour dairy, sugar and sticky buns down your throat when having chemotherapy! More research papers and reviews come out every month, and it is becoming more widely accepted that calorie restriction and/or fasting can improve the efficacy of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and even immunotherapy, whilst reducing side-effects.
The theory was simple. Fasting causes a message to be sent to your cells telling them to shut down. Their metabolic rate declines and so they don’t take on board the chemotherapy, leaving more for the cancer cells which are metabolising vigorously. Result - more dead cancer cells, less damage to health cells.
Longo researched this theory in mice in 2008. The theory was proven correct with two additions. Fasting alone caused cancer cells to self-destruct; they didn’t understand the ’shut down’ message and so kept metabolising but with no nutrients, resulting in cell death. Secondly, not only was there reduced tumor activity but spread was also simultaneously reduced. Research continued until 2012. It was shown that fasting alone could achieve these results in 5 out of eight cancer types. But repeated 2-3 day bursts of fasting with chemotherapy bursts was far more successful(3).
In tests with mice, 20% of those with metastases that fasted and had chemo were cured; 40% of those without spread. Human studies are covered below.
It is now widely accepted amongst advocates of fasting that you should fast for 2-3 days before your chemo, the day of chemo and one day afterwards. Patients report far less sickness; and studies report less neutropenia and other damaging side-effects.
Let us now go into this in more detail.
How to fast
This is actually really important; but simple to understand.
Whether you are an advocate of Ayurvedic Medicine, a disciple of Longo or having chemo, you should drink water only for 3 to 5 days. No more, no less.
To repeat: this type of fast brings plasma glucose, IGF-1 and insulin levels down to zero, it restricts free glutamine levels, reducing glutamate, stops cancer progression, stops metastases, makes chemo work better (and you need less chemo to achieve the same results) and helps reboot the immune system.
A juice fast (organic vegetables to a maximum of 800 calories a day), used of an 11 day to 60 day period, reduces cholesterol and triglyceride levels and reverses diabetes.
Go to: Two UK Professors reverse Diabetes.
However, there is a ’trend’, a ’belief’, that ’Intermittent Fasting’ is an important strategy for anything and everything from cancer to longevity. Research shows that it fails to bring down the important health markers.
Go to: Intermittent Fasting is a waste of time
Putting your body into a state of Ketosis?
The success of cutting carbohydrates by 15% as a way of fighting cancer has been taken by fans as giving yet more credibility to the Ketogenic Diet - an extreme form of the Rainbow Diet where carbs are just 2% of total calories; protein is 8% and good fats form the bulk of the diet. At CANCERactive we have already reviewed the Ketogenic Diet (Click Here). The core thinking is to deprive the cancer of its essential food, glucose, and then its back-up food, stored glutamate.
In Cancer Watch we have covered several research studies that show people with the highest blood plasma glucose levels get more cancers; and people with cancer who have the highest plasma glucose levels, survive least. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that even more worrisome may be high fructose corn syrup in fizzy soft drinks.
While cancer cells must have glucose to metabolise, healthy cells can use other foods such as fat. The process is termed ketosis. Starve the body of glucose by providing calories in the form of good fats and you may well be able to starve, and therefore kill off, the cancer.
Go to: 20 links between sugar and cancer
There is also some evidence that some cancer cells may be able to switch to glutamine, an amino acid from protein. And also that high protein drives the mTOR pathway which causes cancer cell proliferation. So restricted protein consumption seems important too. But only 8% of calories? This is extreme - and many people who think they are on the Ketogenic Diet actually are not. Quite often they are consuming high levels of saturated fat and are closer to an Atkins diet, with no carbs and lots of meat.
Cancer patients need to be wary of fat - in particular ’bad fat’ or ’saturated fat’. There is an increasing number of studies in Cancer Watch showing that high plasma levels of bad fat encourages more metastases. In contrast, high levels of good fat (Extra virgin olive oil, avocado, nuts and seeds, fish oils) have the opposite effect and restrict metastases (for example, see here).
The question is therefore: Since ketosis will occur under starvation conditions anyway, do you need to employ the quite arduous Ketogenic diet, or can you merely go on a regular 3-5 day fast, and then use a Rainbow Diet in non-fasting periods?
Several mechanisms involved in fasting
Many factors are at work during fasting, including less aggressive hormone production, less circulating ‘bad’ cholesterol, glucose deprivation and sirtuin stimulation. Sirtuins are highly protective hormones known to be produced under conditions of food deprivation. Food deprivation is also (not surprisingly) associated with leaner bodies.
A thinner body would have lowered fat stores and fat is the precursor of oestrogen, a hormone known to stimulate many cancers. Fat is also a wonderful solvent and so a body with less fat stores contains less dissolved toxins. This is less important around your waist that it is around your organs. This fat you cannot see is called visceral fat and it is now thought capable of bathing your internal organs in a slew of toxins, which dieting might avoid. Certainly research on exercise has shown that visceral fat starts to liquefy after only 15 minutes of exercise.
A few years ago, we covered research from Northwestern Medical School in the context of breast cancer patients. This showed overweight women survived less that women of optimum weight. Interestingly it concluded that it was never too late to start, and that women who cut their weight to correct levels did survive longer.
All this fits with the American Cancer Society’s 2012 Research Report that stated there had been an explosion of research into complementary therapies since 2006 and that there was overwhelming evidence that diet, exercise and weight control could improve survival times and even prevent a cancer returning.
Fasting as a cancer treatment
It was interesting to read the story of a lady who wrote into CANCERactive after we ran a story on Calorie Restriction in our e-magazine, telling us how her Doctor father who specialized in cancer achieved remarkable results by putting his patients on a water-only fast before treating them.
The next correspondence came a Doctor from India who puts everybody he receives on a fasting regime at the outset after diagnosis and does not start treatment for a couple of months. He claims that results are impressive and that fasting starves the cancer more than the patient. Research would suggest that is correct.
Of course, many cancer experts will point to the severe weight loss involved in cachexia and its dangers. But this is a very different issue – it is an uncontrolled weight loss caused by the side-effects of the chemotherapy drugs and side-effects such as nausea reducing the desire to eat. This is not a controlled weight loss but a drug-induced illness.
Research with lung cancer patients on chemotherapy showed that omega-3 from fish oils could help people regain their appetite and weight, avoiding cachexia. It may be true for other cancers. But then eating bad fats has been linked to poorer survival rates in women with breast cancer, whereas eating good fats (like omega-3 and extra virgin olive oil) has been linked to increased survival times. And so we come full circle to Calorie Restriction and the Ketogenic diet as two options.
Interestingly, in Cancer Watch we also covered recommendation on diet from MD Anderson and Sloan-Kettering which are in stark contrast to the recommendations of the UK NHS for patients on chemo. While the UK NHS has an ‘eat lots of calories, lots of sugary buns, milky sugary tea, even cheeseburgers and milk shakes’ approach, the two top American Hospitals tell people to eat nutritiously and carefully, to provide plenty of nourishment and vitamins and minerals. To top it all, the National Cancer Institute have published their own research showing a bad diet can help cancer stem cells at the core of tumours to re-grow, while a healthy diet can prevent this – the bioactive natural compounds included were curcumin, EGCG from green tea, piperine, theanine and choline, vitamins A and E (the all natural 8 variety version), genistein, and resveratrol and sulphoraphanes, all of which, they said, you could find in supplements.
So, should fasting be part of your integrative cancer programme? And is that a total, water-only fast? Should you maintain some intake of anti-cancer natural compounds? Let’s amplify what we have said above.
The Research
1. Fasting and chemotherapy
The National Cancer Institute |
Both projects will reinforce existing road links from China. The Punjab project is part of the $46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor launched by President Xi last year. There is an existing road, AH66, that runs from Dushanbe to China's Xinjiang province, before connecting to the Karakoram highway that connects China to Pakistan.
The World Bank has also entered into a co-financing deal with AIIB, although it is not yet known what kind of projects it will choose to fund. In case the World Bank agrees to support a Silk Road project, analysts said, the ambitious Chinese program will end up obtaining one of the highest forms of endorsements that can open up many other financial options.
The One Belt, One Road policy, which has been spearheaded by Xi Jinping, is one of his key agendas as China’s leader. The project is a combination of a new Silk Road plan, which seeks to link China’s western region with Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The maritime trade routes, or Belt, pass through Southeast Asia and on to Africa.
"It is possible that the AIIB choose to co-finance its first project in Pakistan with the ADB in an effort to assuage suspicions that the project reflects China's geopolitical priorities," said Paul Haenle, director of the Beijing based Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy.
But he thinks that the new bank, which has 57 member countries, should be judged only after it has conducted more lending operations. It is essential to wait and see if the AIIB finances projects outside the Belt and Road Initiative, he said.
"It would be cynical to assume from the outset that it will be used to advance Chinese government priorities such as the Belt and Road initiative, which is still in its infancy in terms of conception and implementation," Haenle said.
Dealing with NGOs
One major concern about the AIIB, and the main reason why the United States and Japan have yet to join, is whether it will be as open and transparent in dealing with non-government organizations (NGOs), raising issues that pose challenges to all lenders.
NGOs are known to challenge project assessments by the World Bank and ADB on the grounds that they would result in serious relocations of local populations or environmental damage.
But just how NGOs will interact with the AIIB is still unclear.
"The NGO community is trying to figure out its relationship with the new bank. It is located in Beijing, which is not noted for its openness towards NGOs," said Robert Orr, a former U.S. representative on the board of ADB who served until last December. "It has talked about implementing high environmental standards. But the proof is in the pudding."
Haenle also expressed worry, pointing to recent Chinese moves to bring NGO activities "under a national security lens, as exemplified by the passage of a new foreign NGO law last month."Well-crafted, unique for its time, clever, but does #watchmen age well? — WTF Comics Club (@WTFComicsClub) September 20, 2015
The WTF Comics Club is a monthly reading group for Women, Trans, and Femme-identified fans in Minneapolis. In its second year, the club is taking a look at some of the major comic book “must reads” and asking: Must we really read this?
Published in 1986/87 by DC, Watchmen is listed in Time magazine’s 100 Best Novels, and you’d be hard pressed to find a list of the best, most important, or must read comics that doesn’t include Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s magnum opus. That means it must be pretty good, right?
Our general opinion: a resounding “meh” — WTF Comics Club (@WTFComicsClub) September 20, 2015
The mid-to-late 1980s was a period of sea-change for comic books, both in content and in reception. Watchmen was one title in a list of groundbreakers that systematically deconstructed, reimagined, and redefined what the comics medium was and what it could do. The critical and commercial success of these titles contributed to the rise of indie comics in the 80s and early 90s, including the founding of rockstar publishers Dark Horse and Image and the launch of DC’s wildly successful Vertigo imprint. Watchmen itself has had a profound impact on the superhero genre, prompting an on-going examination of the real-world implications of masked vigilantes and superhumans and inspiring a wide range of “dark” and “gritty” antiheroes for decades to come.
Watchmen tells the story of … Well, okay, Watchmen tells about a dozen different stories about everything from former superheroes to an opinionated newspaper salesman to an incomprehensible pirate comic. Mostly, it’s about the people behind the masks, their motivations, mental instabilities, and many many flaws. Set in an alternate version of 1985—present day, at the time it was written – the story is steeped in the paranoia of a Cold War that never ended and deals with events leading up to an apparently inevitable nuclear confrontation between the US, Russia, and pretty much everyone else.
As a whole, Watchmen is layered and complex. Every one of its many, many characters is a study in the psychology of heroism, fear, and terrible life choices. The multitude of plot threads are expertly woven together into a cohesive narrative, an impressive task given the density of each sub-plot and the fact that no part of the story is told in a coherent sequence. Moore’s script for the book is famously detailed, with the first three pages dedicated solely to the opening panel, which shows a bloodied smiley-face pin in the gutter.
There’s no denying that Watchmen is a seminal work with a profound impact on the comics that have followed it, or that it is a well-constructed, thought provoking piece of literature. The question at hand isn’t about craftsmanship, but relevance. After thirty years of dramatic shifts in the social landscape, watershed advances in printing and digital art, and massive changes in comics reception, is Watchmen still a must-read for comics fans?
Our group’s conclusion: Not really.
From a feminist perspective, Watchmen leaves much to be desired. And by much, I mean everything. There are only a handful of women in the massive cast, and they are unilaterally cast as disconnected mothers, stereotyped lesbians, moral-less prostitutes, or some combination thereof. Even Laurie Jusperczyk, the sole female character of real significance and the one woman on the principal “team” of heroes, acknowledges her role as a “whore”—literally, as the US government has charged her with keeping her super-powered boyfriend, Doctor Manhattan, happy and focused, and metaphorically, in that being a public figure necessitates a kind of prostitution.
Leaving aside the narrative’s relentless sexualization of women, which covers a spectrum between realistically horrific and really horrifying, there is the fact that none of the female characters ever actually do anything. Moore makes an impotent attempt at portraying a “strong woman” in Laurie, giving her dialogue that seems to come from a 1980s checklist of “Things Feminists Say” and allowing her to do things like fight bad guys and express opinions. The empowerment falls spectacularly flat, given that Laurie’s one act of agency is to break up with her boyfriend, which we later learn was part of a scheme implemented by Adrian Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias, The World’s Smartest Mansplainer.
As women reading the book in 2015—some of us for the first time, some for the second, third, fourth, etc. time—we’re not impressed. Those who originally read it early in our comics exploration seemed to harbor a greater attachment, but we generally agreed that it hadn’t aged well. Two members who had read the book during its original publication run added that it seemed to become less relevant and less appealing as we moved further away from the 1980s. By contrast, club members reading for the first time were almost unanimous in their distaste.
Now that @QLudwig has said it and @WTFComicsClub meeting is over I can say it also: I hated Watchmen with all my soul — Imperator Trombonosa (@buddhastew) September 21, 2015
Watchmen has its merits, and its place in comics history, though perhaps overstated, is certainly well-deserved. Unfortunately, Moore was writing for a place and time that are now as much nostalgia as the comics he was reacting against, and the demographic for whom this book still holds the most appeal is no longer the dominant readership among comics fans. This groundbreaking graphic novel just doesn’t hold up to the sensibilities of readers for whom cynicism is not a selling point and whose superheroes exist as a part of Watchmen’s legacy, not in its shadow.
Is it a must-read? Sure, if you’re interested in the academics of comics or like reading about neckbeard shenanigans* and how much people suck. If you want to read a good book, there are better choices.
Final Score
Title: Watchmen Creators: Writer: Alan Moore; Art: Dave Gibbons Publisher: DC/Vertigo, 1986 Popular Rating: ✩✩✩✩✩ WTF Rating: 🐒🐒 Must read? Meh.
*Eternal thanks to WTF member Lauren for giving us the beautiful phrase “Dan and his neckbeard shenanigans.” Truly the highlight of a great discussion.
The books for WTF Reads were determined by cross-referencing recommendation lists from four online publications: Forbidden Planet, Empire, BuzzFeed, and Complex. Titles were then selected based on a number of criteria, including popularity, importance, accessibility, and thematic continuity. Popular Ratings are on a five-star scale, averaged from ratings across Comixology, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. WTF Ratings are on a five-monkey scale, averaged from ratings by club and community members. Only books that receive five monkeys will be preserved after the gender apocalypse.
Jordan West is an obsessive writer, dedicated cosplayer, and fake geek girl living in Minneapolis. Specialties include ultra angsty fan fiction, feminist commentary, and co-captaining the WTF Comics Club. Follow Jo on Facebook for ongoing hijinks.
(featured image via Warner Bros.)
—Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.—
Do you follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?Last time the pound was lower was in June 1985, but still a way off the record low against the dollar of $1.0520 in March 1985
The pound sank to a fresh 31-year low against the dollar on Wednesday amid growing signs that the shock Brexit vote is already damaging the UK economy.
Sterling hit a low of $1.2796 at one point as investors lost confidence in Britain’s future outside the European Union and piled out of the UK currency.
Brexit fears send pound sliding below $1.30 - business live Read more
The last time the pound was lower was in June 1985, but it has still got a way to fall before hitting its all time low against the dollar of $1.0520, struck on 1 March 1985.
Sterling has plunged almost 15% since a poll published on 23 June – the day of the referendum – wrongly indicated Britain had voted to stay in the EU, pushing the UK currency above $1.50. The pound also fell to a near three-year low against the euro at €1.1741.
On the stock market, there were fresh falls for housebuilders, which have been hard hit since the referendum result, and the suspension of three major commercial property funds. M&G Investments and Aviva Investors barred investors from withdrawing cash from their property funds on Tuesday amid fears of a crash in the commercial property market and Standard Life made the same move a day earlier.
In early trading on Wednesday Barratt Developments was leading the FTSE 100 fallers, down by over 5%, while Taylor Wimpey fell 4%. The FTSE 100 was up 0.3%, at 6563, but the more UK-focused FTSE 250 index was down again, falling 0.5% to 15660.
Sterling’s slide came amid worrying signs the UK economy is already suffering from the Brexit vote.A closely watched survey published on Tuesday showed growth in the UK services sector – which accounts for more than three quarters of the economy – was the slowest in three years in June. Companies reported “intensified” anxiety in the runup to the referendum.
Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, said: “The pound has continued to come under pressure in the past couple of days sinking to new 31 year lows.
“The suspension of commercial property fund redemptions by a number of big players has precipitated a broader sell off in the UK property sector including house builders and other asset managers.
“Combined with a warning that some Brexit effects were already starting to crystallise and this week’s slowdown in recent economic data we’ve seen a bit of a domino effect in locally exposed sterling assets, as well as risky assets generally across the world.”
The pound also fell against the Japanese yen on Wednesday, hitting a three-and-a-half year low of 128.81 yen.
Concerns about the impact on already fragile global growth spread to commodity markets. After oil prices shed 5% on Tuesday, Brent crude fell further on Wednesday to $47.57 a barrel, before recovering slightly to go back above $48.
Investors rushed to safe-haven sovereign debt and took markets deeper into unknown territory.
Property funds halt trading as Brexit fallout deepens Read more
Yields on US Treasuries, the benchmark for bonds worldwide, hit record lows out to 30 years. Investors had to pay Japan 0.27% to lend it money for 10 years.
“There’s no inflation prospects, there’s no strong growth. The only thing we have is uncertainty,” said Hiroko Iwaki, senior bond strategist at Mizuho Securities.
In Japan, the Nikkei fell 1.9% to 15,379, as concerns over the Brexit vote continued to be felt further afield.
Since Britain’s shock vote to exit the EU two weeks ago, investors have been consoling themselves with the expectation of yet more policy easing from the major central banks.
Yet analysts, and many at the banks themselves, have warned that the scope for manoeuvre is strictly limited and any new steps could prove counter-productive.
“Financial markets appear to have taken a more realistic view around the complexity and uncertainty characterising the global political background and its impact on already lacklustre economic growth,” wrote analysts at ANZ in a note.
“This suggests the tug-a-war between more central bank support and economic fundamentals is going to increase, driving market volatility.”
Dealers said there was no one event behind the moves but rather an accumulation of negative factors.
And in Italy, shares in its banks tumbled, shaking the financial foundations of the eurozone’s third-largest economy.
“Italy faces a severe crisis that is exponential. This is not gradual and not linear,” said Francesco Galietti, head of the Policy Sonar risk consultancy and a former finance ministry official. “The immediate trigger is the banking crisis.”LONDON (Reuters) - Oil discoveries in 2015 fell to their lowest since 1952 as energy companies slashed exploration budgets in the wake of the oil price fall, creating a gap for meeting future demand, analysts at Morgan Stanley said on Monday.
Pump jacks are seen at the Lukoil company owned Imilorskoye oil field, as the sun sets, outside the West Siberian city of Kogalym, Russia, in this January 25, 2016 file photo. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/Files
The oil and gas industry discovered 2.8 billion barrels of oil outside the United States last year, the equivalent of one month of global consumption, the U.S. bank said, quoting data from consultancy Rystad Energy.
Including the United States, where the rapid expansion of the onshore shale industry unlocked major resources over the past decade, global discoveries rose to 12.1 billion figure - but still the lowest since 1952, when the oil industry was one-seventh of its current size.
Oil discoveries are vital to replace resources, meet still-growing demand and offset the depletion of existing fields.
The sharp drop in oil prices over the past two years has led companies including Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) to sharply reduce budgets, particularly for exploration, where spending fell in 2015 to around 95 billion from $168 billion two years earlier, according to Morgan Stanley.
Despite a big increase in exploration spending since the start of the decade, when oil demand rapidly rose, there have been few major hydrocarbon discoveries, such as Statoil’s STL.OL Johan Sverdrup field off Norway’s coast or Eni’s (ENI.MI) giant Zohr gas field off Egypt.
BP last week announced the surprise departure of its exploration boss, and a shift in its oil search strategy that is focusing mainly on expanding existing fields rather than venturing expensively into the unknown.
SHORTAGE
A big increase in new oil fields in recent years and the ramp up of Iran’s production following the lifting of international sanctions mean that in the short term, the impact of the low exploration record will be limited.
But even under the most modest demand forecasts, driven by a drive to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, where consumption will decline to around 86 million barrels per day in 2030, only around two thirds of the demand can be met by currently producing fields or resources under development, Morgan Stanley said.
“Building this capacity over the next 25 years will require ongoing investment. Our strong suspicion is that this will be higher than what companies are currently spending, even relative to the 2 Degrees scenario under which demand is falling.”
The outlook for exploration remains challenged, the bank said.
“The return on exploration dollars spent has clearly deteriorated in recent years. On top of this, oil companies increasingly need to consider scenarios for oil demand in which there may not be much need for further exploration.”SANFORD, Florida (Reuters) - George Zimmerman is not a racist and cried for days after shooting dead a black Florida teenager, a black, longtime friend of Zimmerman said on Sunday in a sympathetic portrayal of a man maligned by critics as a trigger-happy bigot.
Zimmerman, 28, a white Hispanic, shot Trayvon Martin, 17, in what he said was self defense during an altercation in the gated community Zimmerman was watching on February 26 in Sanford, Florida. After attracting little notice initially, the case gained widespread attention, sparking protests and renewing a national debate about race.
“He couldn’t stop crying. He’s a caring human being,” Joe Oliver, 53, a former television news reporter and anchor in Orlando who has known Zimmerman for several years, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Oliver’s wife is a close friend of Zimmerman’s mother in law, who told him Zimmerman cried for days in remorse after the shooting. He also spoke directly with Zimmerman on Saturday.
“I mean, he took a man’s life and he has no idea what to do about it. He’s extremely remorseful about it,” Oliver said.
Oliver’s account differs from the withering criticism Zimmerman has sustained from demonstrators across the country who have demanded his arrest and accused him of racial bias in targeting Martin.
Celebrities have taken up the cause of justice for the teen, many wearing the “hoodie” or hooded sweatshirt that Martin wore in a style popular with black youth. President Barack Obama said “all of us have to do some soul-searching” as a result of the tragedy.
“I’m a black male and all that I know is that George has never given me any reason whatsoever to believe he has anything against people of color,” Oliver said.
Sanford police did not arrest Zimmerman, saying the evidence could not disprove his account of self-defense, though the case is under review by a state special prosecutor and the U.S. Justice Department.
Zimmerman dropped out of public view shortly after the shooting and his whereabouts were unknown. The New Black Panther Party, an African American organization taking its name from the radical group of the 1960s, has placed a $10,000 bounty on Zimmerman.
“All these people who are threatening George, what makes them any better than the person they think he is?” Oliver said. “You’ve got all these people wanting to lynch the man and they don’t know the whole story. There are huge gaps that are being filled in and interpreted without evidence.”
‘LEAP TO CONCLUSION’
As a black man, Oliver said minorities are often unfairly treated, but he believed Zimmerman was simply doing his job as a neighborhood watch volunteer by growing suspicious over an unfamiliar person walking through a neighborhood that had suffered some break-ins.
Martin lived in Miami but was with his father on a visit to his father’s fiancée’s home inside the gated community.
“I understand how they’re able to leap to the conclusion. You have a dead teenager. This guy is white so it must be a hate crime. There’s going to be evidence to come out that basically will justify George’s concern,” Oliver said.
“He (Zimmerman) confirmed for me that he was not the aggressor. But I did not go into details as to how it got to that aggressive point,” Oliver said.
A lawyer representing the Martin family disputes Zimmerman’s self defense claims, saying he “stalked” Martin against the instructions of a 911 operator.
“It seems Joe Oliver and Geraldo Rivera are in agreement that this senseless shooting is somehow Trayvon Martin’s fault,” Benjamin Crump said, referring to the celebrity journalist’s comment that “Trayvon Martin would be alive today but for his hoodie.”
“Had Zimmerman simply stayed in his vehicle, Trayvon Martin would be pursuing his dreams,” Crump said.Boehner, right, said the decision on down-ballot leadership races will be up to his successor. (Al Drago/CQ Roll Call)
In the latest plot twist to House Republicans' leadership drama, Speaker John A. Boehner announced Monday that potential majority leader and majority whip contests would only take place if Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is confirmed as speaker on the floor at the end of October.
Boehner set Oct. 29 as the date for a floor vote for speaker, after which the person holding that title could set the date — if necessary — for a majority leader race, which could then set off a majority whip race. And while the domino-effect timetable might not change the outcome, the extra weeks of uncertainty about GOP leadership has some happy and others worried. If, as expected, McCarthy wins Thursday in what is now functionally a nomination to be speaker, he will have to survive three weeks as the designee while conservatives and rivals try to mobilize against him.
Republicans will go home to their districts and hear from voters who are already frustrated with the status quo. Outside conservative voices — the California Republican has been decried as too moderate by conservative talkers such as Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin — will have weeks to rally opposition and fundraise off of efforts to stop McCarthy.
It is perhaps that anticipated backlash that prompted Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, to jump into the speaker race. And it's perhaps why, as Chaffetz told reporters on Monday, he doesn't see the speaker race as over until someone is confirmed on the floor.
“I think, increasingly, members are recognizing that their constituents don’t want to perpetuate the status quo, that simply giving existing leadership a promotion is not going to work well at all,” Chaffetz said.
The question in Chaffetz's mind “is, when will our conference come to the realization that we have to have a new, fresh person as our speaker?" he said. "I don’t know if that happens before Thursday, before we go to the floor, even after we go to the floor.”
But naming McCarthy as speaker-designee and waiting on the majority leader race may also give some of that conservative anger a release valve. Conservatives and other Republicans who feel like they're not being heard could focus on the majority leader election. Perhaps more candidates for the position could emerge.
Either way, Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who is said to have more than 140 votes committed to him, is publicly showing confidence.
"Our team is strong and growing," Chris Bond, a spokesman for Scalise said, "and we look forward to having all these elections take place as soon as our conference is ready."
"As soon as our conference is ready" may be a subjective term, but Boehner's decision to delay the down-ballot races seems to be a strategy to strengthen the conference.
In his statement announcing the change, Boehner said, "This new process will ensure House Republicans have a strong, unified team to lead our conference and focus on the American people's priorities."
Boehner seems to recognize there's an appetite for change in the conference. Hanging over the races are a slate of proposals that would fundamentally alter how Republicans elect their leaders.
On Sunday, Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., and James B. Renacci, R-Ohio, were collecting signatures for a special conference meeting to further discuss all the potential election changes members want. First and foremost was a delay for the other races. On a conference call later that evening where Chief Deputy Whip Patrick T. McHenry, R-N.C., told supporters he had locked up enough support to be the next whip, some members urged their colleagues to not sign the letter, according to a source on the call.
Some of the changes Republicans are discussing range from making members in leadership vacate their existing position to run for a new spot to punishing members who vote against the speaker nominee on the floor.
An effort requiring Republicans to vote for whoever wins in conference certainly could help McCarthy, but it also could exacerbate the tension in the conference between conservatives and more establishment Republicans.
In the near-term, the one change Mulvaney and Renacci were pushing strongly for — postponing potential races for majority leader and whip — has already been granted. That has to come with some disappointment for candidates such as Scalise and McHenry, both of whom feel they have their races in the bag. (A source close to McHenry told CQ Roll Call Monday the North Carolina Republican "already enjoys support from a significant majority of the conference in the race for whip.")
For other contenders — such as Budget Chairman Tom Price of Georgia for leader, and Rules Chairman Pete Sessions of Texas for whip — a little more time for Republicans to think about these races isn't such a bad thing. As a source close to Sessions told CQ Roll Call, "the decision to delay these elections reflects the fact that our conference needs to sit down and think about our choices long and hard."
"We are at a crossroads in this party," the source continued, "and these races that were already in flux are now even more in question."
Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers and GOP Policy Chairman Luke Messer on Oct. 3 announced in a "Dear Colleague" letter they would form a "working group" to open up the rules and procedures of the House. Part of the changes yet to come could be alterations to elections.
Emma Dumain contributed to this report. Correction 5:47 p.m. A previous version of this article misstated the date on which McMorris Rodgers' and Messer's letter was circulated.
Related:
Chaffetz: McCarthy Support ‘Dwindling, Not Growing’ GOP Split Over Whether to Fast-Track Elections or Take More Time Saying McCarthy Lacks 218 Votes, Chaffetz Announces Bid for Speaker (Updated) A Tale of Two Republicans: McCarthy and McConnell Sources: Chaffetz Readies Run for Speaker In Majority Leader Race, Scalise Lapping Price in This Key MeasureHAVANA (Reuters) - In what has become an annual ritual, the United States on Thursday kept Cuba on its list of “state sponsors of terrorism” and Havana reacted angrily, calling it a “shameful decision” based in politics, not reality.
Protesters take part in a protest against anti-communist Cuban activist Luis Posada Carriles in Miami May 12, 2007. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Cuba said in a statement that the U.S. government was pandering to the Cuban exile community in Miami against its own interests and the wishes of the American people.
“It hopes to please an anti-Cuban group, growing smaller all the time, which tries to maintain a policy that now has no support and doesn’t even represent the national interests of the United States,” said the statement issued by Cuba’s foreign ministry.
Iran, Sudan and Syria also are on the list, which is published annually by the U.S. State Department. Cuba has been on it since 1982.
The terrorism designation comes with a number of sanctions, including a prohibition on U.S. economic assistance and financial restrictions that create problems for Cuba in international commerce, already made difficult by a U.S. trade embargo imposed against the island since 1962.
The State Department’s explanation for Cuba’s inclusion on the list discounted most of the reasons from previous years and said “there was no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups.”
In the past, the report fingered Cuba for harboring rebels from the Marxist-led FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and members of Basque separatist groups.
This year, it noted that Cuba is sponsoring peace talks between the FARC and the Colombian government and has moved to distance itself from the Basques.
Washington’s primary accusation was that Cuba harbors and provides aid to fugitives from U.S. justice. Cuba does not deny that it has fugitives from the United States, but said none had been accused of terrorism.
Robert Muse, a Washington attorney who specializes in Cuba issues, said there is no legal basis for designating Cuba as a terrorist sponsor because of the presence of the fugitives.
He said they remain on the island because the Washington has refused to honor a longstanding extradition treaty with Cuba.
Earlier this month, the FBI placed one of the fugitives, Joanne Chesimard, on its most wanted terrorist list 40 years after she was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper. Chesimard, a former member of a black militant group, has been in Cuba since 1984.
Cuba rejected the notion that she or anyone else on the island was involved in terrorist activities.
“The territory of Cuba has never been used and never will be to harbor terrorists of any origin, nor to organize, finance or perpetrate acts of terrorism against any country in the world, including the United States,” it said.
Geoff Thale, program director at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank, said President Barack Obama can take Cuba off the terrorist list at any time and should do so because it is “clear that the State Department doesn’t really believe that Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism.”
Removing Cuba from the list would improve relations with Cuba and all of Latin America, which sees U.S. policy toward Cuba “as a reflection of U.S. attitudes toward the region as a whole,” Thale said.Best if read in the voice of Cecil Palmer (Beware of spoilers)
A’s for the Tracker (Apache, he said)
Not quite as embarrassing now that he’s dead.
B’s for Big Rico, best under the sun.
No one does pizza like Rico, NO ONE.
C’s for the council, with crowns of soft meat.
They’re off on a clearly pre-scheduled retreat.
D is for Dana, or maybe her twin.
It’s hard to say which of them managed to win.
E is for Emmett, or Ernest some claim.
It’s hard to remember him, even his name.
F is the Faceless Old Woman who roams
Unseen just behind you. She lives in your home.
G IS THE GLOW CLOUD, BENEATH WHOM WE FLAIL.
“ALL GLORY” WE CRY UNTO IT, “ALL HAIL.”
H is for Hiram and all of his heads,
A literal dragon who ran from the feds.
I’s for the Interns who’ve come and who’ve gone.
We send our condolences, then we move on.
J is John Peters (The farmer. You know.)
Folks love the invisible corn that he grows.
K is for Kevin who worked here a while.
Beware of the lies hiding under his smile.
L can be found on the edge of the town
It’s old Larry Leroy. He’s always around.
M is for Marcus, the town’s richest man.
I’d tell you what happened, but I don’t think I can.
N is for Nazr, the school’s football coach.
His tongue’s pretty creepy. I wouldn’t approach.
O’s Old Woman Josie, whom we dearly missed,
Surrounded by friends who do not exist.
P is for Pamela, mayor no more,
A press conference chief with surprises in store.
Q is a question you never will voice.
No “shouldn’t” about it. You don’t have a choice.
R is for Roger, who paid with a spine.
It bought him a condo and terror sublime.
S is for Steve. I’ll try not to rant.
He once saved my life by- No, sorry. I can’t.
T’s for Tamika, that lover of books.
She’s already found, so don’t bother to look.
U’s for the people just under lane five.
They’ll only rest when we’re no longer alive.
V is the vague yet menacing team
That works for the government. So it would seem.
W is for worms…(ellipsis, no caps)
If you can’t find your dog, it’s the pellet that yaps.
X has been cancelled, we’re sorry to say.
There’s nothing to see here, so be on your way.
Y is for you, it just so turns out.
You’re sometimes the one that the story’s about.
Z is the sound once you’ve turned out the light,
So Carlos and I wish you all a good night.By Caroline Parkinson
Health reporter, BBC News, Barcelona
The world's obese population is rising Obese men have poorer quality sperm, perhaps because too much fat around their testicles causes them to heat up, scientists have suggested. University of Aberdeen researchers looked at the sperm of over 2,000 men in couples having problems conceiving. The heaviest men had a higher proportion of abnormal sperm, as well as other problems. The scientists told a European fertility conference losing weight probably boosted fertility. We are pleased to be able to add improved semen quality to the long list of benefits that we know are the result of an optimal body weight
Dr Ghiyath Shayeb
University of Aberdeen Being obese is already known to affect women's chances of getting pregnant. The men were divided into four groups, according to their BMI (body mass index). Other factors which could affect fertility, such as smoking, high alcohol use and age, were taken into account by the researchers. Men who had a healthy BMI of 20 to 25 were had higher levels of normal sperm than those who were heavier. They also had higher semen volume, the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology meeting in Barcelona was told. But those with a higher BMI had lower volumes of seminal fluid, and a higher proportion of abnormal sperm. There was no significant difference between the four groups in sperm concentration or activity. Other studies have also linked obesity to DNA damage in the sperm. Semen quality Dr Ghiyath Shayeb, who led the research, said: "Our findings were quite independent of any other factors and seem to suggest that men who are trying for a baby with their partners, should first try to achieve an ideal body weight. "This is in addition to the benefit of a healthy BMI for their general well being. "Adopting a healthy lifestyle, a balanced diet, and regular exercise will, in the vast majority of cases, lead to a normal BMI. "We are pleased to be able to add improved semen quality to the long list of benefits that we know are the result of an optimal body weight." The researchers will now look at male BMI in fertile and infertile couples to see if the poorer semen quality is directly linked to poor fertility, and examine further how obesity can damage sperm. Dr Shayeb said there were a number of possible explanations, including different hormone levels in obese men, overheating of the testicles caused by excessive fat in the area, or simply the lifestyle and diet that leads to obesity also causing poorer semen quality. Dr Ian Campbell, chair of the charity Weight Concern, said it was known that overweight people had a tendency to have fewer children. He said there had been a suspicion that was mainly due to lack of opportunity. "But if weight actually has a detrimental effect on sperm quality, that's really interesting," he said "It's one more reason for men to lose weight."
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StumbleUpon What are these?The two most common assault rifles in the world are the Soviet AK-47 and the American M16.[21][22] These Cold War-era rifles have been used in conflicts both large and small since the 1960s. They are used by military, police, security forces, revolutionaries, terrorists, criminals and civilians alike and will most likely continue to be used for decades to come.[23][24] As a result, they have been the subject of countless comparisons and endless debate.[5][25][26]
The AK-47 was finalized, adopted and entered widespread service in the Soviet Army in the early 1950s.[27] Its firepower, ease of use, low production costs, and reliability were perfectly suited for the Soviet Army's new mobile warfare doctrines. More AK-type weapons have been produced than all other assault rifles combined.[28] In 1974, the Soviets began replacing their AK-47 and AKM rifles with a newer design, the AK-74, which uses 5.45×39mm ammunition.
The M16 entered U.S. service in the mid-1960s.[29] Despite its early failures, the M16 proved to be a revolutionary design and stands as the longest continuously serving rifle in American military history. It is a benchmark against which other assault rifles are judged.[30] The U.S. Military has largely replaced the M16 in combat units with a shorter and lighter version called the M4 carbine.[31][32]
History [ edit ]
Sturmgewehr 44 [ edit ]
The German Sturmgewehr 44
The Germans were the first to pioneer the assault rifle concept, during World War II, based upon research that showed that most firefights happen within 400 meters and that contemporary rifles were over-powered for most small arms combat.[33][34][35][36][37][38] They would soon develop a select-fire intermediate powered rifle combining the firepower of a submachine gun with the range and accuracy of a rifle.[33][34][35][36][37][38]
The result was the Sturmgewehr 44, which the Germans produced in large numbers; approximately half a million were made.[33][35][36][37][38] It fired a new and revolutionary intermediate powered cartridge, the |
preheated oven for about 10 minutes. Lay 2 pieces of naan on a pizza peel or on a baking sheet (if you’re not using a pizza stone). Brush each naan with 1 teaspoon olive oil and sprinkle the oregano over top. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese on each naan. Divide the corn, tomatoes and jalapeno evenly between the 2 pieces of naan. Top each with another 1 tablespoon of Parmesan cheese. If using a baking stone, transfer the pizzas from the peel to the stone. If using a baking sheet, place the baking sheet in the oven. Bake until the cheese is melted and the naan bread is golden brown, 7 to 8 minutes. Transfer the pizzas to a cutting board and let rest for a few minutes minutes before slicing. Sprinkle the basil over top. Slice the pizzas into quarters. Serve. by From the kitchen of cookincanuck.com Recipe Notes From the kitchen of Cookin' Canuck | cookincanuck.com
Disclosure: This post contains links to my Amazon affiliate page. Any revenue made from sales through these links helps to support this blog. Thank you!SpaceX founder tells meeting of astronautical experts that his only purpose is to ‘make life interplanetary’, revealing plans for reusable ship to Mars
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has outlined his highly ambitious vision for manned missions to Mars, which he said could begin as soon as 2022 – three years sooner than his previous estimates.
However, the question of how such extravagantly expensive missions would be funded remains largely in the dark.
Elon Musk has ambitious plans for Mars. Are they as crazy as they sound? Read more
“What I really want to try to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible – like it’s something we can achieve in our lifetimes,” Musk told an audience in his keynote speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Tuesday.
He said there were “two fundamental paths” facing humanity today. “One is that we stay on Earth forever and then there will be an inevitable extinction event,” he said. “The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization, and a multi-planetary species.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A shot of a video about the Interplanetary Transport System, which aims to reach Mars with a human crew for the first time in history.
In order to achieve this goal, Musk outlined a multi-stage launch and transport system, including a reusable booster – like the Falcon 9, which SpaceX has already successfully tested – only much larger. The booster, and the “interplanetary module” on top of it, would be nearly as long as two Boeing 747 aircraft. It could initially carry up to 100 passengers, he said.
The first ship to go to Mars, Musk said, would be named Heart of Gold as a tribute to the ship powered by an “infinite improbability drive” from Douglas Adams’ science fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Similar modules, also launched using reusable boosters, would remain in Earth’s orbit to refuel the interplanetary craft to be able to use multiple trips, including to other parts of the solar system such as Enceladus, a moon of Saturn on which Nasa’s Cassini mission recently found evidence of a polar subsurface water ocean that could harbor life.
Musk estimated the current cost of sending someone to Mars at 'around $10bn per person'
Musk also outlined a system by which fuel could be synthesized on Mars from water and carbon dioxide in order to fuel return journeys to Earth.
He estimated the current cost of sending someone to Mars at “around $10bn per person”, though it was not clear if he meant using existing rocket systems or on the initial flight of his proposed system. He said that there would be price improvements over time because of the reusability of the spacecraft, in-orbit refuelling and on-Mars propellant production that would reduce that cost by “orders of magnitude”.
But he made little attempt to solve the thorny problem of the initial cost of constructing the system. Suggesting possible revenue streams, Musk proposed two sources of cash – sending cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station and launching satellites – both already part of SpaceX’s business model.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elon Musk said humanity faces two paths – staying on Earth or becoming a ‘spacefaring civilization’. Photograph: Hector-Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images
He also listed three other sources of revenue that simply read “kickstarter”, “profit” and – intriguingly – “steal underpants”.
Asked at the talk about funding, however, Musk said: “The reason I am personally accruing assets is to fund this. I really have no other purpose than to make life interplanetary.”
Bill Nye, chief executive officer of the Planetary Society and host of the popular TV show Bill Nye the Science Guy, was in the audience and described the energy of the crowd as “extraordinary”.
“Watching the crowd go absolutely wild today tells me that the best is yet ahead for space exploration,” he told the Guardian, adding that Musk had presented “a very aggressive schedule that seemed feasible to the crowd”.
“No matter what we send to Mars, I very much hope we conduct a thorough, careful search for life before we consider landing people and cargo. I believe the discovery of life or evidence of life would change the way we think about the cosmos and our place within it,” Nye added.
Nasa said in a statement that it welcomed Musk’s plans. “NASA applauds all those who want to take the next giant leap – and advance the journey to Mars. We are very pleased that the global community is working to meet the challenges of a sustainable human presence on Mars. This journey will require the best and the brightest minds from government and industry, and the fact that Mars is a major topic of discussion is very encouraging.”
Nasa says it has made “extraordinary progress” developing a plan for sustainable Mars exploration, building partnerships in both the public and private sectors.
• An earlier version of this article expressed intrigue at Musk’s mention of “steal underpants”. Musk was, of course, quoting the gnomes who steal Tweek’s underpants from the penultimate episode of South Park season two, episode 17. Their plan, in full, was:(CNN) President Donald Trump's nominee for an Alabama federal court judgeship is being criticized for not disclosing in his confirmation process his wife's role in the White House.
Brett Talley did not disclose his wife's position as chief of staff for White House Counsel Donald McGahn on his Senate questionnaire, according to The New York Times.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, said the full Senate should not consider Talley's nomination until he explains why he failed to disclose the potential conflict of interest.
"By failing to disclose that his wife is one of President Trump's lawyers," Feinstein said in a statement, "Talley has betrayed his obligation to be open and transparent with the Senate and American people."
The Senate judiciary committee advanced Talley's nomination along a party-line vote Thursday and a full Senate vote is expected soon.
Read MoreThough the full ad of 2.11 minutes, has been taken off but the teaser video of 31 seconds is viewed in the India domain.
Hindu Council of Australia called on MLA to voluntarily take the advertisement off air. (Photo: Youtube grab)
Sydney: The Australian advertisement showing Lord Ganesha promoting consumption of lamb meat has been taken off air by YouTube. The step comes after Hindu groups created outrage over the Hindu god shown consuming lamb meat in the commercial.
The advertisement, a campaign by Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) to promote lamb meat, shows Gods of different religion including Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Zeus, Aphrodite, Obi Wan Kenobi and Scientology founder Ron Hubbard, sitting together to a lamb-based meal and raising a glass to the meat.
Lord Ganesha, believed to be a vegetarian Hindu God, widely praised by the Indians following Hindu religion, the video seems to be removed from the Indian domain as clicking on a YouTube link for the video shows the message stating, “This content is not available on this country domain due to a legal complaint from the government.”
Though the full ad of 2.11 minutes, has been taken off but the teaser video of 31 seconds is viewed in the India domain.
In this regard, the Indian high commission to Australia has also taken reservation against the offensive ad which hurts the sentiments of people following Hindu religion.
The commission said in a statement on Saturday said, "Lord Ganesha along with other religious figures is found to be 'toasting lamb', which the Indian community consider to be offensive and hurting their religious sentiments."
The Indian consulate in Sydney has also made a direct appeal to Meat and Livestock Australia to withdraw the commercial, according to the statement.
The industry body said it was meeting community groups to respond to their concerns.
It said it had undertaken extensive research and consultation when producing the advertisement, which was intended to promote inclusivity and not intended to offend.Gary Waters/Getty Images Researchers at Arizona State University found that mass shootings were significantly more likely to occur if another shooting that received national media coverage took place in the previous 13 days.
In the aftermath of yet another mass shooting in the U.S. -- the 351st in the 336 days so far this year -- a visibly weary President Barack Obama addressed the nation yet again.
"We have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world," he said.
This tragic, uniquely American pattern has led to cycle in which each horrific event begets more violence.
These events don't occur in a vacuum. While the "contagion" effect is well-documented in the case of suicides, it's been studied less in the context of mass shootings. But as shootings become an ever more commonplace occurrence, more of us are wondering about the possibility of a ripple effect.
We're starting to better understand the epidemiology behind this tragic trend. While the research is limited, a recent Arizona State University study found strong evidence that school shootings and other acts of mass violence are contagious.
The researchers did a statistical analysis of 176 mass shooting events in the U.S. from 2006 to 2011 and 220 school shootings between 1997 and 2013. They discovered that mass shootings were significantly more likely to occur if another shooting that received national media coverage took place in the previous 13 days -- a finding that suggests that mass shootings tend to cluster together in a similar manner to suicides. This was "apparently due to the [media] coverage planting the seeds of ideation in at-risk individuals to commit similar acts," the study said.
"People had suspected for a long time that mass killings were contagious," Sherry Towers, a research professor at Arizona State University and the study's lead author, told The Huffington Post. "Our study was the first to use to use a contagion model to quantify how much contagion there actually is in these kinds of tragedies."
Towers and her colleagues also found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had higher incidences of mass killings with firearms and school shootings. Unfortunately, their study is one of the only ones to investigate the causes of mass shootings, due to a federal ban on funding for firearms violence research.
Here's what we do and don't know about the social contagion effect of mass shootings.
Copycat Crimes
Many, if not the majority, of mass shooters researched and were inspired by past shootings, particularly the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, Towers said. Recently, authorities found out the 26-year-old perpetrator of the October shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon studied both the Columbine shooting and the 2011 Norway shooting in detail.
“You’d have a hard time finding someone who didn’t do some research about those who went before,” Robert Fein, a psychologist who specializes in targeted violence, recently told The New York Times.
Psychology also shows a copycat effect when it comes to violence. A famous study conducted in the early 1960s found that children learn social behaviors by watching the behavior of others. The children in the study learned to be aggressive by watching adults who behaved that way: They were particularly likely to act with aggression when they saw an adult being rewarded for behaving aggressively.
The Media's Role
National media attention may be playing a role in spreading the news about tragedies and inspiring at-risk individuals who have access to guns, Towers said.
What's more, these individuals can view the resulting media attention as a reward for violent acts.
"We need to remember that if we assign celebrity status, pay homage, glorify and sensationalize those who commit horrific crimes, we are only adding to the likelihood that similar crimes will be carried out by those craving the same attention," Richard Amaral, a counseling psychologist in Ontario, wrote in a 2013 blog post.
Knowing that their actions may garner national attention, shooters are likely using violence to seek out the spotlight. These types of crimes are "a kind of theater... meant to be seen as an attack against society itself," Ari Schulman pointed out in The Wall Street Journal in 2013, after shootings at Los Angeles International Airport and a New Jersey mall.
"I think we're starting to realize we [the media] have sort of played a role," Dave Cullen, author of the book Columbine, told MSNBC after the Washington Navy Yard shooting in 2013. "We didn't start it. But we have sure been hurling the gasoline on, or allowing it, really gassing it up."
So what can the media do? One approach would be to implement informed, responsible reporting practices to help end the cycle of gun violence, perhaps similar to the existing media recommendations for reporting on suicide.
Some experts, along with proponents of the Anti-Notoriety Campaign and #NoNotoriety movement, have suggested that the media refrain from publishing the shooter's name or photograph.
"We should not give out the names, we should not show bloody scenes," Harris Stratyner, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, told HuffPost. "There are no simple answers, but we should stop turning these people into legends, because that's what inspires copycat crimes."
Why We Still Don't Understand
It's easy to point a finger at the media, but the issue is far more complex than that.
"There is a multifaceted problem in the U.S. that is causing this pattern of tragedies that we are consistently observing," Towers said.
Yet we don't understand the problem well, due in part to a lack of research. Since 1996, there's been a moratorium on scheduled funding for research into violence caused by firearms -- which effectively shuts down all CDC research on gun violence.
Towers and her colleagues carried out their study -- one of the few to investigate whether mass shootings are contagious -- in their spare time and without pay. That charity work is not something that most scientists would be willing to do.
Just one day before the San Bernardino shooting, former Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ark.) wrote a letter to Congress expressing regret for authoring the bill limiting firearms violence research funding.
"It is my position that somehow or someway we should slowly but methodically fund such research until a solution is reached," Dickey wrote. "Scientific research should help answer how we can best reduce gun violence... Doing nothing is no longer an acceptable solution."
As Dickey suggests, perhaps we don't know how to prevent these tragedies because we simply don't understand them.
"We are the only First World, industrialized country that forbids federal funding for research into firearm violence," Towers said. "People ask me, 'How can we prevent this?' The answer is, I don't know. It requires further research, but the government has put a muzzle on researchers."
Also on HuffPost:Germany's influence in Europe is not purely geopolitical. A large part of it is based on trade. The past two decades in particular have seen Germany assemble a powerful international goods factory. It takes unfinished products from its neighbors (eight of whom send Germany more than 20 percent of their exports) and transforms them into sophisticated mechanical goods before shipping them onward. In 2014, Germany was the number one export destination for 14 of its 27 EU peers, and the top source of imports for 15 of them. Access to this machine has especially benefited former communist states in Central and Eastern Europe, which have capitalized on high levels of investment from Germany (as well as the Netherlands and Austria) and capital inflows to achieve impressive GDP growth. European Union or no, the players in this network will all be highly motivated to keep it running.
Eastern and Western Interests Diverge
Still, there are two catches. The first is immigration. The subject has hung over these relationships since at least the 2004 enlargement, when Germany was one of several countries to impose restrictions on the freedom of movement for new eastern members. The influx of refugees into Europe has recently rekindled this friction, with the Visegrad Group (Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland) bonding over a mutual aversion to Germany's attempts to dole out quotas of newly arrived migrants. The relationship emerging to Germany's east and southeast is one in which the free movement of goods and capital is encouraged, but the free movement of people is restricted.
The second catch is Russia. Over the next decade, Russia will experience some significant changes in both its external relationships and its internal systems. The first half of this forecast has already come to pass, and Russia has grown increasingly belligerent in its periphery. Stratfor believes this will become more pronounced until the system designed by Russian President Vladimir Putin either adapts or collapses. This will clearly have a considerable effect on Russia's European neighbors, albeit to varying degrees. And so, geography will come into play once more. We have already seen the Russian military used to powerful effect in Ukraine, but its ability to push farther into Romania is somewhat tempered by the Carpathian Mountains, a natural barrier that snakes north and west, also providing protection to Hungary and Slovakia. Poland, by contrast, stands starkly exposed to Belarus, a close Russian ally, with no mountain range to shield it. Farther north, the similarly unprotected Baltic states lack Poland's bulk and thus have even less protection; a larger country like Poland could at least buy time to organize a defense.
This geographic divergence will divide Central and Eastern Europe into two groups, one focused on trade and the other on security. The Central Europeans (the Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians and Slovaks) will be wary of antagonizing Russia. The Carpathians, though a barrier, are not insuperable. And yet these countries, sheltered by the mountains, will also be free to focus much of their energy toward pursuing continued prosperity through trade with the core. A shared interest in maintaining trade with Germany is not the foundation for a defined bloc, but more the makings of a loose grouping that becomes weaker with both distance from Germany and time, as Germany's strength begins to wane. Poland and the Baltics, by contrast, will not have the luxury of focusing primarily on their own enrichment. With Russia's presence looming, these countries will be bound closely together, focusing their energies on defense pacts and alliances — and especially on cultivating strong relationships with the United States. Trade will continue, of course, but the identity of this bloc will center on resisting the Russian threat. If and when internal challenges force Russia to turn its attention inward, Poland will have an opportunity, the likes of which it has not seen for several hundred years, to spread its influence east and south into the former territories of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in Belarus and Ukraine.We tend to be generous towards people who can't get over someone. It sounds romantic, if a little sad. The love affair happened a year ago but still, the excess thought remains loyal to every detail of the story. Maybe they've moved to another country. Perhaps they've married someone else. Maybe, they're dead. None of it matters.
The most famous fictional love affair of the 18th century Goethe's "Sorrows of Young Werther" is a hugely sympathetic study of this kind of romantic fixation. The hero, Werther, an ardent young student falls passionately in love with a charming and beautiful woman named Charlotte. She likes him but doesn't love him back in part because she's married to someone else. There are plenty of other nice women who are single, attractive, and interested in Werther. But, he has no time for them.The only one he cares for is Charlotte. The one who doesn't care for him. Eventually, unable to have Charlotte's love, Werther decides to kill himself. The novel proved hugely charming to its original audiences, who praised it for its deep and pure understanding of love. This sort of unrequited passion is often celebrated in literature and society more generally. It may sound generous and in that sense, loving. But, a devotion to an unrequited situation is in truth, a clever way of ensuring that we won't end up in a relationship at all. That we won't ever need to suffer the realities of love. Fixation on an absent other allows us to be publicly committed to love while privately sheltered from any of its more arduous demands. The fear of love may be motivated by a range of factors.
A squeamishness around hope, a self-hatred which makes someone else's love feel eerie, or a fear of self-revelation which breeds a reluctance to let anyone into the secret part of ourselves. The fears are serious and deserve sympathy. But they are generally not the issues that the romanticly fixated person ever wants to discuss. They prefer to keep the spotlight on the unresponsive ex, rather than on their motives for continuing to dwell on them. The way to fixate is not to tell ourselves that we never like the person. It's to get very serious and specific about what the attraction was based on. And then to come to see that the qualities we had admired in the ex must necessarily exist in the other people who don't have the set of problems that make the original relationship impossible. The careful investigation of the character of one person, paradoxically but very liberatingly shows that we could, in fact, also love someone else. This is not an exercise in getting us to give up on what we really want. The liberating move is to see that what we want has to exist in places beyond the pain and juicing character we originally identified it in.
We should gently recognize that being disappointed and abandoned has its curious satisfactions. It is in an emotional sense, a very safe position to be in indeed. Yet true love isn't to be acquired with pining for an absent figure. It means daring to engage with a truly frightening prospect.
A person who is available and thinks despite our strong background supposition to the contrary that we're really rather nice. That is perhaps, the only sort of challenge that properly deserves the lyrical and grand word ROMANTIC.
Have you hear about the No Contact Rule. The No Contact Rule is a startegy to help you get your ex back or get over them and it works almost for everyone.
Watch the video below and do subscribe to his channel, for this amazing article.**********
Translator: Tynkerd
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Editor: TranslationChicken
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※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
[Subaru: Come to think of it, I think I heard of you… a maid who quit a little while ago before I arrived here, right? I came to the mansion about a month ago… so it’s been three months since you left?]
[Frederica: That seems to be right. I had resigned my position due to personal reasons, and I still remember how painfully lonely it felt, leaving here. … But it seems that I was able to return much sooner than I expected]
Covering her mouth with her sleeve, Frederica smiled. As long as she covers her mouth, her beautiful golden hair and her cold, barely passable gaze, would combine into something even resembling feminine beauty. But her mischievous personality and her mouth-full of fangs tend to negate that no matter what.
In the living room of the Roswaal Mansion, Subaru and Frederica have just exchanged some basic information beyond their names. Listening to her self-introduction again, he seemed to recall having heard that name before.
[Subaru: Three months ago, so that means you’re acquainted with Emilia-tan, right?]
[Emilia: Hrmph! That would be correct, yes]
[Subaru: Who says ‘Hrmph’ these days? Also sulking like that is so outdated it’s cute, geez]
To Subaru’s question and gaze, Emilia sat down onto the couch, averting her eyes as if refraining from joining the conversation, though she was obviously still listening intently. She had been acting like this ever since she realized, too late, how Frederica had tricked her. But that aside,
[Subaru: It’s only been two or three days since you returned, right? We left from the village three days ago……four if you count the traveling time. It seems to be quite a coincidence]
[Frederica: I was surprised too when I returned to the mansion to find it empty. Luckily, there was a letter explaining things in the master’s study, so I avoided the worst of the confusion]
[Subaru: A letter?]
[Frederica: Yes, from Ram. She was the one who called me back to the mansion, though she was rather haphazard in her communication…. I know it’s indulging her too much to pass it off as her personality, but that’s how I feel]
Through Frederica’s half-awkward smile, Subaru saw the time-worn bond she and Ram must have shared, and all the wonderful days they have passed together. At the same time, erased from her memories, her time spent with Rem must have been just as long.
[Subaru: Could you tell me why Ram called you back?]
[Frederica: I don’t completely understand the reason myself. But Miss Emilia was here at the time, I am sure she would know]
At once, both their gazes poured onto Emilia inquisitively. Even now, Emilia continued to maintain her “I’m still really, really angry,” attitude, turning her face away. But, as she slowly became unable to resist the attention focused on her, she tried to steal a quick glance in their direction. Only, it ended up being a rather obvious glance.
[Subaru: Emilia-tan, cheer up… or, actually, I’m not the one who upset you this time. Frederica, apologize properly would you?]
[Frederica: I ask for your forgiveness, Miss Emilia. What I did a moment ago was not nice and I apologize. I was so happy we could meet again after so long, my bad side just, slipped out]
[Emilia: …You won’t tease me like that anymore?]
[Frederica: No, I will refrain from doing so. For all the world I will never again tease Miss Emilia in that manner again]
Subaru couldn’t quite get rid of the feeling that the wording of Frederica’s apology left some room for interpretation. However, our Goddess Emilia seemed to believe in those words without a second thought, and her up-to-now sulking expression relaxed into one that seemed to say, “I suppose it can’t be helped”.
[Emilia: I understand. I’m not angry anymore. Is that good enough?]
[Frederica: Yes, I am very sorry for before, Miss Emilia. ——Too easy.]
Somehow, only Subaru heard that last part. He jerked his head to look at Frederica, but she was playing dumb. Emilia, who had no idea she was being considered “too easy,” placed a finger to her cheek and said,
[Emilia: So, let’s see. The reason Frederica was called back to the mansion… umm]
[Subaru: Yeah, yeah. Rushing to call back someone you fired would mean there’s some kind of emergency…actually, I think I might have an idea]
There was indeed an emergency, it was only a few days ago that the Mansion and Arlam village were targeted by the Witch Cult. Considering her skill, which had been able to knock Subaru unconscious in an instant, Frederica must be another shady maid of the Roswaal Mansion with some crazy combat abilities. In short, Ram must have called her back to buff the mansion’s defenses during their state of—
[Emilia: It was because Ram’s aptitude for housework is catastrophic, and the mansion ended up in an unimaginable state of disarray. It was only a few days, but it kept getting harder and harder to live in]
[Subaru: That’s actually a very compelling reason!! She really is all talk and no… wait, Ram knows she’s hopeless, she even said so herself! She’s right about that at least, but then she should have put in some effort to improve!! Right!?]
Subaru’s chest felt like it would explode from how compelling that reality was compared to his over-guessing of the situation.
Emilia let out a wry smile at his outburst, and shifted her gaze to the living room— or rather, to the entirety of the mansion, as though she could see through its very walls.
[Emilia: But, since Frederica returned, the mansion really has become quite tidy. I think Ram made the right decision in leaving it to someone capable, rather than make things worse by ignoring it]
[Subaru: Emilia-tan, I don’t think you meant it, but that statement’s like a slap to the face! And, well, I still don’t think that’s a good enough reason for her to give up so easily]
[Frederica: Putting Ram’s assessment aside for the moment, it has been such a long time since I have been given the opportunity to do some really worthwhile work. Luckily, since no one was around, I was able to spend the time on further cleaning the mansion]
Listening to Frederica speak of diligently holding up this household, Subaru held his breath, unable to ignore the pain wrenching in his heart.
For this, was the forces of the world compensating for the eradication of Rem’s existence by the Authority of “Gluttony”.
[Subaru: I guess since Ram can’t run the mansion by herself, the obvious solution was to rely on someone else…]
So Ram had contacted Frederica, who had resigned, asking her to return to the mansion. Without Rem, the Roswaal estate couldn’t continue to function, and so, Rem’s replacement, Frederica, had arrived.
Yet, the only one in the world who knows of this sad truth is Subaru. Ram had only done as necessity demanded, without stopping to think about why she needed Frederica’s help all of a sudden, or just how she had managed to take care of the estate until then. That was all there was to it.
But,
[Subaru: Sorry for being serious all of a sudden but… is it a requirement for all the maids of Roswaal’s Mansion to be so quirky?]
[Frederica: ……? Considering who our master is, what’s the point of even asking that question?]
[Subaru: That’s annoyingly persuasive!]
At this point, all of Subaru’s doubts have been answered. Seeing his response, Frederica nodded her head contentedly, and resuming her perfect posture, stared fixedly at Subaru. Then, casually, in a lowered voice,
[Frederica: By the way, the driver of the dragon carriage outside the mansion has been left out there for over an hour now……is that alright?]
[Subaru: Hmm? Oh, you mean Otto. I see, it’s already been an hour…… Well, I don’t think it’s that big of an issue. I want to hurry and let Patrasche rest in the stable, but you don’t need to pay attention to that Otto guy too much…]
[Otto: For a companion who shared a near-death experience together, that is really quite heartless, Natsuki-san! I never thought I was lower in priority than a ground dragon!]
Right on cue, Otto dramatically opened the doors to the living room. His shoulders hunched up angrily, he was glaring at Subaru while disapprovingly breathing through his nostrils. At his entrance, Subaru slowly stood up, shook his head, and sighed.
[Subaru: No, Otto, you’re mistaken]
[Otto: How am I mistaken? It’s too late to take back your words from a moment ago……]
[Subaru: It’s not that you’re lower in priority than a ground dragon. It’s that you are much, much lower in priority than a ground dragon]
[Otto: That’s twice over! That’s even worse!]
Content with Otto’s response and foot-stomping, Subaru turned his gaze toward the window. That is, toward the front yard where the dragon carriage pulled by Patrasche was parked.
Otto followed his gaze, and seemed to understand its meaning. With a still somewhat bitter face, he spoke,
[Otto: I’ve already put Patrasche in the stables. She is a proud and difficult child, but she didn’t want to cause Natsuki-san any trouble, so she was quite docile]
[Subaru: Hearing that from you, it makes me doubt your Divine Protection of “Animal Whispering”. If she were a woman, Patrasche would have been a total kuudere, even though she’d be soft on the inside. When did this change happen??]
[Otto: How would I know that kind of thing. More importantly……]
As Subaru was still struggling to understand just what made Patrasche so devoted to him, Otto moved the conversation to the other matter regarding the dragon carriage, that is—-
[Otto: What should be done about the girl sleeping in the carriage? I think it’s rather pitiful to leave her shut up in there. If you are busy I could carry her to a room……]
[Subaru: —Don’t you lay a finger on Rem]
There was not a hint of malice in Otto’s proposal. But his own voice was ice cold… Subaru himself was surprised by the razor sharpness of it, when he saw Otto flinch.
It was almost a whisper, the words were low and dark, a reflection of the viscous heaviness of his mind. It was good that this did not reach the ears of the girls, but still, Subaru was deeply disturbed by the abnormality of the sound that had escaped his throat.
Next Part 3/3: https://translationchicken.com/2016/10/05/rezero-arc-4-chapter-2-insults-and-gratitude-part-3-final/
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I can’t wait for Part 3! Such a beautiful scene coming up!!
Sorry this took till today! At night time I can’t be sure if something is good or bad so I waited until the morning to finish editing!
The entire draft for Chapter 2 was done by Tynkerd, really awesome! Once again most of the dialogues are straight from the draft, it was really good!!
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Son Wukong did a reading of Arc 4 Chapter 1! I absolutely love watching your readings! Your every reaction just makes all the effort worth it 🙂
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And the giant thanks block is back!
Thank you Jonathan K, Saranyu P, Jonathan B! And Kirt T and Stephen S! and Alberto G! and Jeffrey N! And Jonty J! MattErnest A! Justin F and Oleg Z! And Michael M, and Bentley M, and Micolo C! Zachary K! Marcel O!! Luis R! Guillaume C! Krzysztof C! Martijn T! Sergeev D! Julien/Terence T! Blake L! Macaulay K, Daniel K! Martin S, Vincent M, Brian D, Tim K, Julian H! Flavio T! Lennart W! Mohammed M! William W! David M! Mark M! Dawid K! Otto B! Steve B! Jason B! Alexandre M!! Chris B! Jun P! Philip H! Laurence T! David L! Samir O! Miguel S! Nabil D! Samir O! Mikey Z! Jonathan K! Ayan S! Shane A!
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And the anonymous guys thank you!
Next Part 3/3: https://translationchicken.com/2016/10/05/rezero-arc-4-chapter-2-insults-and-gratitude-part-3-final/MK Hanin Zoabi says the reconciliation agreement between Israel and Turkey was a clear “admission of murder” by Israel.
MK Hanin Zoabi (Joint List), who participated in the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla which ultimately resulted in the cutting of ties between Israel and Turkey, on Sunday night said the reconciliation agreement between the two countries was a clear “admission of murder” by Israel.
"Israel's agreement to transfer 21 million shekels to the Turks constitutes a clear admission of guilt. Even if Israel does not acknowledge it, it is a confession to the murder of nine people, wounding of dozens, kidnapping and piracy in international waters and false persecution,” she charged.
Zoabi called for more flotillas like the Marmara one in order to remove the “criminal siege”, as she put it, over Gaza.
Zoabi is notorious for her anti-Israel statements and actions, despite being an elected member of Israel’s parliament.
Among other things, she has said that Israel has “no right to a normal life,” and that “the Israeli occupation” was behind the murder of Israelis in Bulgaria. She has also declared that Israel should "thank her" for allowing Jews to live in the Jewish state.
Two years ago Zoabi defended Hamas terrorists who abducted and murdered three Israeli teens, saying they weren't "terrorists" and justifying their actions as a "legitimate" way to "fight the occupation."
She is also reportedly planning on participating in another flotilla attempting to breach Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza.
Her comments come after it was reported that Israel and Turkey reached a deal aimed at ending years of acrimony and restoring normalized ties.
The anticipated agreement comes six years after a Gaza-bound ship departed |
is pictured at a test missile launch
Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov (pictured with his daughter Lisa) stopped short of denying claims the Kremlin had ordered high-ranking officials to fly their relatives back to Russia
Putin also cancelled a planned visit to France amid a furious row over Moscow's role in the Syrian conflict and just days after it emerged the Kremlin had moved nuclear-capable missiles near to the Polish border.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned just days ago that the world is at a 'dangerous point' due to rising tensions between Russia and the US.
Russian political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky warned yesterday: 'This is all part of the package of measures to prepare elites to some "big war".'
And today, Russians reacted with a mixture of fury and gallows humour over the Kremlin's new orders amid rising world tension and the possibility of global war.
Political analyst Valery Solovei said plans were afoot for'serious limitations' on people wishing to leave Russia.
While he doubted a return to the Soviet system of 'exit visas' for its citizens, he said: 'Officials of all levels and their relatives will be recommended not to leave the country.
Putin (pictured) cancelled a planned visit to France amid a furious row over Moscow's role in the Syrian conflict and just days after it emerged the Kremlin had moved nuclear-capable missiles near to the Polish border
The Kremlin hsa reportedly moved nuclear-ready missiles closer to the border with Poland. A Russian truck-mounted Topol intercontinental ballistic missile is pictured during a military display
'As soon as officials are limited in their freedom of travel, they will make sure the rest of society gets the same treatment.
'As far as I know a tourist tax will be introduced for people wishing to go abroad.'
But there was deep concern from some Russians on social media that the alleged move signals war on the way.
Journalist Ostap Karmodi warned: 'First siloviki (security personnel) were prohibited from going abroad, then high-ranking officials were asked to sell foreign houses, close their companies and shut (overseas) bank accounts.
'Now they are ordered to bring children back. The only strange thing is that it didn't happen earlier. This is, of course, a preparation to war.
'Not in a sense that Putin is getting ready to a nuclear strike at America and Europe. They believe that the war against Russia started a long time ago.
'By moving everything they can back into Russia they try to minimise their vulnerability and clean up their own ranks to get rid of unstable elements.
'Children are the most vulnerable, they mustn't let the West to take hostages.'
RUSSIA TESTS BALLISTIC MISSILES AS TENSIONS BUILD Russia's military conducted a series of intercontinental ballistic missile tests on Wednesday, the latest flexing of its muscles as tensions with the US spike over Syria. Russian forces fired a nuclear-capable rocket from a Pacific Fleet submarine in the Sea of Okhotsk north of Japan, state-run RIA Novosti reported. A Topol missile was shot off from a submarine in the Barents Sea, and a third was launched from an inland site in the north-west of the vast country, Russian agencies reported. The latest display of might by Moscow - which has been conducting regular military drills since ties with the West slumped in 2014 over Ukraine - comes as tensions have shot up in recent days. Putin has reporedly moved nuclear-ready missiles closer to the border with Poland Russia has pulled the plug on a series of deals with the US - including a symbolic disarmament pact between the two nuclear powers to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium - as Washington has halted talks on Syria. The Kremlin has also moved an air defence missile system and missile cruisers to the war-ravaged country to bolster its forces there. That comes as the West has accused Moscow of committing potential war crimes in its bombing of rebel-held part of the city of Aleppo in support of an assault by regime forces. Washington has previously lashed out at Moscow for resorting to alleged "nuclear sabre-rattling" as East-West relations fell to the worst level since the Cold War following Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014.
Blogger Ilya Viceman, a Putin critic, warned: 'This is not yet an order to "bring everyone back within 24 hours to Russia" but a firm request from the presidential administration which would be so hard to refuse.
'This is not war, of course, but another small step towards it.
'This is also an insurance against escape of the most knowledgeable state servants abroad - with their families in Russia, control will remain with the state.'
The Kremlin fell short of issuing an outright denial with Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating only: 'It is the first time I have heard about that.'
Relations between Russia and the US are at their lowest since the Cold War and have soured in recent days after Washington pulled the plug on Syria talks and accused Russia of hacking attacks.
The Kremlin has also suspended a series of nuclear pacts, including a symbolic cooperation deal to cut stocks of weapons-grade plutonium.
Just days ago, it was reported that Russia had moved nuclear-capable missiles near to the Polish border as tensions escalated between the world’s largest nation and the West.
Political analyst Valery Solovei (pictured) said plans were afoot for'serious limitations' on people wishing to leave Russia
The Iskander missiles sent to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea between Nato members Poland and Lithuania, are now within range of major Western cities including Berlin.
Polish officials – whose capital Warsaw is potentially threatened – have described the move as of the 'highest concern'.
Putin's decision to cancel his Paris visit came a day after French President Francois Hollande said Syrian forces had committed a 'war crime' in the battered city of Aleppo with the support of Russian air strikes.
Putin had been due in Paris on October 19 to inaugurate a spiritual centre at a new Russian Orthodox church near the Eiffel Tower, but Hollande had insisted his Russian counterpart also took part in talks with him about Syria.
The unprecedented cancellation of a visit so close to being finalised is a'serious step... reminiscent of the Cold War', said Russian foreign policy analyst Fyodor Lukyanov.
'This is part of the broader escalation in the tensions between Russia and the West, and Russia and NATO,' he told AFP.
The Kremlin has also been angered over the banning of the Russian Paralympic team from the Rio Olympics amid claims of state-sponsored doping of its athletes.
Meanwhile, the top advisor to US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said the FBI is investigating Russia's possible role in hacking thousands of his personal emails.
But Russian officials have vigorously rejected accusations of meddling in the US presidential elections and dismissed allegations that Moscow was behind a series of recent hacks on US institutions.
Historian Eugene Ponasenkov, a member of an Independent Human Rights Council, said that the media has learned about the Kremlin'recommending' officials bring back children and other relatives from the West
Just days ago, it was reported that Russia had moved nuclear-capable missiles near to the Polish border as tensions escalated between the world’s largest nation and the West (file picture)
Yesterday's reports stemming from news source znak.com claimed all state employees should take their children out of foreign schools and repatriate their families.
Sweeping travel restrictions already apply to security and law enforcement officials and in some cases family members and the supposed proposals were seen as an extension of these.
While there were reports including from Noviye Izvestia suggesting the znak.com report was a 'fake', other sources are suspicious that pressure is indeed being brought to bear as Russia's propaganda machine paints the West as enemy number one.
Gallows humour also set in among some citizens who took to Twitter in an attempt to make light of the situation.
One joke imagined a telegram from Putin mouthpiece Peskov's 18-year-old daughter Lisa - whose views are not always politically correct in Russia, and now lives in France - demanding to meet her off the next flight from Nice.
Blogger Danny Lerer added: 'I'd love to watch Peskov's daughter - who doesn't speak Russian and grew up in the States - being brought back to Russia. Guess they'd need to handcuff her first.'
Another popular comment was a British aristocrat asking his butler: 'Barrymore, what is this howl coming from the swamps?'
The reply: 'Children and other relatives of Russian officials, Sir. They don't want to go back.'
Mr Gorbachev's comments come as France has said they will ask the International Criminal Court's prosecutor to launch an investigation into war crimes it says have been committed by Syrian and Russian forces in eastern Aleppo, pictured
Blogger Irina Azarova write: 'Haha - imagine half-empty schools all around the UK after Russians pull their children back!'
Historian Eugene Ponasenkov, a member of an Independent Human Rights Council, said: 'The media has learned about the Kremlin "recommending" officials to bring back children and other relatives from the West.
'So soon we should expect to see plenty of billionaire orphans.
'Just like when our captured soldiers were said by officials to have resigned a long time ago.
'Imagine bureaucrats saying: "Yes this is my son or daughter (still living abroad) but they resigned from our family a while ago".'
Another commenter Ania Dorn said: 'I worked at Rublyovka (Moscow's most elite suburb) for many years and I can tell you this - there is no way they'll bring their children anywhere near here (Russia).
'They've got so much money that even if tomorrow they all leave their armchairs and will say **** off to this government up to its very top, they'll still have enough to live the most luxurious life for generations to come.'
Other senior officials echoed the line that they had not seen the order, without fully denying its existence.
'I didn't hear it, I am not aware of this command,' said first deputy chief of Putin's political party, United Russia, Viktor Pinsky.Newt Gingrich comments on the political violence outside of Donald Trump's San Jose rally on Thursday night, saying that it is representative of fear on the part of the left and "fits into a general pattern" of political violence. "All of us who want real change in Washington have to realize that our opponents are not going to be helpful," he said. "They're not just going to roll over and accept this change."
"They know that if Donald Trump is acceptable in October of 2016, he will be president," Gingrich said. "So they are trying to paint him as unacceptable."
***
Former House Speaker and presidential candidate goes 'On the Record' on Hillary Clinton's blistering attack against Donald Trump in foreign policy speech, its potential impact and what it means in the road to November.This article is over 4 years old
Police boats scour water for predator off New South Wales coast after 41-year-old Tadashi Nakahara killed at Shelly beach – one day after 35-year-old injured in suspected shark attack up the coast
A surfer has died after losing both legs in a shark attack off the northern New South Wales coast, the second incident in as many days in the area.
Tadashi Nakahara, 41, was pulled from the surf at Shelly beach, a popular tourist spot in Ballina, at around 10am on Monday. He was given first aid but died on the scene.
It was the third fatal attack in New South Wales in the past 12 months and the sixth in Australia.
According to a local surfer, Allan Baldock, witnesses saw the shark appear to swim past others in the water to attack Nakahara, who was sitting on his surfboard about 10m from the beach.
“It went whack and he was thrown into the air... it must have been a huge, huge shark,” Baldock told Guardian Australia.
Friends of the man, a Japanese national who had lived in the area for the past year, told a local cafe owner, named only as Karen, that the shark came out from nowhere. “It just came up between a bunch of surfers,” she said on Monday. “They weren’t even that far out.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Shelley Beach in New South Wales, Australia, is closed after a Japanese surfer was killed by a shark
The victim’s friends were shaken up and looked “white as a ghost” as they carried his board away from the beach, the local said.
Lifeguards have since been stationed at all beaches in the Ballina Shire to keep people out of the water.
“This is obviously a very serious incident and we would ask that the public follow the directions of emergency service workers,” the NSW Surf Life Saving manager, Andy Kent, said.
Police boats scoured the water for the predator on Monday afternoon as marine scientists worked to identify its species and “determine whether that shark still poses a threat to humans”, police detective inspector Cameron Lindsay said.
Film crews had been stationed on the shore on Monday morning and may have captured video of the incident, he said. “We’re still looking at it, but what it appears to capture is a large amount of blood in the water.”
Lindsay hailed the surfers who brought Nakahara ashore and tried to save his life.
“I think their actions are commendable. Here we have a situation where [there is] a significant amount of blood in the water, they took to rescue this surfer, bring him in on shore.
“They did their best and unfortunately they couldn’t stop the blood loss.
“It’s obviously a stressful situation for them to go through.”
The Japanese consulate was working to inform Nakahara’s next of kin, police said.
Meanwhile another surfer is recovering in hospital after sustaining cuts to his lower back in a suspected shark attack on Sunday at nearby Seven Mile beach, close to Byron Bay.
Life in the shadow of Bruce, a shark that weighs as much as two VW Beetles Read more
The 35-year-old was sitting on his board about 60m off the shore early on Sunday morning when he was struck from behind.
Neither he nor a friend saw what had attacked him. “I saw blood and I thought I’d better get back to shore,” he told the Seven Network.
Recent attacks are averaging far above the average rate of one fatality per year. In NSW, a British man was killed at Byron Bay in September and a 63-year-old woman was killed at Tathra in April.
In December, two teenagers were killed by sharks – one in Western Australia and another in Queensland. In South Australia, a man was killed while spearfishing in February last year.
Several beaches were also shut last week in Newcastle, on the state’s central coast, after lifeguards spotted a 1.8-metre shark near Bar beach.
The previous day a body surfer had emerged from another Newcastle beach, Merewether, bleeding from five puncture wounds to the left ankle sustained by a juvenile shark bite.
Newcastle’s beaches were closed for a record nine days in January after a spate of shark sightings, including a five-metre great white nicknamed Bruce.
A similar cluster of shark encounters gripped Australia’s west coast one year ago after three people were killed in the water. The West Australian state government responded by laying baited hooks near popular beaches, prompting nationwide protests and international outrage.
Shark nets stretch across 51 NSW beaches to keep the predators away. But studies suggest the nets, which mostly kill “non-target” animals such as turtles, dugongs and dolphins, have done little to stop human fatalities.
Daniel Bucher, a shark expert at Southern Cross University, warned against a shark panic in the wake of the attacks.
He said sharks traditionally made their way down the east coast during the summer. “Generally there are more sightings when the water’s warm, and that’s because the sharks hunt more actively, because they have higher metabolic rates,” he said.
Nonetheless, he said shark attack rates had remained relatively stable in the past 20 years, even as Australia’s population and tourist numbers had soared.
“You would presume the number of people in the water would also have increased, yet the number of people interacting with sharks hasn’t changed. That suggests the number of sharks in the water has actually gone down,” he said.Survival Tips for Riding in City Traffic
My present job has me commuting about 25 miles each way into downtown Denver for work for the last 10 months. Just about everything that was taught to me by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) instructors in the basic and experienced rider courses has come into play during that time. Here are some tips that should help you too survive riding in city traffic.
First off, if you didn’t know it by now, congratulations: you own an invisibility cloak! No matter what you do to increase your visibility to others, there will always be drivers who won’t see you. You can have modulating headlights, reflective tape and jacket, and heck you can wear a spinning yellow light on top of your helmet. But, you must still ride as if you’re invisible. Even police cars, with their lights flashing and sirens blaring, have had cars pull out in front of them or been hit by unwary drivers!
Be Unhittable
One of the principles I ride by is “Be Unhittable.” What does this mean? It means ride fully expecting drivers to not see you and positioning yourself to be more visible to any driver that can possibly ruin your day.
Positioning is important: try not to ride adjacent to cars. You should always ride in the front line of vision of the driver behind you, not in their peripheral vision. Often people fail to use their turn signals, or even fail to check their blind spots, so keep alert and out of the blind spots of other vehicles. Place yourself so that if the driver unexpectedly moves into your lane, he will do so without hitting you.
Along with being aware of what is immediately around you, don’t forget to check what is seven to 12 seconds in front of you. The way I see it, if traffic events surprise you, you weren’t paying attention. Riding in traffic is not the time to think about anything but the threatening environment around you.
Do you ride where there’s an “escape lane”? Do you create options for yourself in case the car in front of you stops unexpectedly or the car behind you doesn’t notice that traffic has come to a stop?
Do you create and maintain a safe reaction zone between the vehicle in front of you and your motorcycle? (This zone is also called a Safe Following Distance.) Essentially, it’s all about giving yourself enough time to react.
A Visible Intersection
Although you cannot assume for an instant that any driver sees you, you must ride in a way that affords them the chance to see you.
A Safe Following Distance not only gives you the time you need to react to a situation, but it also serves to prevent the vehicle in front of you from blocking the oncoming traffic’s view of you. If you ride too close to a vehicle’s bumper, chances are drivers coming your way won’t see you and will try and make a turn into you after they pass the vehicle ahead of you.
In my opinion, the greatest threat to motorcyclists at intersections is a left-turning vehicle. There have been medical studies which suggest motorcycles are “not seen” by car drivers who are turning left because humans don’t perceive motorcycles as a threat, compared to the size of the car they are in. In essence, the brain appears to ignore the smaller vehicle that’s oncoming. How many times have you heard the stories where the driver of a car is quoted to say: “Honestly, Officer, I didn’t see him”?
As you approach the intersection, you must catch the eye of the left-turning driver by presenting yourself in their line of vision. By doing a slight weave within your lane, your headlight becomes an unusual moving object. This perhaps will gather more attention from that driver. Furthermore, don’t watch the driver’s eyes, but rather watch the front tire and what it is doing. I’ve had drivers look me straight in the eye and still initiate a left turn towards me. If at all possible, transit an intersection with a “buddy”: a car either to your left or right, which the left-turning driver will perceive as a threat. Always be on the lookout for escape lanes as you approach intersections. You should have a final resort if the driver happens to turn into your path. Lastly, don’t forget to double-check your turn signals after you’ve made a turn, and before you approach intersections. You don’t want to signal the wrong information!
Escape Lanes
Understanding the concept of escape lanes is imperative to being safe on your bike. Basically, you want to develop the habit of being constantly aware of available space in the road ahead, should the need arise to maneuver there. The escape-lanes concept applies to two different situations.
First, when stopped at an intersection, the car in front of you can become one third of a “meat sandwich” should the car coming up behind you fail to stop in time. Know whether you’d maneuver right or left in that situation. Also, remember to flash your brake light to attract a driver’s attention as they come up to the intersection behind you. I tend to keep a close eye on the approach of the car behind me, and only relax when I see them slow and come to a stop.
Second, while riding along pick a lane where, if necessary, you could swerve out of harm’s way. On my commute, this involves riding in the lane next to a bike path, or perhaps next to a painted median where I could possibly swerve to avoid a collision with a car. Riding next to raised medians should be avoided.
Escape lanes come and go, and you must continually look for them. One sign you’re not paying enough attention to what’s around you? A car suddenly passes you and you weren’t even aware it was there.
It’s up to you
In sum, it is up to you to ride as though you were invisible to other drivers. A bike will always lose in a collision with a car. You may have had the right of way, but do you really want to be dead right? I’ve talked about how to be unhittable, making yourself more visible to other drivers, and most of all remaining aware of what is around you and in your line of travel. The British teach their riders to always do the “Lifesaver.” What’s that? Before you change lanes, actually turn your head and look: you’d be surprised how many times you’ll find a car riding along in your blind spots.
Get to know your commute route, including the best times to travel, and the best shortcuts and traffic patterns. I’ve found that the shortest way is not the best way, and the taking the longer route can result in a lot less stress. At the same time, my closest calls have actually been on quiet neighborhood streets and not congested city roadways!
There’s a lot more to learn and practice about safe motorcycle riding, and the techniques and best practices needed in different environments. If you haven’t taken the MSF’s Basic Rider Course, I strongly encourage you to do so. I’ve met riders who, after riding for years, took the course and admitted they discovered some bad habits which required correcting. Safety on a bike is the key to ensuring you’ll be riding for years to come.
Ride Safe. Ride Aware.Everyone seems to want to voice their opinion on the merits of streaming music following Taylor Swift’s decision to pull her albums from Spotify. The latest to chime in is Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge and he made a pretty weird comparison in a new interview with Faster Louder. “I tell people condoning streaming is like condoning the Chinese that are killing elephants for their tusks and carving ivory statues,” he said. “It’s cool to put on your shelf but if you really think about what you’re doing it sucks. Streaming music is doing the same thing to artists — might not be killing ‘em but it’s killing the industry. It might be cool for you as somebody that likes music but you’re not really thinking about the effect it has. We’ve got to value our art, you know?” That being said, all of Blink-182’s catalog is still available on Spotify.Some believe that soon after Tuesday’s final presidential primaries the FBI will interview Hillary Clinton about her handling of emails while she was secretary of state. What comes next is the subject of much speculation.
One of the better speculators is Bradley Blakeman, who served as a member of President George W. Bush’s White House staff.
We spoke in the “green room” at Fox News before our separate interviews. The following is culled from our conversation.
Blakeman says the FBI has deliberately waited to interview Hillary Clinton until after the primaries because the bureau did not want to interfere with the nominating process. He thinks the FBI is “likely” to recommend to the Department of Justice whether or not she should be indicted for violating what she says are agency rules and what others call the law between now and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, which begins July 25.
If she is indicted before the convention, Blakeman says, it will give the party an opportunity to make changes in the rules that could result in an alternate nominee.
Here is the intriguing part about Blakeman’s scenario: “If a grand jury is empaneled, or if she were to be indicted before the convention, the Democrats would have to let her go.” If an indictment were to come after the convention, he says, it presents a different problem because each state needs to certify their ballots before November. If an indictment occurs after the states have certified their ballots, it would be nearly impossible to replace Hillary Clinton with another candidate.
Here’s where things might get even more interesting. In states where ballots have been certified, the party would have to go to court to ask that Clinton’s name be replaced. “They also have another problem,” says Blakeman. “Once the convention ends, how do they reconvene to substitute Hillary? They have no rules for that.”
What if a court denies a ballot change? Blakeman says the Supreme Court would almost certainly have to decide. That might look to many like a replay of the 2000 election in which the court certified Florida’s vote count, awarding the state’s electoral votes — and the election — to George W. Bush.
But what if the court — with its one vacancy — divides 4-4? In that case, the lower court ruling would prevail and if that court decided to strike Hillary Clinton’s name from the ballot, a write-in would be the only option.
“Timing is not on Hillary’s side,” says Blakeman, who thinks “the silver lining for Hillary is that, if she were indicted, there is no doubt Obama would pardon her on January 19 as he walks out the door. She will never have to answer for her crimes.”
What about any others who might be indicted, such as top aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills? If they are indicted, but not pardoned by the president, will they go public? It’s the stuff of big book contracts.
Should any of these scenarios prove true, as Blakeman thinks they might, President Obama, unlike President Ford and his pardon of Richard Nixon, will never have to face the voters and be held accountable for his action.
In this unpredictable election season, any one — or all — of these scenarios are possibilities, including the ultimate scenario: the delegates turning to Vice President Joe Biden to save them from Hillary and defeat in November.Weird California - By Joe Parzanese
Golden Gate Bridge
The bridge with the second highest number of suicides in the world is located in San Francisco. Yes, it is the Golden Gate Bridge. At a cost of $35 million, the 1.7 mile structure was opened on May 27th, 1937. About ten weeks later, Harold B Wobler left his job on a barge, strolled onto the bridge, talked with a tourist, and then jumped over the side, becoming the first of currently well over a fifteen hundred suicides.
The Golden Gate Bridge is named so because it crosses the Golden Gate Strait, or the entrance to the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. The color of the bridge is actually classified as orange vermilion and is often called "International Orange". Construction began in 1933 and due to special safety nets, only eleven people died during the construction. Ten of them were lost in one incident when a piece of scaffolding broke through the safety net. Suspended under the entire length of the bridge, the safety net was mostly unheard of in construction at the time. It saved nineteen people during construction. These men are now known as the Halfway to Hell Club.
About every two weeks, one person jumps off the bridge. The east side, looking at the city, is more popular for committing suicide. The first survivor was number 35, 22 year old Cornelia Van Ireland in 1941. As of 2013 only 34 people have survived. In 1988, Sarah Rutledge Birnbaum became what is likely the only person to have jumped from the bridge twice. She did not survive to make a third attempt. 1993 saw Roy Larson Raymond, founder and former owner of Victoria Secret commit suicide on the bridge. This was eleven years after he sold the company. Rumor has it that in the early nineties, even a dog ran out onto the bridge and jumped over the side. Its final path through the city was documented on its trek to take its own life. The youngest suicide victim was Marilyn DeMont who in 1945 at the age of five was commanded to jump by her father, August DeMont, who followed her over the bridge. The youngest victim of the bridge is Kellie Page who at age three was thrown off the bridge by her father, Steven Page, who jumped soon after.
Newspapers use to report the death toll, until the number grew close to 1000. Then the official death toll was stopped in order to avoid fame seekers from trying to be the 1000th person. The unofficial total is now over 1600 victims. That number includes only those victims where either a body was recovered or someone saw the person jump. Jumpers reach an estimated 75 to 80 miles per hour before crashing into the water below. The few survivors all went in feet first. Several suicides in 2004 were caught on tape during the filming of Eric Steele's documentary The Bridge. Additionally, it is a proven fact that people have passed over the much higher San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge on their way to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. In the seventies, a morbid group called the Suicide Club held lavish parties every time a suicide occurred.
Joseph Strauss Joseph Strauss was the chief engineer on the Golden Gate Bridge. Born in 1870 he passed on May 16, 1938, less than one year after the Golden Gate opened. Although he is primarily known for building the Golden Gate, he built several other lesser known bridges, particularly a few that still stand in San Francisco. The 4th Street Bridge or Peter R. Maloney Bridge was also designed by Strauss. Officially complete on May 23rd 1917, the bridge was then built for $89,672.09. It is the oldest operating drawbridge in the state of California and spans 94 feet. It is a Strauss vertical overhead counterweight type bascule bridge. The 3rd Street Bridge or Lefty O'Doul Bridge near AT&T Park is also a Strauss Bridge and was completed in 1933. It is an example of a Strauss heel-trunnion bascule bridge. It's main span is 143 feet and the bridge is 295 feet in length. Both bridges cross the China Basin in San Francisco. Not too far from the Golden Gate Bridge near the Golden Gate Bridge Pavilion, there is a statue commemorating Joseph Strauss. The Golden Gate Bridge can be seen behind his statue.
The bridge with the most suicides in the world is the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in China, which surpassed the Golden Gate Bridge in 2006 as number one. It is estimated that over 2000 people have jumped from it.
All of these deaths have obviously left their scars on the beautiful bridge. Some witnesses report that they can hear screams trailing off in the distance during fog shrouded nights. Although pedestrian traffic on the bridge is restricted at night, bicycles are still allowed onto the bridge.
And of course then there's the ghost ship. In 1853, the Tennessee, a two masted clipper ship ran across rocks in the fog near the Golden Gate Strait. Now it passes ghostly under the Golden Gate Bridge, reportedly unmanned, sailing through the fog. In November 1942, the USS Kennison passed by the ghost ship. Sailors and crew on board reported seeing the ship, watching its wake, but nothing was registered by the ship's radar. The Tennessee seems to always appear on fog shrouded nights, its decks are always deserted, and it fades away about a minute after first appearing.
Ghosts not with standing, the Golden Gate Bridge is able to sway twenty seven feet in order to bear the winds which can reach one hundred miles per hour. The two gigantic cables consist of 80,000 miles of steel wire which is enough to take the strands and encircle the earth at the equator three times. The concrete in the piers and anchorages could pave a five foot wide sidewalk from San Francisco to New York.
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Last Edited: 2015-03-24Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) speaks at a news conference on the "We Get It!" campaign, which aims at uniting people behind Biblical perspectives on the environment and the poor, in Washington on May 15, 2008. The campaign denounces the widely held view that humans are speeding the effects of global warming and instead says that the attempts to counteract global warming are hurting the poor by raising the cost of energy and food while cutting jobs. (File/UPI Photo/Kevin Dietsch) | License Photo
According to a new national poll from Public Policy Polling, the majority of American voters think Congress has more important things to do than talk about the administration's response to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Last week, Sen. James Inhofe said in an interview that, “Of all the great cover-ups in history -- the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra, Watergate, all the rest of them -- this... is going to go down as most egregious cover-up in American history." He further suggested President Obama could be impeached over it.
PPP put that question to voters. 41 percent of Republicans say they consider this to be the "biggest political scandal in American history" compared to only 43 percent who disagree. Only 10 percent of Democrats and 20 percent of independents agreed.
Of the 41 percent of Republicans who consider Benghazi to be the worst political scandal in American history, 39 percent are unaware that Benghazi is located in Libya. 10 percent said it's in Egypt, 9 percent in Iran, 6 percent in Cuba, 5 percent in Syria, 4 percent in Iraq, and 1 percent each in North Korea and Liberia, with 4 percent unwilling to venture a guess.
Voters trust Hillary Clinton over Congressional Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49/39 margin and her favorability rating shows no signs of decline at 52 percent versus 44 percent unfavorable. Congressional Republicans remain unpopular with a 36/57 favorability rating.
By a 56/38 margin voters say passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill is more important, and by a 52/43 spread they think passing gun background checks should be a higher priority than Benghazi.Articles & Speeches
The Rise and Fall of the Official View of Addiction
Bruce K. Alexander, Professor Emeritus
Simon Fraser University
Revised July 3 2014
Confession and Plea to the High Court in the Field of Addiction:
Herewith, I confess to the charge of attempted murder. My intended victim was – and still is – the Official View of Addiction, sometimes known in the field by its aliases including, “the brain disease model of addiction” or “The NIDA model”. The presentation below contains irrefutable evidence of my guilt. However, it also expresses my plea to the High Court that ridding the world of the Official View of Addiction is justifiable and that its useful aspects can be preserved within a different paradigm.
I understand that a plea of justifiable attempted homicide will require meticulous examination by the Court. The structure of my plea is as follows. I show that the word "addiction", which has a long history in the English language, was kidnapped in the 19th century by medical and moralistic interest groups, who drastically restricted its meaning for their own purposes. Despite the meager success of their treatment methods and the futility of their ferocious alcohol and drug prohibitions, their truncated views of addiction have been legitimatized in recent decades as a doctrine which is, I submit, properly called the "Official View of Addiction". Although the Official View of Addiction is often represented a new development in high-tech neuroscience, it is basically a nineteenth century view of the nature of addiction, tarted up with brilliantly coloured brain scans. The Official View currently dominates discussion of addiction in the United States. It also exerts its counterproductive influence in many other countries of the world.
My presentation shows that all six foundational elements of the Official View are untenable. Worse still, I will show that the stultifying, richly funded Official View stands in the way of a rigorous, scholarly examination of addiction. It therefore leaves the world at the mercy of a devastating addiction problem that has been rendered incomprehensible. I submit that, in cases like this, assassination is a lesser evil than the continued existence of the pernicious Official View.
My presentation to the High Court is a revision of a presentation initially given at an expert conference of the Social Trends Institute in Barcelona 15-17 April 2010 on the "Construction of New Realities in Medicine". A revised version of this presentation is being published as Alexander, B.K. (in press). Replacing the official view of addiction. In Davis, J.E. and Gonzalez, A.M. (Eds.). To Fix or To Heal: Conflicting Directions in Contemporary Medicine and Public Health. New York, NY: NYU. The presentation was also given, in much revised form, to an expert conference on "Addiction(s) – Social and Cerebral" sponsored by the European Neuroscience and Society Network in Helsinki, 8-11 September, 2010. The presentation has been updated and revised repeatedly on my website since 2010, and is still being revised. A longer exposition of the ideas in these presentations can be found in my book, The Globalization of Addiction: A study in poverty of the Spirit. (paperback edition, 2010, Oxford University Press).
Respectfully Submitted to the High Court,
Bruce K. Alexander
Summary
The world faces a deadly serious problem of addiction to countless habits and pursuits, including the use of drugs and alcohol. Bringing this problem under control will require a better conceptualization of addiction than the Official View that is currently being globally promulgated, most prominently by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, |
tables on the rapper by playing a caricature of him as a creepy basement-dwelling stan who gets run over by a Mean Girls–style bus in the 2009 music video for her song “Obsessed.” And so it wasn’t as odd as it may seem for the originally unflattering, murderous-stalker connotations of “stan” to be reappropriated by devoted pop star fans. Eminem’s video appeared at a moment when MTV fan cultures began to shift to the internet — in forums and comment sections — and young gay men found a space to assert their agency. One such forum, initially called Absolute TRL in 1999 (then PopFusion, and now ATRL), had by 2005 become pop diva stan central — or, as Urban Dictionary put it at the time, a place filled with “many Britney fanatics & just plain weird people who make stupid posts.” Populated by user handles that, in the drag tradition, often fused the user’s own name with their favorite pop diva’s, Absolute TRL was — and is — a space for fans to argue in favor of their chosen artist with statistics and ideas about cultural impact. Recent posts include one by a fan — whose motto is “I Stan for talent!” — who tallied Beyoncé’s entire worldwide sales throughout her career. These stans, many of whom explicitly identify themselves as queer, feel invested in these performers’ commercial standings, which (accurately or not) are held up as proof of cultural legitimacy and personal freedom. Another thread about rocker Marilyn Manson’s announcement that Rihanna — and her song “Love on the Brain” — inspired his album became a debate about her impact and whether a song needs a music video to succeed. Fights about who is more legendary versus iconic also break out in the music news comments sections of websites like That Grape Juice, which appeared in 2007, the same year that the Chris Crocker video garnered major mainstream attention. And indeed, most have forgotten that Crocker’s video was arguably part of a mass-mediated forum fan fight; the “leave Britney alone!” video was recorded in reaction to Perez Hilton’s posts on Spears, which led one newspaper at the time to cover the story with the headline “Gay Men's Online War Over Britney Spears." Over the same decade or so, the late-’90s generation of pop divas started engaging more actively with their fanbases, initially through their websites before the advent of more interactive forms of social media. The early 2000s saw Mariah Carey, the pioneer of stan cultivation, encouraging her fans, whom she called “lambs” or her “lambily,” to make scrapbooks of their fandom, even devoting a section of her website to them. Carey’s “Lambs” prefigured the rise of fan group names like Katy Perry’s “KatyKats,” Lady Gaga’s “Little Monsters,” or Nicki Minaj’s “Barbz,” usually cutesy labels made up and taken up either by fans or the stars themselves, rather than imposed from the outside by critics. (Though this still leaves the question of names to get sorted out between diva and fans; Minaj has since tried to rename her fanbase “The Kingdom,” to the dismay of many self-identified Barbz, and earlier this year Taylor Swift trademarked the fan moniker Swifties.) By 2010, the website Stan Wars emerged as a kind of meta-commentary on this style of pop diva fandom, through its parodic re-creations of ATRL forum fan fights, faux pop diva Wikipedia entries, and articles about standom. In this campy landscape, "stan," with its original connotations of psychosis, wasn’t a term of denigration. The site embraced, even as it mocked, that kind of excess, and the agency and community it granted to people who might not find it elsewhere in their lives. “Stan wars... have three groups who refuse to be denied: teens, tweens and queens," the site explains. In one of the “stanipedia” entries, Britney Spears is humorously described in terms of her role as part of the history of gay men: “Although the millions of teenage girls who had stanned for Britney had moved on, their power-bottom younger brothers had found their thrown away CDs and became Britney stans themselves.” The lines of fandom are structured not just by gender or sexuality, but also by race, and these fan forums became a rare space where differences — and overlaps — between white gay men and gay men of color got hashed out. While the ATRL forum often had discussions and debates about race in pop, Stan Wars took on a more explicitly queer of color perspective in its writing, highlighting the racial nuances of pop diva stanning through the faux Wikipedia entries. In hilariously shady writing, the website’s Beyoncé entry includes both the “stan” and “hater” version of the truth. The “hater” version elucidates the racialized reception she gets from some “pop” (meaning white) fans: “I guess Beyoncé thinks she’s too good to use the same overused beats, sounds and producers as her peers, but I don’t see the point in releasing music for any purpose other than going Top 5 on the Hot 100 or appeasing Caucasian bottoms and 12 year olds. Let me just be clear, I don’t completely hate Black music or Black artists.”
The outside coverage of standom still gets framed largely in terms of whether the fans’ investment is creepy or not.
This is an inside joke for stan war soldiers, but it’s also a thoughtful commentary on the way pop is structured by our ideas about race, gender, and age. Yet the outside coverage of standom still gets framed largely in terms of whether the fans’ investment is creepy or not. A New York Times article from 2011, “Scratching the Celebrity Itch,” featured an artist manager comparing pop diva standom rivalries to sports teams and referring to Ciara fans as mindless minions: “Her stans will defend her to the death. It’s a little scary.” Even the creator of the Britney website BreatheHeavy was quoted as saying, “A stan will follow a celebrity blindly — it’s a little creepy,” seemingly trying to separate himself from the worst traits of “stanning,” but he ultimately implicates himself. “I like to look at myself as a fan who knows Britney’s best interests, maybe even better than she does. But now that I think about it, it’s weird because I’ve never met her, even though I’ve been following her every day.” In other words, stans are still often portrayed in personal and psychological terms as potentially creepy or overinvested, rather than as participants in a cultural phenomenon that involves arguments about race, gender, power, and how all of it influences the way pop artists are received. As Stan Wars suggests, the world of standom, from early on, has included space for self-criticism. But as with bobby-soxers and wannabes, outside observers have not often given stans credit for their own self-awareness.
As fans emerged from comment sections and forums into Twitter and Instagram, most of the media attention on standom has been focused on the way particular fan armies — especially the Beyhive and Taylor Swift’s Swifties — attack enemies of their preferred stars. But the Twitter wars about pop divas are not just attacks on outsiders; they are also sites for shade-throwing and reading, an affirmation of identity through wit — their own, less passive form of knowing “swooning.” One of the fans interviewed for a Mic article on the Beyoncé–Rihanna stan wars, identified as 17-year old Devin Francis, hinted at this: "Well, the Twitter feuds have became more and more entertaining. The BeyHive have their shady one-liners, we the Navy have ours.... Will it ever stop? I don't think so.”
Queer men’s readings get projected onto these women performers who become complicated stand-ins for their own feelings of disenfran-chisement.
These stan wars emerge, in part, through the particular sensibilities and cultural conundrums of queer men. There is not — and there may never be — a gay male Beyoncé or even a gay male pop diva. Thus, queer men’s readings get projected onto these women performers who become complicated stand-ins for their own feelings of disenfranchisement, particularly in terms of mainstream visibility and desirability. (Chris Crocker, for example, explained in a 2007 interview at the height of his fame, "I'm not really inspired by many men, even if they're gay. I'm more inspired by women who are accepting of gay men than gay men.") And ultimately, some of these “stans” have achieved their own form of media power, often by expanding from the specific focus on one pop diva into the larger field of pop music or entertainment news. Throughout the later aughts, a generation of internet-savvy digital fans were able to turn their supposedly hysterical enthusiasm into financially rewarded labor. While Crocker was not mentioned in the 2011 New York Times article about pop diva stans, a number of other Britney fans or stan connoisseurs — including the twentysomething creators of pop music site MuuMuse, the Britney fansite BreatheHeavy, and the parodic Stan Wars — were all profiled, in part to show that they parlayed their fandom into positions in the creative industries as bloggers, graphic designers, or entertainment journalists. In other words, these fans became producers and insiders in the media cultures that have tended to name and interpret fandom — whether bobby-soxers or wannabes — from the outside. And what used to seem outlandish is now simply part of the pop culture lexicon; a Daily Beast entertainment writer, for instance, referenced Crocker’s video to defend Mariah Carey (“Leave Mariah Carey Alone”) after her disastrous New Year’s Eve performance earlier this year. In both campy and more serious ways, pop diva standom is now reclaimed from within. For some, that’s a double-edged sword; recently, Todrick Hall — a YouTube star and RuPaul’s Drag Race guest judge who performs elaborate mashup tributes to pop divas like Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift — became, in some ways, the ultimate insider when Swift chose him to appear in her latest music video. But the resulting backlash, with Hall branded a “sellout” to his race and the LGBT community by some fans, once again highlighted the complicated racial and sexual lines of standom. The ongoing media fascination with the supposedly destructive side of stan passion is, in some ways, just a continuation of the same narrative that characterized earlier fandoms’ feminine enthusiasm as hysteria. But, as even a brief foray into the websites and wars of standom reveals, stanning is also a new kind of public identification and affirmative self-making for queer men, and their fan debates provide a critical perspective that challenges the supposed universality of white and straight pop histories. Each pop generation gave rise to its own style of fandom, and perhaps the parodies of stans — by stans themselves — suggest that a different narrative about the way fans relate to their chosen artists might soon be emerging. For now, however, these queer connoisseurs seem here to slay. ●
This essay is part of a series of stories about stans and super fans.Dan Coudreaut (born November 8, 1965) is an American chef. He was the executive chef and vice president of culinary innovation at McDonald's from 2004 to 2018.
Biography [ edit ]
Coudreaut started his culinary career at the age of 14, washing dishes in a local restaurant in his hometown of Ossining, New York.[1] In 1995, he graduated at the top of his class from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA).[2][3]
Culinary career [ edit ]
After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Coudreaut was hired as executive sous chef at Café Pacific before becoming the club chef at the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, both of which are in Dallas, Texas.[3] In 2000, he moved to the field of chain restaurants, joining Metromedia Company's Ponderosa Steakhouse and Bonanza Family Steakhouse chains as director of culinary product development. He joined McDonald's in 2004, taking over as executive chef from Rene Arend. As executive chef, Coudreaut's main responsibility was helping the creative team of chefs to create concepts and develop new menus for McDonald's approximately 36,900 outlets. He left the company in 2018.[4]
Accomplishments [ edit ]
Coudreaut has been listed among the NRN 50:R&D Culinarians by Nation's Restaurant News in 2003. In 2006, he received the magazine's Chef/Innovator MenuMasters Award.
He also sang lead vocals in Chef Dan and the Appetizers, a classic rock band formed by McDonald's employees in 2008 to raise money for Ronald McDonald Charities.[5]
Menu contributions [ edit ]
Coudreaut was responsible for the addition of several items to McDonald's national menu, including:
Asian and Southwest Chicken Salads
Angus and Chicken Snack Wraps
Angus Burger line of sandwiches
McCafe coffee drinks
Oatmeal
Real Fruit Smoothie beverages
Spicy Premium Chicken sandwichIt's hard to know how to respond to Meghan Cox Gurdon's June 4, 2011 article chronicling the "darkness" of modern day YA fiction in the Wall Street Journal [and Ru Freeman's Huffington Post support for it, on June 21]. I purposely waited a couple of weeks to let the early responders poke holes in her reasoning the way good educators and the writers of tough Young Adult fiction always have to respond to this kind of ill-thought-out and self-serving "reporting."
My one happy thought is that anyone serious about discovering good stories for teenagers probably won't go to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to find them, so the damage is already minimized.
Gurdon opens her piece telling us how Amy Freeman, 46-year-old mother of three, stands before the Teen section in Barnes and Noble, despondent because there are no books she can buy as a welcome-home gift for her 13-year-old daughter. They're all just too dark.
I think Gurdon is pulling our collective leg. As a member of the purveyors of dark young adult fiction, I can't tell you how many times I've read or heard the tired urban legend of a wonderfully protective parent standing in the YA section of Borders/Barnes and Noble/Hastings, fearing for the future of our young people, unable to find one book that won't taint purity of his or her child's coming of age. They always leave empty-handed and disappointed. I'm guessing "Amy Freeman, 46-year-old mother of three," is either a figment of Gurdon's imagination or a close friend who shared a double-shot grande vanilla latte and a similar conservative philosophy in Starbucks one morning, concluding that Gurdon could and should sound the call to those who would go to the Wall Street Journal for guidance in selecting Young Adult literature.
Then I did what Gurdon obviously didn't do; I went to my local Barnes and Noble and stood in the teen section, as purportedly did Amy Freeman, 46-year-old mother of three. And guess what? I saw a lot of the same "dark" literature Amy saw. And I saw a boatload of literature that was not dark, and a boatload more for which it was impossible to tell standing there staring. She would have had to open some books. I'm guessing Amy Freeman, 46-year-old mother of three, wasn't as interested in finding her daughter a book as she was in making a statement that fit her philosophy.
It seems to me if you don't know anything about child development you shouldn't intimate in your "reporting" that you do. And it seems as if any reporter who got through Journalism her junior year of high school with at least a C- would know that using incendiary words like "depravity," "brutal(ity)," "horrendous," and "ugliness," to highlight a few, are not the tools of an honest journalist. By Gurdon's standards, To Kill a Mockingbird could easily be described as a horrendous or depraved or ugly or brutal novel about interracial rape.
So let's just say at the outset that, in my opinion, Meghan Cox Gurdon has an agenda. And to be fair let's also say that, in my opinion, so do I.
Gurdon says the intellectual freedom side of the argument is that kids who have gone through truly tough times relate to these stories and feel less alone. She's right. That is an argument. She also says, without any back-up, that these stories may cause kids who haven't had those experiences to respond negatively to the doom and gloom and that those who have, may wallow in them. A few may -- and I'd have no problem with that -- but it's not my experience. Laurie Halse Anderson, Sherman Alexie, Lauren Myracle, Lois Lowry, Robert Cormier (were he still alive), Judy Blume and even I could paper Ms. Gurdon's cubicle with letters and emails saying things from, "Until I read your book I didn't even know what happened to me was rape," "When I read your book I realized somebody knew what my life was like and I felt less alone," "Thank you for giving me a voice," to "Your book made me see that my life isn't so bad after all," "I think I'm one of those people who treat hurt people bad(ly)," "I didn't know what some of the people in my class had gone through until I read your book."
You can't bury under the horrendous-depravity-brutal-ugliness blanket, the true face of bigotry painted by Sherman Alexie in The Absolutely True Diary, or the helplessness Melinda feels in Speak before she learns that what was done to her wasn't her fault, and wasn't right. And "bad" language? Bad language gets kids to read books. Know why? It's real. It is the expression of adolescence. Bad language doesn't hurt anybody. It might make a few -- mostly adults -- uneasy, but it doesn't hurt anybody. Words can hurt. Name calling hurts. Oral bullying hurts. Humiliation hurts. But bad language doesn't do shit.Hydro Series H60
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CORSAIR, a world leader in enthusiast memory, high-performance gaming hardware and PC components, today announced its extensive compatibility for the groundbreaking new range of AMD Ryzen processors and the AM4 platform. With a completely new CPU architecture, chipset and CPU socket, AMD Ryzen demands the latest in performance PC hardware. With a wide range of compatible DDR4 memory, liquid CPU coolers and PSUs, CORSAIR has everything enthusiasts need to make AMD Ryzen CPUs run to the full extent of their abilities."CORSAIR is uniquely positioned for the launch of AMD Ryzen, with an outstanding range of not just high-performance DDR4 memory, but liquid CPU cooling and power supplies as well," said Travis Kirsch Director, Product Management, Client at AMD. "CORSAIR offers everything system builders need to get the absolute best performance from AMD Ryzen and the new AM4 platform."AMD Ryzen CPUs require the latest DDR4 memory and CORSAIR has a growing range of AMD Ryzen qualified high-performance DDR4 memory, with more kits being certified for Ryzen processors every day. Launching with Vengeance LPX 16GB, 32GB and 64GB kits running at 2,133 MHz and 2,400 MHz, and Dominator Platinum 16 GB running at 3,000 MHz, CORSAIR has the DDR4 memory to match your choice of AMD Ryzen build. Check http://www.corsair.com/ryzen for a full up-to-date list.AMD Ryzen processors dynamically adjust and optimize performance based on power and temperature conditions; lower temperatures mean higher clock speeds and better benchmarks. With the addition of a CORSAIR Hydro Series liquid CPU cooler, you're able to cool Ryzen processors to temperatures substantially lower than when using standard air cooling, allowing for higher clock speeds, better performance and easier overclocking.AMD Ryzen processors also bring an entirely new CPU socket, AM4, and the CORSAIR Hydro Series H60, H110i and H100i are ready right out of the box to deliver superior liquid CPU cooling to socket AM4 Ryzen CPUs. The rest of the CORSAIR Hydro Series range of coolers are also fully compatible with AMD Ryzen and AM4 via an additional mounting bracket. CORSAIR is proud to announce that, for a limited time, an AM4 bracket will be supplied, upon request, to all qualifying Hydro Series owners free of charge, including shipping to EU, USA and select other countries. Brackets start shipping on March 2nd, so check http://www.corsair.com/ryzen for full details.What's the use of performance without the power to supply it? CORSAIR PSUs have been trusted by PC enthusiasts for over a decade, winning hundreds of industry and reviewer awards thanks to a complete commitment to quality, reliable and performance. Now that legacy comes to AMD Ryzen, with every CORSAIR PSU fully compatible with all new AMD X370, B350 and X320 chipset motherboards. Equip the legendary 80-PLUS Titanium AX1500i, the low-noise 80-PLUS GOLD RMx series, or the dependable 80-PLUS Bronze CX series to complete your Ryzen system."We're extremely excited about the new AMD Ryzen processors and the new AMD platform" said Aaron Neal, Senior Manager of DIY product Marketing at CORSAIR. "With extensive DDR4, Hydro Cooler and PSU support across our entire range, enthusiasts can be sure that CORSAIR has everything they need to build the perfect Ryzen system."To see how CORSAIR DDR4, Hydro Series Liquid CPU Coolers and CORSAIR power supplies can help build your next PC powered by the AMD Ryzen Processors, please visit this page The following CORSAIR Hydro Series liquid CPU coolers are fully compatible with the new AM4 socket out-of-the box:The following CORSAIR Hydro Series liquid CPU coolers require an additional AM4 bracket for AMD Ryzen compatibility:The below-listed CORSAIR DDR4 kits are currently recommended for AMD Ryzen CPUs and accompanying chipsets:Austin, the "Live Music Capital of the World," is home to many Southern delights - SXSW, Lady Bird Lake, BBQ, and one of EA’s largest studios. Austin’s unofficial slogan, “Keep Austin Weird,” helps foster a fun and creative community that attracts talented people from all over the world. Whether it’s enjoying live music on a summer night, swimming in the Barton Springs swimming hole, watching the bats dance from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge, or buying custom boots in the SoCo district, Austin always has new possibilities to discover and explore.
EA Austin is home to the following teams: BioWare Austin, EA Mobile’s Red Crow studio, EA SPORTS, EA’s Worldwide Customer Experience team, and the EA Technology team.
BioWare Austin is creator of the critically acclaimed Star Wars®: The Old Republic™, which is one of the most successful MMO’s in the world. The team is also working on several exciting top-secret projects, which you’ll uncover as we reveal them to the public. EA Mobile’s Red Crow studio is most recognizable for creating The Simpsons Tapped Out and Heroes of Dragon Age. EA SPORTS works jointly with EA Tiburon in Florida, developing the next greatest games in its Madden NFL and NBA LIVE franchises.
EA’s Worldwide Customer Experience (WWCE) headquartered in Austin provides support to customers 24 hours a day, seven-days a week. They strive to deliver the world's best player experience for the world's best games. The EA Information Technology (IT) team delivers secure, on-demand solutions and services to EA employees and development teams, helping us move at the lightning fast pace of the modern gaming industry. The Tech Ops team is building the infrastructure to host all of EA’s online services. This environment is highly distributed and dynamic, and it services millions of players every day, worldwide.
All of these amazing Austin teams are united by our united passion for games!Image caption Small-scale fishermen say their fear for their livelihoods
Hundreds of small-scale fishermen in Chile have clashed with police in several coastal towns as they protested against a proposed new fisheries law.
Riot police used tear gas and water cannon to break up demonstrations in Valparaiso where fishermen erected barricades of burning tires.
The fishermen, who have been protesting for several months, say the new law will favour larger fishing companies.
The law is being debated in Congress and is due to take effect next year.
It sets out fishing concessions and quotas that artisanal fishermen say will threaten their livelihoods.
The legislation also details ways of preserving stocks and mandates the obligatory use by boats of GPS.
Zoila Bustamante, president of the Artisanal Fishermen's Confederation (Conapach), said they were being forced to compete with industrial fishing vessels.
The Fisheries Act, which is due to come into force in January, grants big companies 25-year concessions around fishing farms.
The local fishermen want the government to create restricted fishing zones where they rather than bigger vessels can operate.
The government has said the new law will help to better regulate the industry, so making it more sustainable.The Nerdya Shingyo
Nonsense on your screen? Try setting your browser to UTF-8 encoding
This aims to be a nerd-friendly version of the Sino-Japanese rendition of the Heart Sutra. The current primary aim of this document is to make it easier for me to memorise the sutra for ceremonial purposes. Five years of needing a cheat sheet is getting a bit embarassing.
Features
Chinese characters : helps differentiate words that sound alike Word segmentation : makes sounds easier to remember in chunks Beat separation : useful for chanting to mokugyo Stanzas : adds structural support to aid memorisation
The Sutra
Sutra by itself
摩訶 ma∙ka 般若 han∙nya 波羅蜜多 ha∙ra∙mi∙ta 心経 shin∙gyo
観自在 kan∙ji∙zai 菩薩 bo∙satsu 行 gyō 深 jin 般若 han∙nya 波羅蜜多 ha∙ra∙mi∙ta 時 ji 照 shō 見 ken 五 go 薀 on 皆 kai 空 kū 度 do 一切 is∙sai 苦 ku 厄 yaku 舍利子 sha∙ri∙shi 色 shiki 不 fu 異 i 空 kū 空 kū 不 fu 異 i 色 shiki 色 shiki 即 soku 是 ze 空 kū 空 kū 即 soku 是 ze 色 shiki 受 jū 想 sō 行 gyō 識 shiki 亦 yaku 復 bu 如 nyo 是 ze 舍利子 sha∙ri∙shi 是 ze 諸 sho 法 hō 空 kū 相 sō 不 fu 生 shō 不 fu 滅 metsu 不 fu 垢 ku 不 fu 浄 jō 不 fu 増 zō 不 fu 減 gen 是 ze 故 ko 空 kū 中 chū 無 mu 色 shiki 無 mu 受 jū 想 sō 行 gyō 識 shiki 無 mu 眼 gen 耳 ni 鼻 bi 舌 zes 身 shin 意 i 無 mu 色 shiki 声 shō 香 kō 味 mi 触 soku 法 hō 無 mu 限 gen 界 kai 乃 nai 至 shi 無 mu 意 i 識 shiki 界 kai 無 mu 無 mu 明 myō 亦 yaku 無 mu 無 mu 明 myō 尽 jin 乃 nai 至 shi 無 mu 老 rō 死 shi 亦 yaku 無 mu 老 rō 死 shi 尽 jin 無 mu 苦 ku 集 shū 滅 metsu 道 dō 無 mu 智 chi 亦 yaku 無 mu 得 toku 以 i 無 mu 所 shō 得 toku 故 ko 菩提薩埵 bo∙dai∙sat∙ta 依 e 般若 han∙nya 波羅蜜多 ha∙ra∙mi∙ta 故 ko 心 shin 無 mu 罣 ke 礙 ge 無 mu 罣 ke 礙 ge 故 ko 無 mu 有 u 恐 ku 怖 fu 遠 on 離 ri 一切 is∙sai 顛 ten 倒 dō 無 mu 想 sō 究 ku 竟 kyō 涅 ne 槃 han 三 san 世 ze 諸 shō 仏 butsu 依 e 般若 han∙nya 波羅蜜多 ha∙ra∙mi∙ta 故 ko 得 toku 阿 a 耨 noku 多 ta 羅 ra 三 san 藐 myaku 三 san 菩提 bo∙dai 故 ko 知 chi 般若 han∙nya 波羅蜜多 ha∙ra∙mi∙ta 是 ze 大 dai 神 jin 呪 shu 是 ze 大 dai 明 myō 呪 shu 是 ze 無 mu 上 jou 呪 shu 是 ze 無 mu 等 tou 等 dou 呪 shu 能 nou 除 jo 一切 is∙sai 苦 ku 真 shin 実 jitsu 不 fu 嘘 ko 故 ko 説 setsu 般若 han∙nya 波羅蜜多 ha∙ra∙mi∙ta 呪 shu 即 soku 説 setsu 呪 shu 曰 watsu 揭 gya 諦 te 揭 gya 諦 te 波羅 ha∙ra 揭 gya 諦 te 波羅 ha∙ra 僧 sou 揭 gya 諦 te 菩 bo 提 ji 薩 so 婆 wa 訶 ka 般若 han∙nya 心経 shin∙gyo
Doofus alert
Warning! Everything about this (even the premise) could be wrong, in that special a-little-knowledge-is-a-dangerous-thing way. Don't take it too seriously. The important thing is if makes the sutra easier to learn or not.
Note that I don't actually know Chinese, and I made this by reconciling two versions of a sutra I had, one which appeared to be word-segmented, and one which appeared to be beat separated. So watch out for mistakes!
Details
This presentation of the sutra is done with the help of a small computer program. Right now, it just spits out Chinese words next to their pronunciation. Over time, I hope to make it a bit fancier, for exmaple, making certain parts optional (eg. the Chinese), or putting them above the pronunciation, enabling a gloss, etc…
Below are some elaborations on the things I think would make this presentation of the sutra easier to learn.
Chinese characters
Having the kanji could make life a bit easier if you've had a little exposure to Chinese or Japanese.
Even if not, by looking at their shape, you could maybe spot the symmetries in the sutra a bit better. For example, knowing that there are different words that sound the same, for example, “shiki” could (by eliminating red herrings) make it easier to see where all the “shiki”'s that mean “form” turn up.
Word segmentation
Chinese words are written with these square characters, one character per syllable, for example, “电脑” for “computer”. Individually, the characters mean “electricity” and “brain” but in Chinese, the word isn't “electric brain”; it's “computer”. It's not a “电”…”脑”; it's a “电脑”, one word, a bit like “cordon bleu”. Unfortunately for English speakers, there isn't any separation between the characters. Something like “I have a computer”, would be written like “我有一个电脑” (apologies if my Chinese is bad there), whereas the word segmented version might instead look like
我 有 一 个 电脑 I have one [measure-word] computer
So in this version of the heart sutra, we try to keep separate words separate.
Beat separation
We chant the heart sutra to the beat of a mokugyo. But it's not always one syllable per beat, so how do you know? I think for the most part the beats respect the the word segmentation boundaries, but that there are some multisyllable parts within a word that can get chanted with a beat each.
In the case where this happens, we insert a little hyphen character to indicate that while the two syllables are still part of the same word, they ought to be chanted separately.
Stanzas
The stanzas here are arbitrary. They're just meant to help me find my place in the sutra. I can't learn a big blob of sounds effectively; has to have a structure…
Help improve the Nerdya Shingyo
The source code is hosted on darcsden. If you don't feel like writing Haskell, or you just want to make corrections or other suggestions, shoot me an email.
Acknowledgements
This presentation of the sutra was made by combining Brad Warner's version with the one used in the Brighton Soto Zen Group.
No explicit permission was granted to use these for this project, but I'm sure it's not a big deal. And as far as I'm concerned, you can do whatever you please with both this presentation of the sutra and the source code that made it.Just in case there weren't enough potential GDP-boosting war hotzones around the world, Obama is now preparing to go back to ground zero, Iraq, where the NYT just reported he is "considering airstrikes or airdrops of food and medicine to address a humanitarian crisis among as many as 40,000 religious minorities in Iraq who have been dying of heat and thirst on a mountain top after death threats from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, administration officials said on Thursday."
NYT adds that Obama is currently meeting with his national security team (at the White House, not on a golf course) and a decision from Mr. Obama was expected “imminently — this could be a fast-moving train.” The official adds that “there could be a humanitarian catastrophe there."
To be sure the possibility of US-launched airstrikes in Iraq is nothing new, and was reported here previously, and in fact Iraq itself requested US airborne assistance before, but conventional wisdom was that Obama would delay until there is a new Iraq government, and the former US puppet, Maliki, stepped down. "But administration officials said on Thursday that the crisis on Mount Sinjar may be forcing their hand. Some 40 children have already died from the heat and dehydration, according to Unicef, while more than 40,000 people have been sheltering in the bare mountains without food, water or access to supplies."
How does the NYT know all this?
The administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. One official said that any military action would be “limited, specific and achievable,” noting that Mr. Maliki’s political party was supposed to announce a new candidate for prime minister on Thursday, but hadn’t yet.
To be sure, there is no mention that the same ISIS extremists which Obama is about to bomb are getting their weapons either directly from the US, via US assistance to Syrian "rebels" whose armaments end up in the Islamic State, or indirectly, by pillaging cities such as Mosul, where among the spoils were such US trophies as BlackHawk choppers and countless Humvees.
As for ISIS, who as we reported over the weekend have now captured the largest Iraq dam, the only question is whether their retaliation to the third US invasion of Iraq, which will surely be to release the dam flood nearby towns, water and leave Baghdad without a water source, will be worse than or equal to the Russian response to western sanctions, neither of which anyone could have possible predicted.
* * *
The White House's John Earnest added some more color:Ireland's advertising watchdog has made itself a laughingstock—except nobody's laughing—by banning an anti-child-abuse PSA that was powerful enough to get noticed worldwide. The brutal spot by Ogilvy Dublin, which Adweek covered at length here, shows a boy being beaten up while still articulating, in grown-up language, a manifesto for children's rights. After getting 13 complaints, the country's Advertising Standards Authority has banned the spot from all "Irish media" (this does not include YouTube) because it supposedly breaches gender-equality rules. "Complainants objected to the advertisement on the basis that it was unbalanced in its treatment of the subject of abuse in the home. The advertisement only depicted a male as being the aggressor, and the complainants considered this to be unbalanced," the ASA ruled, according to Adland. The stupidity of such a ruling is self-evident. It means you couldn't dramatize abuse without having both a man and a woman whaling on the kid at once—which would be weird and completely shift the focus of the ad from the abused to the abusers. The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which produced the ad, is understandably flabbergasted and is in the ludicrous position of having to explain what should be common sense. "The video makes no reference to physical abuse being carried out exclusively by either men or women or indeed by fathers or mothers," it writes. "This advertisement does not focus on the adult; its focus is entirely on the child. Any attempt to focus on whether the adult is a male or female is clearly missing the point and purpose of the ad in the first instance." The ISPCC is appealing the ruling.Image caption Unamid peacekeepers are tasked with protecting civilians in the troubled Darfur province
Rebels in Sudan's Darfur province say they have |
the things included in this guide are things that I teach to newer players of all characters, not just Marth!
ONE LAST DISCLAIMER: I may present things as being easier or more simple than they actually are. It’s not possible to 100% describe the thought that goes into Smash in language, so this guide is more of a model for teaching/learning purposes. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, and use it as material to feed your own ideas, rather than taking it as an instruction manual on how to play.
“All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
–George Box
Outline
General Pros/Cons Fundamentals Move List Matchups
1. General
So you want to know more about Marth. He is a very strong character who is easy to learn and hard to master. He is easier to pick up due to his basic moveset, long range, potential for low APM (i.e. slow, precise) play, extremely high payoff for landing f-smash, strong edgeguarding, and emphasis on fundamentals. He is difficult to master because of his need for precision and patience, lack of many “automatic” setups/finishers, concordant difficulty taking stocks at high percent, extreme mediocrity in close quarters, and emphasis on fundamentals.
Marth’s lack of “automatic” or close range tools makes him feel like a really underwhelming character in some situations where most other characters may shine (lol). However, Marth more than makes up for it by being an absolute MONSTER at neutral game situations. Where Marth is lacking an automatic solution, he can often set up a strongly favorable situation for himself, and his movement/disjointed range give him the control to win these situations, or more precisely, they give him the control to NOT LOSE these situations. Marth is a character who is all about positioning and control, and when everything comes together and you’re able to use these skills to land finishers and end stocks, he’s one of the most satisfying characters in the game to play.
2. Pros and Cons:
Pros:
PPMD, Mew2King, PewPewU (are Marth pros)
He is the only good character with a sword, and swords are cool
He effectively outranges every character in the game
He has some of the best movement in the game, due to his long/fast dash and his good wavedash
He is one of the best edgeguarders in the game
He has one of the best punish games vs fastfallers
He has amazing juggles vs everyone (except maybe Yoshi)
He has some of the most satisfying finishers in the game (d-air spike, up B, and tipper f-smash)
He very strongly emphasizes fundamentals
Cons:
He is not very good in extremely close quarters
Doesn’t have many persistent hitboxes (hitboxes that just stick out, like Fox’s nair). Most of his moves swing in an arc, which an opponent can exploit
His attacks can be pretty laggy
His attacks can be fairly weak
He sticks out his arm with his sword, extending a hurtbox that the opponent can hit.
He is very bad at trading
He is bad at closing out stocks at higher percentages
He requires a lot of precision
He requires a lot of patience
He very strongly emphasizes fundamentals
3. Fundamentals
This is the most important part of this guide, by far. It’s very applicable and very good information no matter what character you use, but I just discuss it through a Marth lens!
As I mentioned earlier, Marth probably emphasizes fundamentals more than any other character in Melee. You can get a lot of mileage off a minimalistic gameplan based on strong fundamentals. On the flipside, he is also one of the characters that gets punished the hardest for not having strong fundamentals. Now that I’ve talked about how awesome these things are, let’s actually talk about WHAT they are.
What are fundamentals? Let’s start with the Merriam-Webster definition!
Fundamental:
(1) forming or relating to the most important part of something
(2) of or relating to the basic structure or function of something
In other words, fundamentals are the most basic, important concepts and skills you need to know in order to make things happen in Smash, or any fighting game, for that matter. They are the most important parts of your strategy. You learn fundamentals, you will get better with every character. You learn fundamentals, you will probably get better at every fighting game.
In this section of the guide, I will describe a few important fundamental concepts, why they are important, and why they are particularly important for Marth. Let’s get to it!
Spacing
Let’s start with the simplest fundamental concept: spacing. When beginners think of spacing, they generally think of it as nothing more than hitting with the right part of their attacks. However, this is merely a tiny piece in the grand puzzle of this wonderful game.
I think part of what throws beginners off is the word spacing. I think it’s a little misleading, and I believe a more accurate term to describe what I’m talking about is positioning. Positioning is extremely important in Smash because positioning is ultimately what defines what you and your opponent can and cannot do. Positioning is what defines how you interact with your opponent.
Having good spacing requires a good understanding of both your opponent’s and your own character. Understanding your opponent’s character allows you to position yourself in a way that minimizes your opponent’s threat to you, which makes them work harder and reach further to do anything to you. Understanding your own character allows you to see openings when they are presented to you, letting you know what actions you can take in a given situation.
How do you get started on developing your spacing? A good way is to try to visualize it when you are playing the game. When you are playing, try to imagine your opponent’s quickest, safest options (for example, Fox’s running SHFFL nair). The area that the opponent can cover with that option is their effective range (effective ranges vary depending on situation and matchup). Try to visualize this effective range, and then try interacting with it. See what happens whenever you position yourself right outside of it. See what happens when you go inside of it. Try to weave in, out, and around this range, and observe. I can’t give you a three-step lesson on how to space. I can only point you in the right direction.
The other side of the coin is understanding your own effective range. Personally, I think it is more important to focus on your opponent’s effective range rather than your own. However, I’m not saying that you should ignore your own effective range! I just think it’s more important to watch your opponent’s effective range because not getting hit is more important than getting a hit. Not getting hit is the first step to getting a hit! Secondly, focusing too hard on your own effective range can tunnel-vision you onto your own options, which can make you try to force things when you shouldn’t. Third, since you’re in control of your own character, you should naturally have a much better idea of where you can go and where you can attack, which simply means that you don’t need to dedicate as much active attention on that. However, since we’re not ignoring it, let’s talk about it! Understanding your own range is key in learning to control your character! Once again, an important tool in developing this skill is good old trial-and-error. The next time you play, try to pay very close attention to not only WHAT you want to do, but WHERE you want to do it. Let’s say you’re using Marth. If you want to use a fair, don’t just throw out a fair and think nothing else. Think about WHERE you want to throw out that fair and why you want to throw it out there. Go into training mode, pick out a few of your most trusty options: for example, SHFFL fair, wavedash in -> dtilt, run-in -> dtilt. Use them and pay attention to exactly how far they go.
Spacing is extremely important for Marth because he is a bad character in close quarters, but his movement and long, disjointed hitbox give him almost unparalleled ability to control the game from further away.
Why is he so bad in close quarters? First, his attacks are fairly slow (contrast with Fox/Falco shine, Peach d-smash) and most of them are big, swinging arcs (contrast with Falco dair or Fox nair), making it so that he needs to be really precise with how he throws his attacks out. Marth needs room to be able to use his sword safely and therefore make the most out of his influence, or else the opponent will easily force their way in on him before or after he swings his sword. Secondly, he has a tipper sweetspot, meaning his attacks are extremely weak at close range (they’re honestly not exceptionally strong tippered either, with exceptions), making them susceptible to crouch cancel, shield, and making it so that he will lose an outright trade with almost any other decent character. Third, he doesn’t have moves that engage the opponent very well. What I mean is, he doesn’t have any moves that, (a lot of the time) when landed, will DIRECTLY lead to a big punish. Moves like Fox’s nair and shine, Falco’s dair and shine, Peach’s fair and d-smash, Falcon’s stomp and knee. In other words, Marth is not good at landing strong, stray hits at close range. Whenever he *does* land stray hits, he doesn’t always get that much off of them.
So now I’m done depressing you with why Marth is so bad at close range, LET’S CHEER YOU UP AND TALK ABOUT WHY MARTH IS SO GOOD AT LONGER RANGE.
The first obvious reason is that 36-inch disjointed hitbox he carries around. Marth’s sword is what makes him so bad at close range, but it’s also what makes him god tier at long range. Whenever you interact with your opponent on YOUR terms (i.e. at a spacing that is good for you and bad for them), they WILL NOT win the exchange. The fact that they WILL NOT win the exchange gives the Marth player a lot of leverage to influence and control the match. Your sword forces your opponent to respect it, meaning the opponent needs to adjust their gameplan to deal with your sword. Your sword essentially lets you take options away from your opponent, because those options WILL NOT work against your sword when you use it right. After you take these options away, you can continue to use your movement and your sword to follow up on their actions after they respect your sword. However, you will not be able to effectively use Marth’s sword unless you have a good idea of when it is good and when it is bad, i.e. a strong grasp over Marth’s spacing.
The second reason that spacing is so important for Marth is his amazing movement. Marth probably has top 3 movement in Melee, along with Falcon and Fox. His movement gives him a lot of freedom and mobility. It lets him set up good positions for himself, and it lets him get out of good positions for the opponent. It lets him manipulate space in a very tricky way. His speed lets him aggressively threaten the opponent. His speed lets him defensively evade the opponent and get grabs. Having a good handle on spacing is what allows you to understand how and where you should be moving with Marth.
Positional Advantage
When you apply your understanding of spacing to various situations, along comes the idea of positional advantage. Positional advantage is a pretty self-explanatory term, but it’s one that needs to be pointed out. There are many situations in this game that strongly favor one player, creating an advantage. These situations are defined by character matchup and stage positioning, i.e. positional advantage.
Being able to effectively use positional advantage hinges on being good at two things: 1) setting up good positions and 2) abusing good positions.
Setting up good positions is one of your most important goals in neutral and in your punish game. It’s how you create good situations for yourself, putting the odds of the guessing games in your favor.
However, setting up a good position is only half the battle. It only stacks the deck in your favor, but you still have to play. And knowing HOW to play is determined by the position you are in. You need to be able to evaluate each player’s options and determine the most effective routes of action in that position.
In my opinion, there are four major categories of situations that give a player huge positional advantage: 1) opponent knocked down 2) opponent off-stage 3) opponent above you 4) opponent in the corner. Understanding each of these is quite important, so I’ll briefly talk about each one.
1) Opponent knocked down:
This one is a no-brainer. An opponent that gets knocked over has very limited options. They can tech or they can not tech. If they do tech, they’ll end up in one of three places. If they don’t tech, they can either roll, stand, or get-up attack. Compare these options with a standing, grounded opponent, who has huge freedom of motion and access to a bunch of amazing moves, and you can clearly see why you would rather have your opponent knocked over.
This is one reason why percentage matters so much! At low percentages, people will not get knocked down by a lot of your attacks, which is why grabs are so vital. Marth’s dthrow will oftentimes throw the opponent on the ground and knock them over, allowing him to set up a good position at low percentages, where most stray hits don’t convert. Furthermore, this is also why Marth’s f-smash is very good at lower percentages, because it knocks the opponent over relatively early, where his other pokes and zoning moves don’t directly lead to much. Also, at low percentages, you can uthrow your opponent onto a platform and abuse the fact that they are above you *AND* the fact that they are knocked down. Getting good at platform techchases can make the difference between getting big damage from all of your grabs vs getting nothing and possibly letting them turn the tables on you.
2) Opponent off-stage:
It’s advantageous to have your opponent offstage, whether they’re completely offstage or merely on the ledge. I don’t think this is any surprise. First of all, when an opponent is offstage, their life is hanging by a thread. An offstage opponent has very limited options because they’re not grounded, they’re limited to the handful of options that allow them to live, and they need to do something quick or else they’re not coming back
Edgeguarding is one of the most unique situations in Melee, and it’s part of what makes the game so fun. Having strong edgeguarding is a must-have against the fast-fallers, and being able to edgeguard effectively requires you to understand your opponent’s limited off-stage options.
One tip that Armada has given on edgeguarding is to focus on and cover their best option(s) at a given time. This sounds vague, but it’s actually pretty simple. For example, let’s say you’re edgeguarding Fox, having thrown him offstage. One of his best options (perhaps his best overall) is to jump and use a side B. Therefore, you should stay in a position where you can easily punish and get a stock off the side B if they decide to do it. Once they have come to a point where side B is no longer available to them (e.g. if they dropped down too low), you can more or less forget about covering side B, and then punish them beyond that.
When I refer to the opponent being off-stage, I am including the situation where the opponent is on the ledge. When an opponent is on the ledge, they have a very limited number of options, and their life is hanging by a thread. This situation can be abused in a similar way to the opponent being off-stage or the opponent being in the corner (one major option you need to watch for is the ledge wavedash).
3) Opponent above you:
Ground control is so important that I gave it its own section. However, I’ll briefly discuss some things in this section. The opponent being above you is one of the most important positions to exploit as a Marth player. Conveniently, you have a uthrow which allows you to make this situation happen very easily.
In general, an opponent that is in the air is severely limited. They lack their ground mobility ( they’re limited to their double jump and their aerial drift), they’re at the mercy of gravity, and most characters don’t have moves that cover their bottoms very well.
Marth is particularly good at exploiting an enemy in this situation because of his character design. Marth has a fantastic anti-air game. His fair, uair, utilt, ftilt, and fsmash are all EXTREMELY strong anti-air moves. Marth doesn’t have the ability to blindly combo these moves on the opponent from a throw (think about Sheik’s dthrow -> fair), but the strength of his anti-air game comes from the fact that he can force his opponent to deal with it or else take huge damage and the fact that HE STILL HAS HIS AMAZING GROUND GAME. In general, every character can exploit an aerial opponent by leveraging the mobility advantage in some way, even if it requires finesse.
That being said, the opponent above you doesn’t directly give you a free hit. You still need to work for it through your positioning, threatening to use your sword, and making the right calls to just go up there and hit them, but know that the odds are drastically in your favor, but only when you’re playing it right.
4) Opponent in the corner:
Learning to use the corner is a very important skill in Smash. When someone is cornered, they are limited. Because they have no space behind them, they have nowhere to retreat to if you decide to poke at them meaning they basically have to deal with your attacks on your terms. Furthermore, if you have someone cornered, they cannot jump at you very well because they don’t have the room to set up a running start. Because you are the one with all the space, you’re more or less the one that calls the shots, but you have to be smart and patient.
Trying to corner your opponent is one of the most important goals in the neutral game. When you throw out attacks or threaten to throw out attacks with your movement, the goal is to either hit the opponent or force an action. A big one of these actions is retreating. Whenever they retreat, you can punish them by moving forward and cornering them. If you read a retreat, this is the smart way to take advantage of it. It is good to call the retreat with an over-extended attack sometimes, but relying on that alone is risky. Learning to set up and abuse the corner is a big asset towards having an effective neutral game.
So now that I’ve spent all those words talking about positional advantage, WHY is it so important to Marth in particular? It more or less boils down to his strengths and weaknesses as a character. Marth is not good at doing things without considering positional advantage. Marth, for the reasons I listed earlier, is very bad at forcing things. His approaches aren’t that fast or safe, he’s very bad at trading, his moves don’t have that much brute force (i.e. His moves are kinda weak against defensive options. His moves can’t brute force their way through shield or crouch cancel the way that Fox/Falco/Peach can), and his moves don’t engage very well. On top of this, he doesn’t have many guaranteed true combos off grab the same way a lot of the other top tiers do, except vs fast fallers (e.g. Fox uthrow -> uair, Sheik dthrow -> fair, Falcon uthrow -> uair string/knee). These are some of Marth’s weaknesses.
What are Marth’s strengths? As I discussed earlier, Marth’s strengths in spacing are his giant sword and his amazing movement. These strengths make him one of the best characters in the game at setting up and capitalizing off positional advantage. His ability to limit, control, and counter the opponent’s options is amplified when you use them with the understanding of positional advantage. When Marth fights you on HIS terms, you cannot beat him. In other words, a lot of Marth’s punish game is understanding how to MAKE things happen on your own terms along with recognizing when you’re not playing on your own terms, so you can be a little more passive.
Even though his throws don’t lead to combos most of the time, his uthrow and dthrow are amazing at setting up positional advantage. His uthrow puts the opponent above him, which is a situation he can control and abuse. His dthrow oftentimes puts the opponent in the corner/knocked down, which is another situation he can control and abuse. Positional advantage should be one of your main objectives in neutral and in punishment. Whenever you’re comboing someone, you should make your decisions based on what actions will result in good damage AND what actions will result in positional advantage. Whenever you have no idea how to get good damage off a grab, a good rule of thumb is to throw them in a spot where you have positional advantage, and exploit that.
Personally, one reason I love Marth so much because his punish game embodies Smash to me. One of the often-cited greatest things about Smash is how interactive the punish game is, opting away from the true combos that more traditional fighters have, creating a much more organic, interactive system where both players have a lot of options, but the punishing player has a clear situational advantage that he can only fully exploit when he really understands the game. The punish game in Smash alone offers so much depth.
Ground control
The ground is where the majority of important neutral game takes place. Learning when you’re supposed to stay grounded is an invaluable skill in all fighting games, and a huge mistake that rookies make is jumping too much.
Why is the ground so important? The ground is important because it’s generally where a player has the most options and the safest options.
First, the ground is where you have the most mobility. When you’re on the ground, you can dash, wavedash, walk, and basically go anywhere, as opposed to being airborne, where you are limited to the relatively short arc of your jump. To visualize this, let’s think about the threat that Marth poses to you on the ground vs in the air. Whenever Marth is on the ground, you have to worry about the long range he controls with his tilts and his other ground moves, and you essentially have to respect a much larger area because he has a lot of freedom to go wherever he wants. Whenever he is in the air, his effective range becomes much shorter, limited to the max distance of his jump. Whenever he is airborne, not only is his effective range shorter, but he has much less freedom to control where his character goes (he’s limited to how far he can drift his own character along with his double jump). Double-jumping is a cool mechanic in Smash that gives you a little more maneuverability when you’re in the air, but ground control is still king.
The ground is generally where you have more tools available to you. Not only does the grounded player have a huge mobility advantage, but the person on the ground has access to their shield, crouch-canceling, along with a lot of their best attacks (smash attacks and tilts), still having the freedom to jump.
So whenever you jump at someone, they can look at you and KNOW that your mobility is limited, and they KNOW that you’re limited to a certain number of options, and they can act accordingly. However, in trying to stress the importance of ground control, I don’t mean that jumping is BAD. Jumping is, however, a commitment. You don’t want to commit mindlessly, otherwise you’re limiting your own potential for no good reason. You need to be able to pick your spots for jumping.
Ground control is ridiculously important for Marth because he probably has the best ground control in Melee. Neglecting ground control is basically ignoring one of his biggest, un-contestable strengths. Why is his ground control so good? Well, put simply, it’s because of his amazing movement (top 3 in the game) and good ground moves, most notably (BY A HUGE MARGIN), his down-tilt. I will write several paragraphs about how amazing this move is in the “Move List” section of the guide, but it really is an amazing move. IMO it’s the most important move he has. If Marth’s dtilt (somehow) got nerfed, I would not think twice about quitting him, because it’s that amazing and it’s that crucial to playing Marth.
Having discussed how important the ground game is, it becomes clear that having such a strong ground game is a huge asset to Marth. Marth is a character that limits the opponent’s options, and this is largely because he has ground superiority vs practically every other character in Melee. His ground superiority gives him the ability to beat the opponent when they’re on the ground. In other words, his ground game allows him to limit his opponent’s options right at the core. Once you have effectively castrated your opponent, the rest of the match becomes a matter of recognizing and exploiting the positional advantage you have in a lot of situations, once the opponent is forced to play in a way that respects your ground game.
Marth needs to focus on a solid ground game largely because… well… he’s pretty weak otherwise. It’s almost all that he has in neutral. He can’t do aerial approaches the same way that characters like Fox and Falco do for a lot of reasons. The first reason is that in the air, he’s pretty slow. Whenever Marth jumps at you, it’s extremely easy to see him coming and just avoid him. The second reason is that his aerials are not good aggressive moves. They’re too laggy (His fair travels in an up-to-down arc, meaning that his lower-front side is vulnerable during its entire startup. His aerials are somewhat easy to beat/easy to avoid when he does them blindly), and they’re not very safe in any sense of the word. They’re relatively unsafe on shield. They can be unsafe on hit, depending on the circumstances. And if he misses, he doesn’t have any fast moves to cover himself (e.g. shine, fast jab, fast d-smash) or follow up.
This isn’t to say that Marth is BAD in the air. Marth’s air game is extremely important to playing him well. However, you need to understand when it’s appropriate to jump and when it’s appropriate to stay grounded. In general, Marth wants to go in the air when he needs to beat or zone off (threaten) the opponent’s aerial approaches, but, as you can imagine, the reality is not nearly this simple.
Offense, Defense, Patience
I’ll be cliche and start with a question: is Marth an aggressive or defensive character?
The most common answer, by far, to this question is “defensive character.” Intuitively, this makes some sense. Earlier, I discussed how Marth is really bad at “approaching” and forcing things. I also discussed how he’s VERY GOOD at hitting people out of their options or weaving around their options altogether. These things point to defense, right?
Of course, my initial question was rhetorical. The entire POINT of this discussion is to question and redefine your ideas of aggression and defense. Based on my definitions and my opinions, Marth is actually an aggressive character. However, we’ll need to talk on that.
SO MANY Smash players like to categorize things into false dilemmas (false dilemma: a fallacy in which a subject are improperly categorized into only two choices, when the reality is not black-and-white) with regards to playstyle. Aggressive vs defensive, approaching vs camping, you get the point.
Personally, I find this to be an offensive oversimplification of this game. A lot of the time, when people use these categories, they ignore how deep and interactive this game truly is. There are SO MANY intermediates that vary based on stage position, timing, conditioning, move choice, option coverage, that talking about things in an “approach vs camp” lens is insane to me. In fact, I think this kind of attitude can even stunt your growth as a player because it can lock you into a mindset that STOPS you from seeing options and seeing the depth in the game.
One of the big problems with the “approach vs camp” mindset is the implication that approaching means you need to go all-in and take a risk that will hopefully hit your opponent and hopefully lead to a follow-up. For a lot of people, the definition of approaching implies overextending prematurely. IN OTHER WORDS, for a lot of people, the definition of approaching ignores a good chunk of the possibilities and decision making that happens before and after an attack is thrown out (it also implies that an attack HAS to be thrown out, but more on that later). And from this poor definition, since “approaching” is bad, the only choice is to camp. There is nothing else you can do in this game.
To be honest, I really dislike the words “approach” and “camp.” I think they have toxic implications (not necessarily, but you run the risk), so you’re better off using more precise words to avoid being misleading.
So what terms should we use? Personally, I am a fan of proactive vs reactive. Instead of thinking of an aggressive player that approaches, you should think of a proactive player, that is trying to create opportunities and force the opponent’s hand. Instead of thinking of a defensive player who camps, you should think of a reactive player, who is waiting for more information from the game before committing to a decision. Being a good player requires you to be able to effectively use both in the proper situations. Instead of trying to typecast players as aggressive, defensive, whatever, you should think of every player as a unique individual who does what they think is best in a given situation. Sure, people have their tendencies, differences, and quirks, but you really should just be focusing on what you think is ideal in a given situation. Now, let’s get back to whether Marth is an aggressive or a passive character.
How good is Marth when he’s cornered? Bad. How good is Marth when the opponent is INSIDE his sword range (or in other words, how good is Marth at disengaging)? Awful. How good is Marth out of shield, roll, and spotdodge? Mediocre (compared to Sheik, Peach, and the space animals). How good is Marth at not-getting-comboed and not-getting-edgeguarded? Not exceptionally.
How good is Marth when his opponent is cornered? Amazing! How good is Marth when the opponent is a bit outside of sword range away from him? Amazing! How good is Marth at FORCING his opponent to respect and playing around his options? Amazing!
Get the point? Even though Marth’s kit is defensive, in the sense that he doesn’t engage extremely well and that his kit is more suited for countering the opponent’s aggressive options, he needs to apply it proactively/aggressively. If Marth plays too passively, he essentially gives the opponent the opportunity to walk all over him, pick THEIR favorite spots, and play on THEIR OWN TERMS, reducing him to a bad character with an amazing punish game. Being proactive/aggressive with Marth means that you have to be aggressive with your positioning and proactive with regards to forcing good positions.
This sounds fine and dandy, except there’s one problem. As I said, Marth’s kit is kinda defensive in nature. Even if you have the aggressive positioning and situation-forcing down, how do you actually execute it? The key is patience.
A lot of people equate patience with defensive or boring play, but this is really just a poor understanding of what patience actually is. Patience is not passive. Patience is waiting for the perfect moment to act. Patience is not cowardly. In fact, it’s QUITE the opposite, and heres why: impatience, a lot of the time, stems from the fear that you HAVE to do something, or else! Patience, on the other hand, requires you to have the wisdom, heart, and courage to be able to wait in the perfect spot and wait for the perfect moment, being very close to danger, but keeping calm, knowing that you have control.
Let’s talk more about WHAT patience actually is. Patience is one of the keys to solid decision-making in Smash, which is why it lends itself so well to Marth’s sword usage, but that’s only one application. Patience allows you to cover options. Patience allows you to win the neutral game. Patience is what lets you get the most out of positional advantage.
Whenever you perform an action in Smash, you are committed to that action, for some amount of time, making you completely unable to access all of your other options. Since you are committed to this action, the opponent may be able to act accordingly to gain some advantage or some opportunity, knowing you’re committed. IMPATIENCE is the error of making tons of unnecessary commitments, hoping one of them will work (and sometimes they do, otherwise people would learn faster).
Going from this, PATIENCE is the art of being comfortable waiting in a neutral position where you have a lot of options available, being calm and not committing to any of them unless you have a reason. If you are more patient than your opponent, they’ll oftentimes crack before you and they’ll GIVE YOU a free opportunity to make something happen. If your opponent is patient (or just really defensive, it varies from person to person), then you’ll have to finesse your way into something.
Here’s a bit on patience that is VERY important. A lot of Smash players will convince themselves that something is spammable JUST because it’s frame safe. In other words, because they will not get immediately hit or grabbed for it, people will think it’s okay to use liberally because “they’re not getting punished.” This is not the right way to think, and it has to do with the nature of getting punished, so listen carefully to this next bit.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO GET HIT TO GET PUNISHED. IF THE ENEMY GAINS ANY RELATIVE ADVANTAGE IN RESPONSE TO YOU DOING SOMETHING, YOU GOT PUNISHED.
Therefore, if you do an overly committed or unnecessary action, you are effectively punishing yourself by cutting down your own options from a situation where you had many.
A lesson that personally helped me develop my own patience is the idea that you are not in a rush to make anything happen! Let’s say you’re in an advantageous position, like having your opponent in the corner. A lot of Marth players will squander this opportunity by being impatient and overextend while trying to force an opportunity when there are none immediately present. The waiting game is in YOUR FAVOR! Advantageous positions don’t go stale! If 5 seconds pass and nothing happens (unlikely), your opponent is in no better shape than they were at the beginning! Keeping your opponent in a bad position indefinitely is a lot better than being impatient and losing the opportunity altogether.
Patience is particularly important to know with Marth because his sword usage requires a lot of discretion. Marth’s sword swings have really punishable lag whenever he doesn’t manage his space correctly, so you REALLY need to use your judgment for whether or not you actually want to commit to it. His sword is AMAZING at what it does, which is to limit and forbid the opponent’s aggressive options. However, it makes up for being amazing at what it does do by being awful at what it doesn’t do. In other words, it’s pretty mediocre vs defensive options, like crouch cancel, shield, evasion, certain trades, etc. For a counterexample from a different character, let’s think about Falco’s dair. It CAN be used to limit the opponent’s aggressive options, yes. However, if Falco hits a shielding/crouching opponent with his dair, he can STILL make something happen from it. The same applies for Peach’s fair, for another example. Marth cannot just force it to work a lot of the time, and trying to make it work like Fox, Falco, or Peach is playing a game you shouldn’t be playing. Because Marth is so bad in close quarters, being impatient will oftentimes make you overextend, and Marth is probably the viable character that gets punished hardest for overextending.
So does that mean Marth loses to defense? Not really. The thing is, whenever your opponent has shifted towards a more defensive style, that means he already respects your range. He has forfeited his aggressive options. In other words, your sword has already done its job!
Once your sword has done it’s job, it becomes YOUR job to follow up, not your sword’s job to keep doing more than it already has. Whenever your opponent’s aggression has been limited, he is essentially put in a position where his main choices are to stay back or to do an unsafe aggressive option (which you still need to be careful of). When your opponent is in this situation, THAT gives you the freedom to do so many things! It allows you to be more invasive with your positioning; it allows you to go for grabs more safely; it allows you to be more bait-heavy; it opens tons of doors.
For Avatar (TLA) fans, I will be using a quote from the show to wrap up the lesson. For everyone else, I’m using the quote anyway because I love it.
Aang: I don’t understand. Why didn’t you free yourself? Why did you surrender when Omashu was invaded? What’s the matter with you, Bumi?
Bumi: Listen to me, Aang. There are options in fighting, called jing. It’s a choice of how you direct your energy.
Aang: I know! There’s positive jing when you’re attacking, and negative jing when you’re retreating!
Bumi: And neutral jing when you do nothing!
Aang: There are three jings?
Bumi: Well, technically, there are eighty-five, but let’s just focus on the third. Neutral jing is the key to earthbending. It involves listening and waiting for the right moment to strike.
Aang: That’s why you surrendered, isn’t it?
Bumi: Yes, and it’s why I can’t leave now.
Aang: I guess I need to find someone else to teach me earthbending.
Bumi: Your teacher will be someone who has mastered neutral jing. You need to find someone who waits and listens before striking.
Zoning and Threatening
I’ve been speaking in fairly abstract terms about how Marth “limits options” and needs to “manage space,” and although I’ve gone into some detail with examples, I haven’t really touched on HOW you go about executing this. Two essential concepts that assist in achieving this goal are zoning and threatening. Both of these concepts revolve |
(starting at 12:01am Pacific Time), for any purchase you make on Bandcamp, we will be donating 100% of our share of the proceeds to the American Civil Liberties Union, who are working tirelessly to combat these discriminatory and unconstitutional actions.
NOW is the time to purchase all the albums and songs you’ve been saving to your wishlist! Are you new to bandcamp? Maybe you’re not sure what next to buy. Here is a hastily thrown together list of music that’s available via bandcamp for ska fans and Boston music fans alike.
Threat Level Burgundy – The Longest Day
Released a few weeks into January, The Longest Day sees Billerica’s Threat Level Burgundy deliver another solid set of ska-punk tracks about “video games, star wars, movies, life and relationships”. The album is the fruit of labor that resulted from last year’s successful Kickstarter made to fund it’s recording and production. Though this is only the band’s second album, TLB have been at this for a while now, and this album’s heavier sound presents a nice change of shift.
The Macrotones – Unknown Outpost
As Boston’s afrofunk ambassadors, any given album from The Macrotones will feature a collection of dense, horn-heavy grooves that just don’t quit. Unknown Outpost, the band’s fifth release and the first since 2012, sees the band incorporating vocals into many of the tracks to create a nice distinction from the catchy horn leads on other tracks from this and past releases. Spearheaded by John and Marc Beaudette (of Destroy Babylon and The Flying Vipers), the ensemble also includes past and present members of some of our favorite locals like The Pomps and Big D.
Stuck Lucky – S/T
Nashville’s Stuck Lucky have been doing their harder/faster blend of punk and ska for quite some time now, and have had a hot streak over their past few albums. Released on the always great Community Records last November, the band’s latest self-titled record continues that streak of quality with twelve tracks of hard hitting ska-core that doesn’t let up. The tracks go by quick, but have enough hooks to stay memorable hours after hearing them. The lyrics on this thing manage to sway hopeful while maintaining anarchist messages, something the band has been excelling at on most of their latest records. LIYL: Anything else from Community (The Flaming Tsunamis, Murphy’s Kids, Fatter Than Albert), Choking Victim/Leftover Crack.
Comps
We’ve mentioned this before, but Bandcamp is the best service for releasing compilation albums around. Like to compilations in support of Bernie Sanders in the lead-up to the Democratic National Convention, swaths of compilations have been posted to Bandcamp in opposition to President Trump and his cabinet’s actions. The kicker with most of these comps is that all proceeds go to charities, which means that adding Bandcamp’s contributions makes 100% of what you pay go directly to one of the many foundations fighting against the new administration.
We Are Not Trump (W.A.N.T.) Volume One
Released earlier this month, We Are Not Trump: Volume One collects just under 45 tracks from New England-area bands (and beyond!) across a wide range of genres. I can’t say that I’ve heard of any of the bands on the comp before (unless it’s that Wolf Blitzer), which probably means that the city has a bigger music scene than we realize, but that we’re all in this together. Put together by Somerville musician Christopher G. Brown, the comp is available as a pay-what-you-want download, with all proceeds going to the ACLU. What’s more, an open invitation to contribute to the second W.A.N.T. volume can be answered by joining the comp’s privately screened Facebook group.
What Do You Know About Ska Punk Volume One
If a tracklist in the double-digits just isn’t enough for you, the one hundred-plus tracks on last month’s What Do You Know About Ska Punk Volume One should be enough to keep your sense of discovery active for quite some time. Readers of this site will recognize more than a handful of the bands on this comp, whether it’s more established acts like MC Lars (Lars coming through with the tracklist’s best song title) or J. Navarro and the Traitors, or up-and-coming Northeast bands like The Screw-Ups or Crash the Owl Party. Even Stuck Lucky and Threat Level Burgundy make appearances, who both have recent full albums available above. Per their popular Facebook page, WDYKASP plans on curating future releases from associated ska punk artists as well as more compilation volumes.
Don’t Stop Now: A Collection of Covers
Another large compilation with 100% of proceeds going exclusively to the ACLU, Don’t Stop Now is a collection of mostly prominent bands covering songs exclusively for the compilation. Released on Inauguration Day, the compilation features notable members of the Philadelphia punk scene and bands from across the country. Ya boiii Jeff Rosenstock covering Bikini Kill, Laura Stevenson covering Townes Van Zandt, Chris Farren covering Against Me!, The Menzingers covering Jason Isbell, and contributions from several member of the excellent Cayetana are just the tip of the iceberg. The organizers added a mission statement that included:
This compilation is an expression of love, anger, hope and protest on inauguration day. Let it serve as a reminder that the fight for justice is not over, that the celebration of diversity is essential to progress, that we must work together for what is fair and good. Can’t stop. Won’t Stop. Don’t stop now.
The list keeps going…
Bandcamp is a treasure trove of great music. We couldn’t possibly cover everything but here are more great records for you to dig into.
Quite a few labels now offer their entire discography on Bandcamp…
And don’t forget to browse the “ska” tag on Bandcamp.Story highlights Patrick Macnee is best known for portraying "Avengers" secret agent John Steed
The actor was familiar debonair presence on UK, American screens for years
(CNN) Patrick Macnee, the British actor who played bowler-hatted secret agent John Steed on the 1960s spy series "The Avengers," died Thursday. He was 93.
Born to an upscale family in Berkshire, England -- his father was a horse trainer -- Macnee, a World War II naval veteran, spent years in the trenches of theater, film bit parts and TV guest roles before hitting it big as Steed when "The Avengers" premiered in 1961 on UK television.
JUST WATCHED 1986: Patrick Macnee on being John Steed Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH 1986: Patrick Macnee on being John Steed 01:35
Originally, Steed was the assistant to the lead, Dr. David Keel, a physician who solves crimes. But he soon became the lead and was paired with several beautiful and intelligent women: first Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), later Tara King (Linda Thorson) but perhaps most notably, from 1965-68, Emma Peel (Diana Rigg).
Steed and Peel had a notable chemistry: Macnee in bespoke suit and characteristically British hat and umbrella, Rigg in fashionable outfits and the occasional catsuit. She was nobody's fool, a speedy sports car driver and martial arts expert; he was suitably impressed, if more staid. The two routinely engaged in witty banter while keeping the world safe from supervillains.by JAKE NUTTING
The Venezuelan connection of head coach Giovanni Savarese is paying off for the New York Cosmos — for a second time this week.
Days after announcing the addition of Venezuelan national team legend, Juan Arangi, EOS has learned that the club is set to formally announce the signing of another Venezuelan national team midfielder in Yohandry Orozco.
Orozco, 25, is an attacking midfielder with 25 appearances for the national team. At 19 he signed with Wolfsburg in the German Bundesliga where he he earned a handful of appearances in three years. He then moved back to his home country to play for Deportiva Tachira in 2013 for a productive stint. In his three years with Tachira, Orozco made 68 appearances and tallied 15 goals.
Most recently, Orozco spent 2015 with Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabi.Postscript
For many years, one of the standing jokes at Chaosium was that every employee had to have at least one tattoo. I facetiously asked Greg to provide an inventory of his current tattoos. He sent a photo, replying that he'd explain it on the condition my editors print his response if they used the photo. I can fairly say it is nothing like anything The Escapist has ever published:
"This, my first tattoo, is a part of my transformative healing work. Transformation is difficult work. If it is not difficult, then it is not transformative; it is just improvement. But shamanism offers a process to interact with the nonexistent, or the nonphysical, and manifest it in the world. I had to reveal the core of my vision into this world in order to make it more real. Not more real for me-it can't be more than it is. I mean, to make my vision more real for you. I'll explain as much as I can in print.
"This shows the world, the three worlds. This is the Above, this is the Below. This is the Light, this is the Darkness. This is the One, this is the Many. Each thing inside another is another world, another dimension, another depth or meaning and majesty.
"Look below here - this is the web of being. Everywhere two webs meet is something in life, an event or a place or a person or a thought or a dream or voice or vision or pain or terror or realizations that some day we will die. This net, the visible part, is the world of relationships - see how they cast their own shadows?
"And in the center there, that's the spider woman who came to me in darkness and scared the hell out of me for years. Something horrible happened and she came, and at first she was just another terrible thing. But she kept everything away from me for decades, and at last I learned her language. Sometimes she comes now in a sweat lodge to help healing, sometimes she still guards me. See her head, it's on fire. That is how to find her - head for the light. She is the center there, where fire and darkness are one. It's a terrible and horrible place to try to get to - not so bad once you get there.
"But the whole thing there, that is the world of shadows where we live. But that whole world grows too, and you can see that one tree there - that's me, or you. It takes the energy from below - the great confusion of joy and pleasure and hate and fear and screwing up and love - and that tree takes it all into itself, that tree does, and it brings the power upward from Below, up to the world of the Above. That's what the tree does.
"And above there is the sky - you see it, blue, up beyond the clouds. An eagle took me there once so I could look down more clearly. You can tell which way the eagle is going by the constellations: the Great Bear and the Hunter. And there is the sun, inside the sky, and inside it is something else. And from it, through the sun, you see, out comes light, bright light that comes out from the One, out from the Above, to warm the clouds and the trees and the world of below. And it streams into the world as sunlight, and lightning, and rain."
Writer and game designer Allen Varney has written more than 50 articles for The Escapist. See the complete list at The Great Games Experiment, and follow him on Twitter.Me: For this album you guys got a new guitar player?
Erika: The whole band is new to the albums. I had a different band on the first two albums, and I was in a relationship with one of the band members. We were together nine years though so it wasn’t some kind of band playing. When we split up I moved to Austin to just kind of start over because we had all the same friends so it was kind of hard to be in the same city so I moved to Austin. When I recorded “The Mountain,” I didn’t have a band yet so I had to snatch some musicians on that album. I ran into Dave when I finished recording “The Mountain.” I had been in band years ago with Dave back in Dayton, Ohio. He played drums so he came to the band. He happened to be finishing up school at UT so it was good timing. Then called up Jackie who lived in the Cincinnati area and asked if he would consider moving down to Austin to join the band, I’ve always thought he was a really great bass player and a really good positive personality. Sometimes it’s nice to work with people you already know because when you are on the road you are in a van it’s hard sometimes and it’s easy for drama to happen. Having people that I have known for a long time I figured it was less likely and so far so good. We all get along nicely.
Mark joined, before “The Mountain,” was released, we did a tour as a three piece and he did sound on that tour. He is a professional sound engineer and we got along really well and heard he was a great guitarist so then we asked if he was interested, it’s now three years later.
This is the first album they are all one. Dave and Jesse were in a demo I did back in 2002 when I lived in Ohio. This is the first full length that the three of the other guys are on as a band.
Me: You worked with “Spoon’s” Producer Mike McCarthy. How was it like working with Jim Eno (From the band Spoon)?
Erika: I like his work with Spoon and also with a band called,” …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead,” and did an album called “Source Tags and Codes.” I have always loved how it was recorded and the sounds of it. Mike McCarthy heard of us through his sister because she is from Cincinnati. That is kind of how I got to working with him, and he coincidentally lived in Austin, when I moved there so it made sense. Over the years we have gotten to know him through various friends and we would run into each other on different occasions. He has an amazing studio in Austin called ‘Public Hi-Fi,’ and worked with bands like Black Joe Lewis. He showed some interest in the band and actually came to some of our rehearsals. The greatest thing was that he asked us what we wanted to sound like and wanted some samples and recording techniques as albums as references. I think with him being in a band previously we worked together with a team and liked the direction we were headed.
Me: Where you looking for a specific sound in this album?
Erika: It’s not an overall sound for the album. Some inspirations for “Parted Ways,” were like Thin Lizzy’s cover of “Whiskey in the Jar.” It is kind of like rock and sound but it has an acoustic guitar. “Got to Have Rock and Roll,” was inspired by T-Rex so we put the drums in an enclosed vocal booth for that tight sound. It was just kind of, “how do we approach each song rather than the album.” If you take each song individually, each gives its own identity.
Me: Well the tracks in the album were all over the place and not placed in any specific order.
Erika: Yeah, totally. Even mixing the acoustic guitar it’s a bit more melodic in “Parted Ways.” In “Got to Have Rock and Roll,” the percussive elements of the guitar are heard more.
Me: You guys did a taping of ACL 2009, are you doing festivals this year?
Erika: Yeah, I am not certain which ones have been announced but we have one called, “Hangout.” Then we are doing “Summer Fest,” in Milwaukee, and another one called, “Soundtown.” Just a number of them, but the one I like the most is, “Pickathon,” which is one in Portland. It’s very intimate with a max of 5000 ticket capacity. All the acts play at least two sets so it’s a show in a barn and then one outdoor.
Me: What bands are you looking forward to seeing anytime soon?
Erika: Probably Dr. Dog, we played with them two or three years ago. Jesus and Mary chain have reunited and they are playing SXSW. I hope I get to see them; we are playing eleven times there so we will see. I have never seen them, I caught part of them and I was sixteen at Lollapalooza. It was so long ago.
Me: Well thank you so much for your time.
Erika: Not a problem man. It was cool talking to you.This woman fought her fear of cancer — and a personal battle raging inside her — by giving “unconditional love for zero dollars.”
Diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, Dr. Shamanie Thompson tenaciously fought it, but suffered some complications and, later, a growing fear the cancer would return.
After reading an inspirational story about Brice Royer, another cancer survivor, she contacted him and he convinced her to replace the fear that was paralyzing her with unconditional love.
RELATED: Man’s Cancer is Healed After Doing Random Acts of Kindness for a Year
Thompson and her kids made a sign that read: “I am giving Unconditional Love for $0 to heal my fear of cancer.”
They set the sign up in a nearby park, and Thompson handed out receipts, along with hugs, to 40 strangers in 30 minutes. Each receipt had a different, positive message such as “Sunny days will come again” and “You are stronger than you think.”
She says in the video below, she could feel her heart growing “three times” its size. Thompson said the experience pushed the fear out and left her with an overwhelming sense of love and goodness.
CHECK OUT: Firefighters Pay it Forward–Big Time–After Waitress With Heart of Gold Picks Up Tab
Thompson was so emboldened, she even went to her ex-husband and made peace, after years of hostile feelings between them.
“On any other day,” she says in the video below, “this never would have happened because we’ve had such conflict in our lives. This is the miracle — I ended the war inside me.”
(WATCH the video below and READ more at Dr. Shamanie Thompson’s website)
Share the Inspiration–You Never Know Who Might Need it…In the foyer of Teneo Holdings impressive headquarters on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan there is an old Coca-Cola machine that looks like something out of a time capsule.
For just a dime you can pull out an old Coca-Cola bottle and drink like it was 1955.
When you enter Teneo itself however it feels like the future.
Teneo’s newest business is Teneo Intelligence, which uses algorithms to predict future trouble spots around the world and models how such events will effect markets.
They then sell the information on to major companies.
It is run by an ex-CIA figure who Teneo CEO Declan Kelly, 43,says can spot a revolution from a million miles away.
At its heart Teneo is essentially a global consulting firm and merchant bank that advises many of the world’s largest companies on a wide-range of issues.
In his own office the Portroe, Tipperary-born Kelly has a spectacular view of uptown Manhattan and his desk is adorned with pictures of world leaders and corporate chieftains he has done business with including Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
The coke machine also serves the purpose of reminding visitors that Teneo and Kelly are deeply involved with Coke, one of their major clients.
Kelly is on the fast track in American business, this Irish generation’s Tony O’Reilly who conquered the American corporate sphere in his day.
Like O’Reilly he comes from a humble background in Ireland and still tears up remembering the sacrifices his parent Nan and Tom Kelly, a small farmer who left school when he was 12, made for him and his brother Alan, now a Minister of State, to ensure they got the best education.
Whatever was in the water in the Kelly household the two sons emerged as outrageously ambitious, confident and willing to take on the world.
At Nenagh CBS Kelly was a very capable hurler who played in an All-Ireland ‘B’ Colleges final and soon after his love of sport and writing found him working on the Nenagh Guardian and doing a degree at UCG in English and Law at night.
He graduated in 1989 and worked for the Cork Examiner becoming a well-respected sports columnist and award winning business reporter.
He was not long for the Munster championship circuit however and soon he lit out for Dublin where he and Jackie Gallagher eventually started their own PR firm in 1998 after they had both worked at Fleishman-Hillard.
It was the beginning of a dramatic rise in the business world on both sides of the Atlantic, culminating now in Teneo Holdings which numbers numerous Fortune 100 companies and a former US president among its clients and has Tony Blair on its advisory board.
Teneo was formed in June 2011 and already has over 100 employees and offices all over the world. He is the largest shareholder.
Today Kelly will deliver the former American president Bill Clinton to the Worldwide Ireland Fund dinner in Cork where he will oversee the Clinton schedule for the weekend.
His introduction to the Clintons was hardly auspicious. It was at an Irish America magazine event in New York and Kelly had arranged an introduction to Hillary through Irish America founder Niall O’Dowd.
The media crush around the First Lady was so great that Kelly got hit by the sharp edge of a camera and had had to meet the First Lady while staunching blood from a forehead wound.
Despite that awkward beginning, he has gone on to become a major confidante of both Clintons.
He was often at her side during her election battle against Obama and became known as a fundraising wizard, personally raising millions and became a person the Clintons increasingly relied on.
The relationship has continued strong in the post- election years. It will be the fourth time in a little over a year that the president will come to Ireland at the behest of Kelly.
Haiti and Ireland have become favored projects for Clinton after leaving office. The fact that his focus is still on Ireland is down in large part to Kelly and to Clinton remembering his role in the peace process as among the highlights of his presidency.
Kelly advises Clinton and the president is a client of Teneo. He was once on their advisory board but left and remains "a friend and an unpaid adviser to Teneo and its founders," according to his spokesman.
Rumors swirled at the time that all was not well between Teneo and Clinton.
"There was a lot of misinformation and rumours about Clinton and Teneo," says Kelly "There was never a rift or a division, far from it.
"Read what Clinton said at the time'. He said, and I quote: 'I did not sever my financial relationship with Teneo. I changed it... Because of the help I continue to receive with my business relationships and speaking engagements, as well as with CGI and other philanthropic activities, like the Ireland investment conference, I felt that I should be paying them, not the other way around.' That's pretty self-explanatory."
On Clinton's close associations with Ireland, Kelly said: "He really believes he can help, and he wants to take every opportunity to do so. That's why he will be back in Ireland again and again. I don't think he has visited too many countries more."
If anything, the links between Teneo and Clinton have become even more entwined since.
That is hardly surprising, the president of Teneo is Clinton’s long-time aide Doug Band who is credited with creating the Clinton post-presidency aura which has seen him rise to become the most popular politician in America.
Kelly also raises considerable sums for the Clinton foundation and served as Hillary Clinton’s economic envoy to Northern Ireland for two years and remains close to the former First Lady.
Teneo was also in the headlines recently because it advised the disgraced former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine whose company MF Global recently went bankrupt on the back of disastrous derivative trading.
Kelly is quick to point out that such advice consisted only of monitoring economic trends and preparing a report each morning for Corzine and they were not involved in any trading issues
Either way Corzine is firmly in the rear view mirror for Teneo as their client list rapidly expands.
Coke CEO Muktar Kent is one of Teneo’s clients, recommended by Donald Keough, the former Coca Cola president, who still plays a hugely influential role in that company as a major shareholder and board member.
Keough, a legendary figure in American business and currently chairman of major investment bank Allen and Company, has unabashed admiration for Declan Kelly and how he has burst on the scene in corporate America.
“I’ve wandered around in the world of consultants for a very long time he says from his office in Atlanta “and Kelly is the best.”
“He is simply a great problem solver” he says, You know how many people can tell you what your problems are but never how to solve them?
‘He gets to the core of the problem in a moment and he has the intellectual honesty to tell it straight to his clients, to tell the unvarnished truth but he will never do so without having a proposed
solution as well.”
High praise indeed, for a former journalist for the Nenagh Guardian who has leapfrogged from obscurity to a major place at the corporate table in America.
How did Kelly reach such lofty heights? In a dizzying series of maneuvers, Kelly sold his successful PR firm in Dublin run with Jackie Gallagher for $15 million at the beginning of the Celtic Tiger to Financial Dynamics, a major American communications company, a move
that brought Kelly to the US in 2001.
Kelly then turned around in July 4th 2003 and bought out FD for $43.5 million in a management buyout and turned it into a major player in the PR and consulting world.
Then in 2006 FTI Consulting, one of the biggest fish in the business, acquired FD for $340 million, then the largest price ever paid for a communications firm.
It was considered likely that Kelly would eventually run FTI but he soon became restless and through the Clinton connection was offered the economic envoy to Northern Ireland job in September 2009 which he took while serving out a 2-year non-compete clause with FTI.
He won widespread respect in Northern Ireland for his efforts to promote inward investment even grudgingly from political leaders who found him refreshingly direct in telling them to get the finger out and forget the outmoded practices and dependency on government.
During his tenure major U.S. corporations including Citi, NYSE, Seagate, Dow Chemical, GE Energy and others announced they were creating new jobs there.
He also played a major role in securing the recent Clinton-led economic conference on Ireland in America
Kelly himself is utterly at home in the cutthroat environment in America. He is known not to suffer fools willingly and is clearly a young man in hurry.
He has also fundraised major amounts for organizations such as the children’s hospital in Crumlin and the American Ireland Funds, as well as several non-Irish charities.
But it his connection and bond to President Clinton that has opened up major avenues to him.
In a business where power and influence is everything he has the 800-pound gorilla in his corner.Horn Chen, who owned the Ottawa Rough Riders for two seasons – 1995-96 – died on Monday in Illinois. He was 83.
While owning the Rough Riders, Chen was invisible – he never saw the team play – and at the time, the Ottawa Sun hired a private detective to find him to make sure there actually was a Horn Chen. Turns out he was real and he admitted in an interview later that he “made a mistake” by buying a CFL team. Horn also owned the rights to the name, Rough Riders.
Chen, a minority owner of the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets, owned several minor-league hockey teams along the way, founding the Central Hockey League in 1992.
While he owned the Rough Riders, the team finished with a record of 3-15 both seasons, before folding Nov. 6 of 1996 with Revenue Canada freezing the franchise’s assets.When Borrowers Don't Pay, Should The Bank Take Everything?
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Spain, like the U.S., is going through a huge real estate bust.
But only around 3.5 percent of Spaniards with mortgages stopped making payments last year. In the U.S., the rate was above 9 percent.
What's true for Spain is true for most of Europe: Homeowners are much more likely than Americans to keep paying their mortgage, even when the economy falls apart.
Maybe it's because European homeowners who stop making payments stand to lose a lot more than their American counterparts.
Consider what happened to Frédérique Létienne when the Spanish economy started to stall.
Frédérique translates technical documents from Spanish to French. She's French, lives in Madrid. Two years into the economic crisis, her work dried up. She couldn't pay the mortgage anymore.
"They called me every day," she says. "Telling me you have to put money. And if I had 100 euros, I used to put it in the mortgage. But it was never enough."
Frédérique panicked. She filled in for secretaries on maternity leave, temped at a restaurant, asked her ex-husband for money. She sold her grandmother's jewelry.
But if Frédérique had lived in the U.S., it's quite possible she never would have sold her family heirlooms or called her ex. She would have had another option: Give up.
If Frédérique walked away from her mortgage in the U.S., her credit score would be ruined, she'd lose her house. And then, most likely, the whole thing would be over.
In Spain, if Frédérique walked away from her mortgage, her credit score would be ruined, she'd lose her house — and then the bank could pursue her for everything else she owned. Her car, her investments. In a few years, if and when she does get a job, the bank could take part of her wages.
Most Spanish banks issue recourse loans. That means the bank can pursue and pursue until it gets its money back in full.
"That's it, I mean for the rest of my life" Frédérique says. "I can't do anything about it."
Javier Andrés, an economist at the University of Valencia, says this may not be a bad thing.
He says Spanish banks are suffering huge mortgage losses already. If people weren't afraid of the banks when asking to borrow money, things would have gotten even worse. "If you have this kind of regulation, then people would think twice before asking for a very high mortgage," he says.
In America, of course, the attitude is different — even among economists.
Atif Mian at the University of California at Berkeley says the problem with recourse loans is that people are afraid of their banks — which means they are also afraid of spending, of opening new businesses. In a recession, that's bad thing.
"If you force that person to sell their other assets as well, then that person may not have enough money to pay for their children's education," Mian says. "Or their health, or so on. So you need to be lenient toward such individuals."
No one has been lenient to Frédérique Létienne. Each month she comes up with a different short term solution. She's fearful. But she's not actually angry that things work this way.
"I knew if you take a loan and you don't pay it, the bank will go after you," she says. "It's normal. I mean, of course."
Someone gives you money, she says, you've got to pay it back.As 10 Republican presidential hopefuls wrestled in the mud that was the first GOP primary debate in Cleveland, one candidate kept clear of the scrum and took his shots from outside Quicken Loans Arena.
Tonight, follow the debates live with me and use the hashtag #DebateWithBernie to join the conversation. pic.twitter.com/Mh9XrzWeA3 — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
Bernie Sanders, who has emerged as a clear challenger to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, began by asking if Fox News would ask about Citizens United, climate change, or health care.
However, within 25 minutes he realized that was not the direction this debate was headed.
Except it was a commercial.
The self-described democratic socialist perhaps surprisingly found solidarity with some of the Republican candidates.
With Rand Paul on domestic surveillance:
Who would've believed it? @RandPaul is right. Yes we can fight terrorism and protect the U.S. Constitution. #DebateWithBernie — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
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And even with Trump on health care:
Did @realDonaldTrump just support a national single-payer health system? Well. He was right on something. #DebateWithBernie — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
He didn’t hold back on other candidates though.
Carson talks about the debt. Hey Dr. Carson... the Rs forgot to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. $6-8 trillion on the credit card. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
.@JebBush Talk about killing jobs. When your brother left office we were hemorrhaging 800k jobs a month. And you want more of the same? — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
With more than a tinge of sarcasm directed at Scott Walker.
.@ScottWalker: "repeal Obamacare." Throw millions of more people off of their health insurance. Great idea. #DebateWIthBernie — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
And the Republican field overall.
Millions of Americans are struggling with horrendous student debt + high interest rates. Do the Rs have anything to say? #DebateWithBernie — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
Does any Republican agree with the majority of Americans who now strongly support gay rights and same-sex marriage? #DebateWithBernie — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
While the debate itself entertained, Sanders became increasingly displeased with what he took away.
What I'm hearing so far: tax breaks for the rich, more people losing health insurance and more talk about war. This is not what we need. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
The very rich get richer, everyone else poorer. And Republicans who take campaign money from billionaires have nothing significant to say. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
It's over. Not one word about economic inequality, climate change, Citizens United or student debt. That's why the Rs are so out of touch. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015
If it’s any consolation Bernie, you’ll get a shot on stage as well… but not until October.What’s the second most popular and essential pirate accessory besides eye patches? Yes, the earrings. And since we already explained Why Pirates Wore Eye Patches, it’s time to explain earrings as well. Because, as it turns out, they not only look total badass, they also served several purposes for the legendary men of the sea.
The most dominant theory is that pirates put gold or silver rings in the ears so no matter where they died on land, or even be washed ashore if died on the sea, they would pay for their burial. Since silver or gold were accepted forms of payment pretty much anywhere in the world, it meant that whoever found the body had the ‘obligation’ to offer a proper burial to the corpse and of course, keep the earrings. For that same reason, they’d also drill holes in coins and wear them as necklaces or bracelets (archaeologists have found several of those).
In addition to the ‘down payment’ role, earrings were also seen as a form of rebellion. Don’t forget that we are talking about the 17th and 18th centuries here. During those times, there were laws that forbidden common people from wearing jewellery. By wearing the earrings, when going into towns, pirates were basically flouting the laws as if they were saying, “F*** your laws, what can you do to me?” (the article continues after the ad)
Of course, even though these theories are supported by many historians as they “fit” the pirate’s culture and lifestyle, there are other historians who disagree. For example, in his book Pirate: The Golden Age (Get it from Amazon ), author Angus Konstam supports that pirates didn’t wear earrings at all and the whole earrings and bandanas outfit is purely based on the 19th century American artist Howard Pyle who was asked to depict pirates for children’s books and came up with the iconic look.
If you like what you read, then you will definitely love this one: This Is Why Pirates Wore Eye Patches
Main Article Photo: 3D Art by Sergey Samuilov
Photoshop: I’m A Useless Info Junkie
Sources: Why Do Pirates Wear Earrings? | Why Did Pirates Wear Earrings?
Widget not in any sidebarsZero is a special number.[1] If there are zero things, there are no things at all. There are none. For example, if John has zero hats, that means he does not have a hat.
The symbol for the number zero is "0".
Arithmetic with zero [ change | change source ]
Adding a number to zero results in that number. For example, adding zero to three gives three. In symbols:
3 + 0 = 3
Subtracting zero from a number always gives that number. For example, subtracting zero from three gives three. In symbols:
3 − 0 = 3
Subtracting a positive number from zero always makes that number negative (or, if a negative number is subtracted from zero, it makes the number positive). In symbols:
0 − 3 = −3
Multiplying a number by zero always gives zero. For example, multiplying forty-three by zero gives zero. In symbols:
43 × 0 = 0
Dividing zero by a number always gives zero. For example, dividing zero by forty-three gives zero. In symbols:
0 ÷ 43 = 0
Any number divided by zero has no answer. In symbols:
43 ÷ 0 has an undefined answer.
Zero divided by zero has no answer. In symbols:
0 ÷ 0 has no |
apologies for the misinformation.
"Do‘nought fear though, we are actively scouting a number of locations to open our first Irish store The specifics are not confirmed at this stage, but we’re very excited to spread the joy of Krispy Kreme across the Irish sea next year – so watch this space!"
Demand is high in Northern Ireland for a Krispy Kreme store to be opened and at the start of this year an online campaign was started to get a Krispy Kreme store in Belfast gained hundreds of supporters.
A fan of the American donut chain started the group on Facebook in a bid to get the company to open its first Northern Irish store.
Currently there are no Krispy Kreme outlets in Northern Ireland, or the Republic. The company also sells its products in certain retail outlets in store cabinets in other parts of the UK.
They can be found in Tesco, Moto, Welcome Break and Roadchef. However, this is not yet the case in Northern Ireland.
Krispy Kreme previously said they want their first Irish Hotlight store to be in and around Dublin, they are also looking for 25-30 sites across the UK for new shops, kiosks and box stores.Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible code editors to be released in a long time! With a community and plugin ecosystem as passionate as this one, it just might be impossible for any other editor to catch up. I'll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.
Sublime Text 2 is currently available for all major platforms: OS X, Linux and Windows.
1 - Bleeding Edge Versions
Sublime is in active development. If, like me, you want to use the latest possible version of the app, you can download the dev build. You'll find that new (auto) updates are available every other day or so.
Download a dev build of Sublime 2 here.
2 - Get a Better Icon
In its defense, Sublime Text 2 is still in a beta state. The official icon will likely/hopefully change with the official release. Until then, Nate Beaty created an alternative icon, if you prefer it.
To integrate it, you need to replace the existing "Sublime Text 2.icns" file with this new one. On a Mac, browse to Sublime 2 in your Applications/ folder, then right-click and "View Package Contents." Lastly, browse to Contents/Resources/, and drag the new icon in, overwriting the existing one.
Please take note of the fact that, if you're using the frequently updated development version of Sublime Text, with each update, the icon will be removed. With that in mind, don't worry about the icon for the time being.
3 - Access the Command Palette
Similar to TextMate, we can use Sublime's command palette by accessing the Tools menu, or by pressing Shift + Command + P, on the Mac. Whether you need to visit a Preferences page, or paste in a snippet, all of that can be accomplished here.
4 - Lightning-Fast File Switching
Press Control or Command + P, type in the name of the file you wish to access (fuzzy finder), and, without even pressing Enter, you'll instantly be transported to that file. While Vim and apps like PeepOpen offer a similar functionality, they're not nearly as fast as Sublime's implementation.
5 - How Did We Survive Before Multi-Selection?
Editors like TextMate have long offered vertical selection, which is quite neat. But, with multi-selection, you can have multiple cursors on the page. This can drastically reduce the need for using regular expressions, and advanced search and replace queries. Perhaps a quick visual demonstration is in order...
To enable multi-selection, you have several options:
Press Alt or Command and then click in each region where you require a cursor.
or and then click in each region where you require a cursor. Select a block of lines, and then press Shift + Command + L.
. Place the cursor over a particular word, and press Control/Command + D repeatedly to select additional occurrences of that word.
repeatedly to select additional occurrences of that word. Alternatively, add an additional cursor at all occurrences of a word by typing Alt+F3 on Windows, or Ctrl+Command+G on the Mac. Amazing!!
6 - Indent Guides
Update: this feature now comes preinstalled with Sublime Text 2.
It's such a small feature, but I've always loved how Notepad++ on Windows displays indent guides; it makes the page much easier to navigate and format. Sublime Text 2 offers this ability, via a plugin created by Nikolaus Wittenstein.
To integrate this plugin:
Download it
Rename the folder to "Indent Guides" and drag it into the Packages folder. On a Mac, this path would be Application Support/Sublime Text 2/Packages
7 - Package Control
The steps outlined in the previous tip (#6) are a bit tedious, aren't they? Instead, we can install the excellent Sublime Package Control, which streamlines the entire process.
To install "Package Control," open Sublime and press Control + `. Next, paste the following snippet into the console.
Don't worry if you don't understand the code above; just copy and paste!
Lastly, restart Sublime Text, and browse to Preferences -> Package Settings. If the installation was successful, you'll now see a Package Control item in that list.
With Package Control installed, the process of adding new plugins and functionality becomes incredibly simple!
For a usage example, refer to the next item in this list.
8 - Alignment
If you're the type who prefers to line up your equal signs - for example, in your JavaScript...
...this process can be automated, via the Sublime Alignment plugin. Rather than downloading and installing it manually, let's instead use Package Control (outlined in #7).
Press Shift + Command + P
Type "install," to bring up the "Package Control: Install Package" option, and press Enter
Look for "Alignment," and press Enter to install it.
You're done; so easy! Type Shift + Command + A to auto-align.
This process can be repeated for all of the typical plugins we install, such as Zen Coding.
9 - Vim Fanatic
I'm a huge fan of Vim. The amount of power it provides is insane. The fact that I've switched over to Sublime Text 2 should speak volumes then!
If you're using a dev build of Sublime Text (see #2 in this list), you can enable Vintage mode, which provides support for the Vi commands that we know and love -- okay...some of us love. The rest of you hate it! :)
To enable Vintage mode, browse to Preferences/Global Settings - Default. Once this file opens, browse to the very bottom, and change "ignored_packages": ["Vintage"] to "ignored_packages": []. Next, restart Sublime, press the Escape key, and, tada: command mode!
Block Cursor
One thing you may notice is that, in command mode, it can be difficult to find the cursor (especially when taking advantage of things like bookmarks). On more than one occasion, I've found myself trying to hunt down its location.
While it's not a perfect solution, a plugin, called "SublimeBlockCursor," attempts to remedy this issue.
Note: While the readme states that SublimeBlockCursor can be installed, via Package Control, I wasn't able to find it. Instead, I had to clone the project manually into the Packages folder.
10 - Distraction Free Editing
Sometimes, we need to filter out all of the additional fluff that gets in the way of our coding. Use "Distraction Free Mode" to take this idea as far as possible. This option is available, via the View menu. Select "Enter Distraction Free Mode," or use the Mac keyboard shortcut, Control + Shift + Command + F.
11 - You Can Still Use TextMate Bundles
TextMate snippets and themes port over nicely to Sublime Text. You only need to drop them in the Packages folder --.tmbundle extension intact, and Sublime will recognize the files. This means that the entire catalog of TextMate themes will work in Sublime!
For example, I've been working with the (fantastic) Slim templating engine a good bit lately, and needed better syntax highlighting. Fred Wu created a bundle for TextMate, but, tada, it works perfectly in Sublime Text as well! If you're interested, you can download the Slim bundle here; it includes both snippets and syntax highlighting.
12 - Custom Themes
The default theme for Sublime Text is excellent, but I much prefer a custom light and dark theme, Soda, created by Ian Hill.
Installation
As taken from the Github page...
"If you are a git user, the best way to install the theme and keep up to date is to clone the repo directly into your Packages directory in the Sublime Text 2 application settings area."
Using Git
Go to your Sublime Text 2 Packages directory and clone the theme repository using the command below:
Download Manually
Download the files using the GitHub.zip download option.
Unzip the files and rename the folder to Theme - Soda
Copy the folder to your Sublime Text 2 Packages directory
Activating the Theme
To configure Sublime Text 2 to use the theme:
Open your Sublime Text 2 User Global Preferences file: Sublime Text 2 -> Preferences -> User Global Settings
Add (or update) your theme entry to be "theme": "Soda Light.sublime-theme" or "theme": "Soda Dark.sublime-theme"
Example User Global Settings
13 - Page Crawling
Sublime Text provides us with a few different ways to query a page (outside of the standard search functions).
Functions
Need a quick way to browse to a specific function or method?
Type Control/Command + r to reveal a popup that allows for this very thing (notice the @ symbol)! Even better, the search is fuzzy as well, which is particularly helpful for huge classes.
HTML
What if you want to immediately transition to a specific part of an HTML page - say, to the div with a class of container. Type Control/Command + p, then #, and you'll instantly see a tree of your document.
Go to Line Number
To quickly move to a specific line number on the page, you can press Control + g. However, you'll notice that, once again, it's pulling up that palette ( Control/Command + p ), and appending the : symbol. This is adopted from Vim.
This means, in addition to Control + g, you can also type, Control/Command + p, and then :LINE_NUMBER.
14 - Fetch Remote Files With Ease
Let’s say that you’re a fan of Normalize.css. Perhaps, you download it and save it to a snippet, or store the stylesheet, itself, in an assets folder. That way, for future projects, you only need to copy and paste.
The only problem with this method – as we’ve all discovered – is that, if a few months have passed, it’s more than possible that the asset (in this case, Normalize.css) will have been updated by the creator. So your options are to either use the, now, out-dated version of Normalize, or, once again, return to the GitHub page and pull in a fresh copy. This all seems tedious.
Created by Weslly Honorato, Nettuts+ Fetch is the solution to our dilemma. It can be installed, via Package Control.
Usage
You'll only use two commands, when working with Fetch. First, we need to save some file references. Again, bring up the command palette, and search for "Fetch." For now, choose "Manage Remote Files."
What's great about Sublime Text 2 is that configuration is incredibly simple. To assign references to online asset files, we only need to create an object, like so (don't worry; one will be pre-populated for you, after installation):
So, to pull in the latest copy of jQuery (if you don't want to use a CDN):
Learn more about using Nettuts+ Fetch.
15 - Prefixr Plugin
Built by by Will Bond (creator of Package Control), the Nettuts+ Prefixr plugin allows you to automatically update your entire stylesheet to include support for all of the various required CSS3 vendor prefixes. This way, you never have to visit the website itself; you merely type a keyboard command, and:
...will be converted to:
Usage
Once installed (via Package Control), select your stylesheet (or a single block), press ctrl+alt+x on Windows and Linux, or cmd+ctrl+x on OS X, and the code will instantly be run through the Prefixr web service.
16 - Launch Sublime From the Terminal
Sublime Text 2 includes a command line tool, subl, to work with files on the command line."
To use it, create a symlink to the tool.
As long as ~/bin is in your path, that should do the trick!
Refer here for additional instructions.
17 - Autoformat HTML
A bit oddly, the ability to auto-format HTML is not included as part of the default build of Sublime Text. The Tag plugin, among other things, hopes to provide a solution, however, due to a few shortcomings - namely when dealing with HTML comments - it falls short.
The Tag plugin can be installed via Package Control.
To test its auto-formatting skills, the following HTML:
...will be changed to:
Yikes; it looks worse than it is. From my tests, it incorrectly does not place the body tag on its own line, and gets pissy when dealing with HTML comments. Until these issues are fixed (or a native solution is provided), it's best to manually select a block of HTML to reformat, rather than the entire page.
A $200 bonus will be paid to the first Sublime Text plugin developer who creates and submits the definitive "Nettuts+ HTML Formatter" plugin.
18 - Create a Plugin
If you're feeling adventurous, dig into Sublime Text's huge plugin development community, and start contributing. We have an excellent tutorial on the process of building a ST plugin here on Nettuts+. Be sure to check it out if that interests you!
Conclusion
The more I work with Sublime Text 2, the more I realize how incredible it is. But all of this would mean nothing if not for the fact that it's an insanely fast editor, and, even better, it's not finished!
If you want to go even further, check out Snippeter, a code snippets manager that boosts your coding by saving your code snippets online and enabling you to find them easily using an integrated search bar. It also lets you export items as Sublime Text snippets (with tabTrigger support).It's impossible to talk about streetwear without discussing designer Hiroshi Fujiwara. In the late ’80s, Hiroshi made a name for himself in Japan as one of Tokyo's first hip-hop DJs and with his clothing label, Goodenough, and then went on to mentor kids who became fashion legends in their own right, like Nigo (Bape) and Jun Takahashi (Undercover). Today, he's churning out collaborations via his brand Fragment Design, which currently has ongoing relationships with Apple, Nike, Off-White, and even Starbucks (seriously, check it out for yourself). Anything the man touches becomes a must-have to fans of streetwear, because he practically invented the culture itself. Line-ups, quickstrike sneaker releases, and even higher-priced T-shirts can in some way all be credited to the man many call the "Godfather of Streetwear" (though, as we found out, it's a nickname he doesn't much like). We caught up with Hiroshi at NikeLab in New York City, where he was celebrating the release of his latest Nike collab, the Air Trainer 1, to talk music, sneakers, and his opinion on the world of hype he helped create.
I recently watched a video of you performing "Thinking About You" by Sister Sledge on Japanese television. How did that performance come about, and why that song?
They asked me to perform a few songs, one of which was my original song, and the other was supposed to be a cover. I always loved that song, even when it came out in 1977. I was in high school, and I bought the album.
People always call you the "Godfather of Streetwear" or "Godfather of Harajuku." How do you feel about that title? Does it come with certain responsibilities?
I think it's just hype. There are no godfathers. Streetwear was happening everywhere at the same time, in New York, London, Tokyo...so it's not only me.
Who else would you consider your peers as far as seminal streetwear designers?
I think Shawn Stussy is the main guy. He's from surf culture, but I kind of mix up surf culture and fashion and music. I'm good at mixing the cultures in my designs, too, I think.
Is there new music that inspires you when designing new products?
I don't listen to many new things, mostly old things. I don't really listen to music that much. I listen to it in the car, or on an airplane, but not at the office so much. But it's kind of random what I listen to; I just have all my music, and the songs just select randomly.
You've collaborated with so many great brands over the years. What do you love about collaboration so much?
I always try to collaborate person-to-person, not with brands. So I have a few guys at Nike I like working with. I like mixing my ideas with their ideas, not from the brand's ideas, but from personal ideas. I will work with anyone at any brand if I like them, whether young or old. I love working with Tinker [Hatfield, Nike sneaker designer] and Mark Parker [CEO of Nike] because they are older and have a lot of knowledge.
How do you feel about high-fashion sneakers, particular ones that copy iconic Nike styles?
I think they are not sneakers. I think there is a big gap between sneakers, trainers, and designer silhouettes. I don't call these styles sneakers, I call them designer shoes that look like sneakers. I don't really wear them, but I understand why people would want to wear them. Sometimes, design, they are really good.
Your sneakers, especially your recent Air Jordan 1 collaboration, are often hard to get. How do you feel about the limited-edition nature of sneaker releases these days? Is it still as necessary as it once was?
I don't really make sneakers to make them limited. It's up to Nike to determine how much they want to make. And the thing about the Air Jordan 1 is that it's not too small; I think it was a somewhat larger release. Sometimes they're hard to get, but when I was young, it was more difficult to get what I wanted [than it is for kids today]. There was no Internet. If I saw something in a magazine, I had to call them or actually go there. Many young kids complain, "Oh, I won't be able to get this sneaker again." But you can, if you're lucky. There's many shoes out there. I want everyone to have it who wants to have it. But it's hard because so many people buy them just to make money. And I don't like that. And sometimes it's good to work hard to get a sneaker, because otherwise you won't buy it.Adil Charkaoui (in Arabic عادل الشرقاوي born 1974) is a Morocco-born Canadian citizen who was arrested by the Canadian government under a security certificate in May 2003.[1]
Before issuing the certificate, evidence was submitted that he had trained in an anti-Soviet Jihadist camp in Afghanistan. The court was also not satisfied with his reasons for visiting Pakistan for six months in 1990. Evidence that he practiced Karate was also among the submissions. Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) testimonies included opinions that he would also "have been trained in such areas as: operating rocket-propelled grenade-launchers, sabotage, urban and assassination." CSIS also alleged that "[i]t was noteworthy that one of those who participated in the hijacking of [the September 11 attacks in 2001] had taken martial arts training in preparation..." and suggested that Charkaoui represented a sleeper agent.[2] This led to the issuance of the security certificate by the two responsible government ministers after which he was detained, and such evidence was also enough to uphold the certificate by Federal Court upon review.
Personal history [ edit ]
Born in Morocco in 1973, Charkaoui joined his sister and parents in moving to Montreal, Quebec in 1995.[3] He has been a Canadian citizen since July 2014.[4][5]
Charkaoui graduated with an MA from Université de Montréal and is an Arabic-language teacher, who now styles himself as a sheik,[6] and an imam.[7] He is married and has three children, and is a combat sport group leader, as well as a skilled backwoodsman.[7] He is also the director at the Centre communautaire islamique Assahaba.[3][7] Charkaoui is the President of the Quebec Collective Against Islamophobia,[8][9][10] an advocacy rights group he established in 2013.
In the late 1990s, Charkaoui associated with hard-line Montreal Muslims who had turned up in Bosnia, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and other violence-prone areas.[11]
In 1998, he flew to Pakistan to study religion for a book he was hoping to write;[12] the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) believes he slipped across the border into Afghanistan and attended Khalden training camp under the name Zubeir Al-Magrebi, although he denies the allegation.[13] According to friends, he knew Raouf Hannachi well enough that the two would "shake hands when they crossed paths".[13]
The government later stated that he had not accounted for "a period of his life, from 1992 to the end of that decade".[2]
Arrest and release [ edit ]
Adil Charkaoui is represented in a 2004 protest outside the Toronto office of CSIS.
From 2001 to 2003, Charkaoui operated a Montreal pizzeria, where the CSIS first approached him in the wake of 9/11. He refused to account for his whereabouts or reason for travel to Pakistan. Moroccan authorities stated that Charkaoui provided funds and resources to an Islamic insurgent group.[11]
Charkaoui was arrested under a security certificate in May 2003, which was co-signed by Solicitor General Wayne Easter, and Immigration Minister Denis Coderre.[14] He was detained without charge or trial in Rivière des prairies Detention Centre. The Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui was formed in defense of his rights, with Coalition launching a campaign for his release.
He was released from prison on C$50,000 bail on 18 February 2005. His bail conditions included a curfew, electronic monitoring, designated chaperones for leaving his home, restriction to the island of Montreal, 24-hour police access to his home without warrant, and a prohibition on access to the internet, on the use of cell phones and on the use of any telephone except the one in his home.
Not long after his release, Charkaoui unsuccessfully tried to help Bloc Quebecois candidate Apraham Niziblian defeat Coderre in the Canadian federal election, 2006, saying:[15]
“ It's not a question of being anti-Coderre. We are citizens before anything, we have the right to have political ideas and to have choice. Gone is the time when the Liberals could take the ethnic vote for granted. ”
Restrictions on his conditional release were gradually lifted to be cancelled in September 2009.[9] A helpful timeline of his arrest and events subsequent was produced by The Globe and Mail,[16] on his final release order by Federal Court Judge Danièle Tremblay-Lamer: "There will be an order all conditions be revoked immediately."[11]
Charkaoui opened on 22 February 2010 a $24.5 million lawsuit against the Canadian government in Quebec Superior Court in which he demanded compensation for wrongful arrest and detention. He sent a letter asking for an apology, Canadian citizenship and compensation for lost income and legal fees after a federal judge quashed a security certificate against him. Past federal ministers Denis Coderre and Wayne Easter, Diane Finley and Stockwell Day were named in the suit.[17][18]
Defender of unpopular causes [ edit ]
In August 2013, Charkaoui defended the right of two foreign Islamic hate-preachers to spread their message in Montreal, even if they held sexist and misogynist views of women in society. Citing security concerns, the event was cancelled by the convention centre where it was supposed to be held. Charkaoui maintained that it was Islamophobia to ban their visit to Canada.[5]
Activities at Collège de Maisonneuve [ edit ]
For a time prior to 2015, Charkaoui rented classroom space every Sunday from Collège de Maisonneuve, a Montreal Cegep near the Olympic Stadium, for Muslim education and Arabic language studies,[6] which he calls l'École des compagnons.[7] Charkaoui also rented classroom space at the nearby Collège de Rosemont, also a Cegep.[7] It was reported in February 2015 that six of his young students had absconded to Syria, allegedly with intent to join an Islamic terrorist group, either ISIS or the Nusra Front.[6] Of these, four students were following his guidance at the de Maisonneuve location, and at least one teenager, Mohammed Rifaat, he knew through the Rosemont location.[7]
Before the week was out, Charkaoui threatened to sue both Colleges because they had terminated the arrangements under which he leased the classroom spaces.[7][10] At a press conference, he deemed the termination unacceptable and dishonest.[10]
An interview of Charkaoui by ICI RDI's Anne-Marie Dussault sparked quite a bit of controversy the following week.[19] Dressed in a djellaba, Charkaoui presented himself as a victim and rejected calls for him to condemn violent jihadism and the Islamist project.[20] Instead he accused occidental politicians of promoting violence against Muslims in a degenerate, Islamophobic culture.[20] Charkaoui maintained that ISIS was a creature of the US government, and on his website he hyperlinks to other websites that offer praise of Osama bin Laden.[20] He rejects any interference of the wider community in which he lives on his religious rights; he finds this argument to be nefarious.[20] One commentator was shocked because of what his position meant in the context of his pedagogical pursuits.[20]
Court challenges to security certificate [ edit ]
Charkaoui has consistently denied the allegations against him and has challenged the legitimacy of the security certificate regime. Canadian authorities and the Federal Court have refused to disclose the case against Charkaoui, relying on provisions in the security certificate process that allow evidence to be kept from the defence and the public.
Charkaoui's certificate has not undergone a court review and thus has not been upheld. The case has been suspended since March 2005, pending a new decision on protection by the Minister of Immigration.
Charkaoui has been at the centre of a public campaign against the extension of state power in the name of the "war on terror". In February 2006, Amnesty International reminded Canada, "His fundamental right to liberty and security of the person accords him the right to due process or release from the restrictive bail conditions that have been imposed on him."
In February 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision of Charkaoui v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) on the appeals Charkaoui, Hassan Almrei, and Mohamed Harkat. The Court ruled that the certificate process violated sections 7, 9 and 10 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and struck down the security certificate legislation (sections 33 and 77 to 85 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act). However, the judgment will not take effect for one year.
In March 2007, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a second challenge by Charkaoui, this time relating to the destruction of evidence in Charkaoui's case. Government lawyers revealed in January 2005 that CSIS had destroyed evidence in Charkaoui's file. The situation raised concerns about the accuracy of the secret evidence before the court. The Supreme Court will hear the challenge in January 2008.
In April 2007, Charkaoui submitted a leave to appeal to the Supreme Court in a third challenge; in this instance to the law permitting deportation of non-citizens when there is a risk of torture. The Canadian government's position is that legal safeguards against being sent to torture do not apply to people who are subject to a security certificate, basing this policy on their interpretation of the 2002 Supreme Court Suresh decision. Charkaoui is challenging the legal framework permitting deportation to torture, the lack of due process, as well as the fact of being subject to the threat of deportation to torture and excessive procedural delays.
A CSIS agent identified only as J.P., the Deputy Chief of Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation in the Ottawa Regional Office as of 2005, testified against the petitions for release by Hassan Almrei, Mahmoud Jaballah and Charkaoui.[21]
In June 2008, Charkaoui managed to have the Supreme Court of Canada overturn as unconstitutional the security certificate. The ruling is known as Charkaoui v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration) 2008 SCC 38. CSIS was ordered by the SCC to stop destroying its tapes and notes in terrorism investigations. For the previous 25 years CSIS had interpreted their constitutional law as obliging the destruction of such records - a procedure that largely kept CSIS intelligence out of open court - but this was ruled by the SCC a fundamental mistake. Given spies were becoming closer to police in the post-9/11 world, they had to disclose their investigations just like police do. The judges ruled "The only appropriate remedy is to confirm the duty to disclose Charkaoui's entire file to the designated judge and, after the judge has filtered it, to Charkaoui and his counsel."[11]
In motions filed the next summer in Federal Court, lawyers arguing for CSIS said it could not abide by such vast disclosure without jeopardizing its source and methods, which CSIS considers the lifeblood of national security. The Crown pulled all of the wiretaps it used against Charkaoui, and half of its human sources, leaving it with insufficient evidence to meet the security certificate's test that there is a "reasonable suspicion" that Charkaoui is a threat to Canadian national-security. The judgment proceeded accordingly in September 2009.[11]
In May 2013 federal prosecutors produced evidence that Charkaoui may have been plotting a terrorist attack in the Montreal metro in 2002. The memo also mentions CSIS surveillance where Charkaoui was spotted stealing valuables from parked cars.[22]
Ahmed Ressam withdraws his allegations [ edit ]
Fabrice de Pierrebourg of the Journal de Montreal testified in Federal Court on 22 August 2007 that, in correspondence, Ahmed Ressam had withdrawn his allegations against Adil Charkaoui;[23] the former had written to the latter, who is also known as the Millennium Bomber for his failed plot to bomb LAX airport,[11] in the course of writing a book about terrorism in Montreal.
Ressam was convicted in the United States and held under an unusual arrangement whereby he was offered a reduced sentence in exchange for information. Under this arrangement, over a period of some years, he fingered 130 people as "members" of the "extremist Islamist network linked to Bin Laden". Two cases in the United States were dismissed after Ressam's evidence proved worthless. Earlier in Charkaoui's case, Charkaoui's lawyer introduced an arrest warrant for Ahmed Ressam for an incident that occurred in Montreal at a time when Ressam claimed, under oath in another case, to have been in a training camp in Afghanistan. Ressam is known to have suffered a mental breakdown while in prison.
After learning that Mr. Ressam was supposed to have named him, Charkaoui repeatedly asked to be able to cross-examine him in court, but the motion was not granted.
In the original charges against Charkaoui, two government ministers mistakenly referred to martial arts having been used by a hijacker aboard "American Airlines Flight 93", a mistaken reference likely meant to refer to United Airlines 93 or American Airlines Flight 11.[2]A Calgary-based oil company says it is in danger of defaulting on some of its debts by the end of June, but is working with its lenders to ensure that doesn't happen.
Penn West Petroleum Ltd. said in its quarterly earnings on Monday that it is considering selling assets and raising capital via other means in order to pay its debts and stay in business.
"If the current low commodity price environment continues, the company anticipates it will not be in compliance with certain of its existing financial covenants by the end of the second quarter of 2016," Penn West said.
"The company is engaged in negotiations with its lenders to amend these financial covenants prior to the end of the second quarter of 2016, which if successful will mitigate the risk of default in 2016 and further into the future at prevailing commodity price levels."
Martin Pelletier, portfolio manager and OCIO at TriVest Wealth Counsel says that's a warning to the company's lenders that if ongoing negotiations to restructure the company's debt don't go well, the alternative could be much worse for them.
"To me it looks like a warning flare — if we don't get this thing settled, the alternative is zero: default," he said in an interview. "It's getting that message across to the lenders. But unfortunately it's also going to the shareholders."
Penn West shares fell 21 per cent on the TSX on Monday, closing at 82 cents. They have fallen by 67 per cent in the past year.
During the recently completed quarter, Penn West posted a loss of $100 million in the first three months of the year, and pumped out just over 77,000 barrels of oil per day during the quarter — down from 94,000 during the same time last year.
The numbers also show the company has $1.86 billion in long term debt. That's almost four times as much as what the company is worth on the TSX.
The company recently sold its oil and gas interests in the Slave Point area, which produce almost 4,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, to raise $148 million.
Pelletier said Penn West is not the only company in the oil patch to have too much debt on their books, and could be a sign of things to come.
"Are there other companies facing such a crunch?" he said. "For some, the current rebound in oil prices is not enough, it's too late.
"The next six months are crucial."The Problem of the Commons: Still Unsettled After 100 Years
NBER Working Paper No. 16403
Issued in September 2010
NBER Program(s):Environment and Energy Economics
The problem of the commons is more important to our lives and thus more central to economics than a century ago when Katharine Coman led off the first issue of the American Economic Review. As the U.S. and other economies have grown, the carrying-capacity of the planet -- in regard to natural resources and environmental quality -- has become a greater concern, particularly for common-property and open-access resources. The focus of this article is on some important, unsettled problems of the commons. Within the realm of natural resources, there are special challenges associated with renewable resources, which are frequently characterized by open-access. An important example is the degradation of open-access fisheries. Critical commons problems are also associated with environmental quality. A key contribution of economics has been the development of market-based approaches to environmental protection. These instruments are key to addressing the ultimate commons problem of the twenty-first century -- global climate change
Acknowledgments
Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX
Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w16403
Published: Robert N. Stavins, 2011. "The Problem of the Commons: Still Unsettled after 100 Years," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 81-108, February. citation courtesy of
Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these:The Official Fantasy Bundesliga is here! Think you have what it takes to win? bundesliga.com takes a look over the top points scorers in each position to lend you a helping hand. First up, the goalkeepers…
Perhaps unsurprisingly, FC Bayern München and Germany number one Manuel Neuer was the Bundesliga's strongest goalkeeper in the 2015/16 season, but who else should you look out for next term?
All statistics given are from the 2015/16 season, unless otherwise stated.
1) Manuel Neuer (Bayern), In-game fantasy value: 15m
Germany's number oneBundesliga record 21 clean sheets
2) Bernd Leno (Bayer 04 Leverkusen), In-game fantasy value: 13m
Neuer's long-term successor?Bundesliga-record nine penalties saved
3) Roman Bürki (Borussia Dortmund), In-game fantasy value: 12m
Displaced Roman Weidenfeller at BVBLeague second-best 34 goals conceded
5) Timo Horn (1. FC Köln), In-game fantasy value: 11m
Germany's Olympic choice119 saves (Neuer and Bürki put together saved 138)
6) Yann Sommer (Borussia Mönchengladbach), In-game fantasy value: 11m
Resurgent Switzerland number oneBlocked 83 percent of shots in 14/15
7) Oliver Baumann (TSG 1899 Hoffenheim), In-game fantasy value: 10m
Lynchpin of club's great escapeLeague-high 150 saves
9) Rene Adler (Hamburger SV), In-game fantasy value: 10m
Top-flight stalwart back to his bestHSV tenth, but Adler fifth for goals conceded
10) Fabio Coltorti (RB Leipzig), In-game fantasy value: 10m
Old head behind youthful RBLOnly conceded every 102 minutes in promotion campaign
Watch: The top 10 saves from the 2015/16 season:Story highlights Second source confirms terms of the proposed sale
Donald Sterling's lawyer earlier |
a rally was thwarted. The Tigers scored the final three runs of the game and won 5-3 behind a complete game from Mickey Lolich.
3. Sparky’s veteran team defeats Blue Jays in Game #162 to win AL East crown in ’87
October 3, 1987, Toronto Blue Jays at Detroit
The 1968 season was emotional, with several late-inning rallies. The postseason followed suit. The ’84 season was dominant, the Tigers rolling over their competition. In a way, the 1987 campaign was more thrilling than those two, even though the Tigers fell short in the playoffs. The regular season started awfully, the team falling to 11-19 and last place in May. It was a talented veteran bunch. Almost like a switch, the Tigers flipped into gear in late May and played at a torrid pace, winning two of three here, and 7 of 10 there. But the rival Blue Jays were playing.600 ball and maintained a lead into mid-August. That’s when Sparky Anderson’s club caught Toronto. The two teams slugged it out the rest of the way. The back and forth was dramatic, but the finale topped it all.
Wouldn’t you know it? The two teams were scheduled for a three-game series on the final weekend of the season at Tiger Stadium. Entering the series, Detroit trailed Toronto by a single game. The Tigers won on Friday 4-3 behind Doyle Alexander, who improved to 9-1 since being acquired at the trade deadline. On Saturday afternoon the Tigs and Jays battled into extra innings. In the bottom of the twelfth, Alan Trammell grounded a single to left field between third and short to score the game-winning run in a 3-2 triumph that put Detroit in first place.
The Sunday game (#162 on the schedule) pitted veteran southpaw Frank Tanana against Toronto lefty Jimmy Key. The two pitchers were brilliant, but Key made one more mistake than Tanana — a hanging curve ball to Larry Herndon that the Tiger deposited into the left field stands. The lone run held up for a 1-0 Tiger win. With 98 victories, Detroit had the best record in baseball and captured the AL East title. The entire weekend was nerve-wracking and thrilling.
2. Tigers complete comeback against the Cardinals in ’68 World Series
October 10, 1968, Detroit at St. Louis Cardinals
The top two games on our list were played in the same city. This was Game Seven of the ’68 World Series and the Detroit victory marked an historic comeback. The Cardinals were prohibitive favorites and defending champions. They had Bob Gibson, the best pitcher on the planet, on their side. He dominated the Tigers in Game One of the Series, striking out 17 batters. The Tiger lineup looked like little leaguers facing a professional pitcher. But after a come-from-behind Game Five win the Tigers won Game Six and forced a deciding seventh contest.
Mickey Lolich started and won Game Seven on two days rest. He not only pitched, he pitched brilliantly. He pitched a complete game, his third in eight days. The Cardinal lineup was stymied by his left-handed offerings, going down 4-1, the one run coming harmlessly on a homer in the bottom of the ninth.
Had the Tigers lost the Series (as they were supposed to do), they would be still be remembered in Detroit. The roster was filled with several very good players and one or two great ones, like Al Kaline, Lolich, and the meteoric Denny McLain. They had a team character that was very appealing, led by colorful Norm Cash, and fiery competitors Jim Northrup, Dick McAuliffe, and Lolich. But they won the Series, and the way they won it, coming back from 3 games to 1 down, has cemented their status as one of the all-time great Detroit teams.
1. Greenberg’s grand slam clinches ’45 pennant on final day of the season
September 30, 1945, Detroit at St. Louis Browns
The circumstances surrounding this game are unusual. The Tigers were in St. Louis playing a makeup doubleheader against the Browns on a Sunday. They held a slim one-game lead over the Senators, who had finished their season a week earlier. (Wartime travel caused havoc with schedules that summer.) A win in game one and the Tigers would clinch the pennant. If they lost they would have to win game two to avoid a one-game playoff with Washington. The Browns didn’t roll over — entering the ninth they held a 3-2 lead behind starter Nels Potter. But the Tigers didn’t want to play that second game.
Potter was a pretty unspectacular pitcher who was enjoying his best seasons in World War II against poor competition. A great athlete as a youth in Illinois, Potter had been a superb basketball player, tennis player, and even earned laurels for his track and field exploits but chose baseball and pitching as his profession. He was a great at almost every competitive endeavor, known for being a clever card player, pool shark, and excellent at tossing horseshoes. His pitching repertoire was pretty average though, his fastball well below big league average speed. As a result, Potter resorted to special pitching tactics, some of them not exactly legal. The St. Louis righty was a known practitioner of the spitball.
Pinch-hitter Hub Walker started the ninth with a single. Manager Steve O’Neill sent Red Borom in to pinch-run for Walker, representing the tying run. Potter was tiring and walked Skeeter Webb to put runners at first and second. Little Eddie Mayo followed with a perfectly executed sacrifice bunt to push the runners ahead 90 feet. Trusty veteran Doc Cramer was next, 39 years old and in his 17th big league campaign. Potter and Doc had faced each other many times before, and the pitcher worked carefully against Detroit’s #3 hitter. Looming on deck was Hank Greenberg, the powerful slugger. But Potter tossed four pitches, a few of them “wet” and wide, and the bases were loaded. Borom was at third, Webb at second, and Doc at first with Hammerin’ Hank coming to the plate.
Less than 6,000 fans were in the stands at old Sportsman’s Park when Greenberg stepped in to face Potter. In the modern game, a relief ace would have been summoned from the bullpen long before the situation got that dire. But in 1945, you “danced with the one who got ya there.” It was Potter’s game and he had the unenviable task of facing one of the most fearsome men with a bat in his hands.
Greenberg, who missed almost five years to service in World War II, had only been back in the United States for a few weeks. He’d already made an impact, hitting a dozen homers and sparking the Tigers to a drive for the flag. With the bases loaded, his team trailing by a single run, and a tired pitcher on the hill, odds were in his favor. Rust or no rust, Hank was a great hitter.
Potter tried to sneak a curve ball past Greenberg but the tall Detroit slugger twisted his hips in the righthanded batters’ box and sent his bat through the strike zone. The bat met the ball and sent it soaring high into left field. Few fans were in the stands, but eyewitnesses on the field would always remember it.
“That ball was as high as any home run I ever saw Hank hit,” Red Borom said. From his vantage point at third base, Borom should have know.
But while the ball was launched high into the Missouri ski, it was not a sure thing.
“Hank rarely hit cheap ones,” said starting pitcher Virgil Trucks, “but that one hardly grazed over the fence.”
Lou Finney was the Browns’ left fielder and he had a great look at it. But he ran out of real estate and watched fruitlessly as the high fly ball dropped into the left field grandstands at Sportsman’s Park. If there were any Detroit fans in attendance, their cheers would have echoed in the large, nearly empty ballpark. Manager O’Neill remembered pitcher Prince Oana nearly tearing off his neck with a hug in the dugout. Oana had only been with the Tigers for three weeks and had already made his final big league appearance, but for that moment he was as proud as any Detroit ballplayer ever has been.
Greenberg’s grand slam did not end the game. The Browns still had a turn at bat. O’Neill summoned Al Benton, the tall Okie, from his bullpen to nail down the victory. Working with a three-run cushion, Benton allowed a scratch single in the ninth, but got Len Schulte, who was born only blocks away in St. Louis, to hit a weak grounder to end the game. Detroit had won a war-torn pennant thanks to the clutch hitting of their biggest hero, Hank Greenberg.
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commentsOmaha police are investigating a shooting that left three people injured early Sunday morning. The victims told police they had been shot while at a house party.Police originally responded to the area of 55th and Sprague just before 2 a.m., after several callers reported hearing shots fired. Officers found a residence in the area that had been struck several times by gunfire, but they didn't find any victims there. Around 2:00 a.m. two people arrived at Creighton University Medical Center. Officers say they had been shot in the knees.Around the same time, a third shooting victim walked into CHI Health Immanuel.Officials report all three victims have non life-threatening injuries.The incident is still under investigation. The victims were not able to provide any description of a suspect. Three other homes in the area were also hit by gunfire. Anyone with information about what happened should call Crime Stoppers, 402-444-STOP.
Omaha police are investigating a shooting that left three people injured early Sunday morning. The victims told police they had been shot while at a house party.
Police originally responded to the area of 55th and Sprague just before 2 a.m., after several callers reported hearing shots fired. Officers found a residence in the area that had been struck several times by gunfire, but they didn't find any victims there.
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Around 2:00 a.m. two people arrived at Creighton University Medical Center. Officers say they had been shot in the knees.
Around the same time, a third shooting victim walked into CHI Health Immanuel.
Officials report all three victims have non life-threatening injuries.
The incident is still under investigation. The victims were not able to provide any description of a suspect. Three other homes in the area were also hit by gunfire.
Anyone with information about what happened should call Crime Stoppers, 402-444-STOP.
AlertMeBEIJING, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- As the United States and the Philippines plan to hold joint military drills near disputed waters in the South China Sea from March to April, one can't help but raising questions about the real intentions behind Washington's pivot to the Asia-Pacific region.
Since the United States announced its "return" to the Asia-Pacific region with much fanfare late last year and rolled out a new defense strategy on Jan. 5, countries in the region have been wondering what all this fuss would mean to them.
For many people, they hope the United States, the world's sole superpower, will play a constructive role in promoting peace, prosperity and stability in the region.
But as the planned joint military drills show, the United States could become a destabilizing force in the region itself if it puts its power in the wrong places.
The United States and the Philippines have claimed that their proposed war games are not directed against other countries in the region, but the motive behind the planned joint drills is really dubious.
As to the issue of the South China Sea, the priority for all parties is to shelve disputes and refrain from taking radical measures to escalated the situation.
The United States, as an outside power, should work with all parties concerned to prevent tensions from getting out of control, rather than support one side or the other.
Instead of trying to arm the Philippines and stoking tensions, the United States should restrain the activist and provocative moves by its so-called ally.
After all, it is in the interests of all parties to maintain peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, which has been considered as a major engine driving the global economy.
So far, Washington's performances have failed the good expectations of many people in the region. It should take concrete measures to back up its claim that its presence in Asia-Pacific is a positive contribution to regional peace.
For the Philippines, as signatory of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, it is obliged to honor its commitments and stop any provocative actions that could escalate the disputes.March 26, 2012 / GO Brooklyn / Gowanus Gowanus art collective is the epicenter of ‘Occupy’ art The Brooklyn Paper
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Occupy Wall Street wants to occupy your wall space.
A collective of poster printers in Gowanus is attempting to help reignite the social movement’s flames for a May 1 “General Strike,” with a handful of new pin-ups it hopes will be as arresting as the image of a ballerina atop a bull that kicked off the whole protest in September.
“Imagery and posters are part of the general mix of culture that helps bind people together and make social movements more than a sum of their parts,” said Jesse Goldstein, a CUNY PhD student and lecturer, and one of the founders of the “Occuprint” collective, which has been producing and collecting arresting visuals related to the anti-corporate movement. “Posters fit in because they’re a nice bridge between the digital and physical spaces.”
The group has been funding itself through an online campaign on the website Kickstarter and it has already surpassed its $16,800 goal, with eight days left in the effort.
The money, Goldstein says, will be used to fund the group’s printing effort in advance of the May Day protest, as well as the production of a high-end portfolio of screen prints the group is selling to museums, libraries and archives around the country.
The posters designed and curated through Occuprint, whose founders also created the all-poster edition of the Occupied Wall Street Journal in the fall, draw on many traditions and styles of political posters and protest art.
Artist Molly Crabapple’s poster of a lady striking a match has a vaguely art nouveau aspect to it, while others draw on sources as diverse as the cubanposte rart.blogs pot.com/ ">Cuban Revolution and the Black Panthers.
Many simply play off American advertising and movie posters — a connection that is hardly subconscious in the mind of their creators.
“As a society we privilege the visual over all the other senses,” said Josh MacPhee, who founded Occuprint with Goldstein and co-runs the Gowanus archive that gives it a home. “Images are important to Occupy in same way they are to other entities: they’re a tool to cultivate our ideas, they’re advertisements to come join us, and they can also function as warnings to those that oppose the change we desire.”
Check out some posters from Occuprint, as well as other social movements, at the Interference Archive (131 Eighth St. #4 between Second and Third Avenues in Gowanus) on Sundays from noon to 5 pm. For more info, or to make a viewing appointment, email interferen cearchive@ gmail.com.
@cnglocal. com
m/emrosenb erg
Updated 5:31 pm, July 9, 2018
©2012There’s nothing worse for a flight attendant than seeing passengers evacuating an airplane with luggage, going down evacuation slides with suitcases and running from a burning plane with 22-inch roller bags.
That is stuff that weighs them down, slows them down — when they need to be quick. Unfortunately, whenever we turn on the television and there’s an incident on the news, that’s what we see: Passengers evacuating with their luggage.
When a British Airways flight caught on fire at the Las Vegas Airport, a reporter on board tweeted not to judge the passengers who grabbed their luggage and ran.
Just evacuated on a British Airways flight at Las Vegas airport after an engine caught fire. Don't think anyone hurt pic.twitter.com/Y986xW9Wzy — Jacob Steinberg (@JacobSteinberg) September 8, 2015
Don't criticise passengers for taking their bags! People go into panic mode in that situation — Jacob Steinberg (@JacobSteinberg) September 9, 2015
But it’s hard not to judge when it’s a life or death situation.
It's hard not to judge when you’re endangering other people’s lives — hard not to judge when flight attendants command passengers to leave their bags behind and passengers choose not to listen to the very commands designed to save their lives.
There’s a reason we tell passengers to leave everything behind. Every second counts. Literally.
Get in bed — LEAVE EVERYTHING. Eat dinner — LEAVE EVERYTHING. Brush your teeth — LEAVE EVERYTHING.
This was the running joke at my house after my 9-year-old son asked me why I had to yell LEAVE EVERYTHING every two seconds after he caught me practicing my evacuation commands for recurrent training.
Why? he asked.
You tell me.
I’ve been a flight attendant for 20 years. When I first started flying, we only had to tell passengers to leave their things behind once. Now? Now we have to repeat it over, and over, and over — and even then some people don’t listen.
Take that back: They choose not to listen.
Remember everything in your bag is replaceable. Another life is not.
Once a year, flight attendants attend a training class to review medical and emergency procedures. After all, it’s why we’re on the airplane in the first place. Oh sure, an emergency probably won’t happen on your flight, but if it does we’re ready to evacuate an entire airplane full of passengers in 90 seconds or less. (Until then we’ll serve drinks and do everything we can to make you forget why we’re there.)
Ninety seconds.
That’s all you have to get off the plane. Ninety seconds is all you and 200 other people have to escape from an air-tight tube filling with smoke. It’s your Gucci bag or your life. Your laptop or your life.
Taking time to stop and grab your luggage out of a bin is wasting precious seconds, and these seconds don’t just belong to you: They belong to everyone on board.
Which brings us to all these new airline safety videos.
Nothing annoys me more than dancing flight attendants. I think dancing flight attendants are worse than the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models — but that’s just me. Both are pretty bad.
Airlines create these videos to get your attention, some airlines create new ones — often — to keep your attention. But also to get the media talking, which equates to free publicity. The media, of course, falls all over it, so much so it’s beginning to feel like there’s a safety video contest going on.
Who can come up with the most exciting video? The most talked about video?
Why are airlines obsessed with making the safety video light and fun? It's safety! — Heather Poole (@Heather_Poole) August 6, 2015
A few seconds into Delta's latest video, an adult dressed up like a squirrel shows you how to put their luggage in the bin. Talk about dumbing down.
Do we really have to treat passengers like children to get their attention? This is your life we’re talking about.
Look, I’m all for having fun in flight. I like to laugh just as much as everyone else. But there’s a time and a place for everything, and there’s nothing fun about burning alive — especially if it's because you stared at a supermodel’s rack instead of listening to what was said.
Do you know where the nearest exit was on your last flight? Was it behind you or in front of you? Could you find it in the dark? Do you realize white lights lead to red lights where the exit is?
I know, I know, being told how to open and close a seat belt in the 21st century is more than a little mundane, but pretend this is the first time you’ve traveled on something other than a school bus from the 1950s.
Fun safety videos make my job more difficult, because when it comes to safety we’re not playing around. That’s why when you sit in an exit row you have to verbally acknowledge that you understand what you’re doing if there’s an emergency: You have to tell us "Yes," you are willing and able to operate the door.
But do you really know how to operate the door? Are you really prepared? Do you know every airplane manufacturer uses a different door? While you're taking advantage of the extra legroom, you’d be wise to orient yourself.
After the safety video, I walk through the cabin to make sure everyone is in compliance, and I still have to remind many passengers to fasten their belts, put their seatbacks up and stow their bags completely under the seat in front of them.
I still have to tell people what to do, and I get attitude from people who don’t feel like doing it. Of course, these are often the very same people on their phones while the safety video is on. Gotta post one last selfie on Instagram, let their Faceboook friends know they're about to depart, tweet a few things about how much you hate air travel.
If you’re a frequent flier, instead of going blank, take that safety briefing as your reminder to figure out how you’ll be an asset to an evacuation — and not a liability.
When I talk to my son about safety, I don’t go out of my way to make it fun. I think it’s important to make it clear we’re talking about something serious and important: Life and death.
So I don’t dress up like a squirrel, invite a famous actor over to the house to make a cameo, or show him my latest dance moves to keep his attention. My tone changes to reflect the seriousness of the situation. It’s important he knows there’s a difference.
So we treat passengers like children so they pay attention? Ok then. If that's how you like it.... #SafetyVideo — Heather Poole (@Heather_Poole) August 6, 2015
Someone recently said to me, “But your job should be to make me care, right? To make me want to care if I don't.”
But when we talk about gun safety, do we turn it into a joke? Shall we throw in some cleavage or dancers? How about a fuzzy costume?
What about with driver's ed? Do you need a dancing banana to tell you to wear your seatbelt when you're on the road?
While we’re flying on the safest and most technologically advanced machines in aviation history, there’s always the chance of a catastrophic malfunction that may require an evacuation. Should it ever happen to me, I can only pray that people will have paid more attention to the safety briefing than their phones.
That they listen to our safety commands — and leave their luggage behind.
LEAVE EVERYTHING.
Heather Poole is a flight attendant for a major U.S. carrier, and the author of the New York Times bestseller "Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet." You can follow her on Twitter at @Heather_Poole.national
Following a push by Yuva Sena chief Aaditya Thackeray, CM Devendra Fadnavis has agreed to get certain areas such as Nariman Point and BKC designated as nightlife zones
Mumbai shall soon own the night. The city will soon have eateries, pubs, bars, and entertainment joints open throughout the night in areas designated as ‘nightlife zones’. Non-residential areas, malls and some business districts are expected to get this tag.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis yesterday agreed to push this proposal for legislative approval. He is expected to get relevant rules amended to facilitate city’s nightlife in the budget session starting next month. Fadnavis assured this to Shiv Sena’s youth wing chief Aaditya Thackeray.
Now
The idea is to have hotels, medical shops (pharmacies), milk shops, cafeterias and malls open 24X7. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had prepared this plan two years ago for the state government’s approval. Fadnavis and Thackeray took the discussion to fruitful level after deliberating it at length.
Now
“BMC’s proposal remained pending at state level because of apathetic approach taken by the Congress-NCP cabinet,” Thackeray said in a statement. Two days ago, Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria agreed to implement the plan in areas of his jurisdiction.
What could be: A mid-day artist’s conceptualisation of what Marine Drive could look like as a ‘nightlife zone’. Graphics/Amit Bandre
Maria cited preparedness of his force to prevent any law-and-order situation if establishments remained open in the night. “We had got a letter from the tourism department and we have replied to it that we don’t find any problem in letting pubs and bars run in the night, but they should not be in residential areas.
What could be: Bandra-Kurla Complex also gets a facelift in this conceptualisation
There should be no problems to residents in the night due to these establishments, and proper arrangements should be made to drop the patrons home. In terms of malls, we don’t think running a bar or a pub in the mall at night will pose problems to anybody.
Aaditya Thackeray and Devendra Fadanvis
But, we will take the decision on case-by-case basis for granting permission,” said Rakesh Maria, commissioner of police.
Where?
The plan will have non-residential precincts such as Kala Ghoda, Nariman Point, Marine Drive, Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) and Carter Road doing business till wee hours. Commercial complexes like malls, especially those set up on mill lands, will be designated as special entertainment zones. Malls on non-mill land will also fall under this category.
Other than the above options, less expensive joints will be allowed to operate near railways stations and off the highways, so that commuters could use them. This proposal will boost tourism, employment, business and revenue for the government, said Thackeray.
“Nightlife will enhance the city’s economy. Commercial activity will increase and offer more jobs in three working shifts. The state will also earn revenue,” Thackeray told reporters after meeting the CM. Sena MPs Arvind Sawant and Rahul Shewale, MLA Sunil Prabhu and corporator Makrand Narvekar, too, presented their views before the CM.
Thackeray praised the city police for dismissing the issue of law-and-order while giving approval to the proposal. “The Mumbai Police is able enough to meet any eventuality. The people of this city have faith in our police force, and hence nightlife will not create any issue for the people and the police,” he said.
Fadnavis told mid-day that he was positive about the proposal. “I will take this plan forward keeping in mind the concerns faced by peace-loving people. We will amend relevant laws in such a fashion that they will not allow stakeholders to create disturbance for the passive class of people. We will take utmost care in making the system work in a manner which will be acceptable to all.”
Cheers all around
The proposal was met with collective approval from the entertainment industry, with the likes of actors Dia Mirza, Ayushmann Khurana, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sushant Singh Rajput lauding the government for the initiative. Musician Gino Banks also felt it would improve the music scene.Gazidis’s answer is that, yes, the past year cannot be looked upon with anything but frustration, but that the broader picture must also remain in focus. “We have to be disappointed, certainly not satisfied, to end up second,” he says. “We wanted more than that and I think that there were chances during the season. We are taking a long, hard, realistic look at why we fell short of our ambitions. You can’t say second place is a disaster, but it’s not what we are about.”
Gazidis believes that one of the lessons throughout football last season was the gains that could be made not in the “messiah complex” of a manager or star player but the structures inside a club. “What is clear is that the big spending was not the solution to all problems,” he says. “It was clever spending and a lot of ‘difference makers’ underneath the surface.” Those ‘difference makers’ include fitness and medical departments, psychology, analytics and youth development.
Although injuries again weakened Arsenal at critical moments, Gazidis says that the soft tissue problems were actually at “historically low levels” and that more freakish impacts were the bigger issue. “But we still have to ask ourselves difficult questions: Did we have the right squad depth for certain difficult functions? We have a good idea of where we feel we fell short and where we feel we did well. Because we have a highly-visible manager who represents so much continuity, there is a misplaced belief that things don’t change. There has been tremendous change within, fully embraced and led by Arsène.”If you read the Tripedia insert for the DTaP vaccine, you will read the following:
Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting.
You can take a look here. (Scroll down to page 11) (actually, below is a screen shot of it.)
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And another insert by GlaxoSmithKline…………Vaccine GKS insert – SIDS – PEDIARIX
https://www.gsksource.com/pharma/content/dam/GlaxoSmithKline/US/en/Prescribing_Information/Pediarix/pdf/PEDIARIX.PDF
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When I was pregnant with my first born, I was terrified of sudden infant death syndrome, also known as SIDS. Thinking about it gave me so much anxiety. It kept me up at night. I even bought an over-priced “SIDS PROOF” mattress cover in hopes of preventing such a terrible tragedy. Little did I know at the time that SIDS had nothing to do with what mattress cover I chose.
As cut and dry as it comes, mainstream medical advice claims that sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) “just happens” and “there is nothing one can do to prevent it.”
Can we think about that for a moment? Your child suddenly dies and there is no reason for it? As a mother and a researcher, I find that extremely unacceptable and inaccurate, and I am going to explain in detail why you should never accept “it just happens” as an answer.
Disclosure: This post is for informational purposes only and not intended as medical advice.
What is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)?
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is when a child suddenly stops breathing and dies. It normally happens during sleep. According to the Centers For Disease Control, SIDS is rare, only occurring in less than 3,000 babies per year, and only 1,500 in 2013.
The problem with the above chart and statistics is that these numbers are not even remotely accurate. Again, we are first looking at this from a conscious parents’ perspective. We do not take “It just happens” as an acceptable answer and we do not take “Unknown Cause” as an acceptable answer. After the “Back To Sleep” Campaign launched in 1994, SIDS cases seemed to plummet. But what isn’t publicized is that after that campaign launched, causes of death titles were also changing from “SIDS” to “Unknown Causes” and a plethora of other titles. The percentages of “Unknown Causes” or other muddled titles went up, and the SIDS rates went down.
According to The CJ Foundation For Sids, fewer and fewer medical examiners and coroners are using SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) as a cause of death. While the definition of SIDS is: “sudden death of an infant under one year of age which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including performance of a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene and review of the clinical history,” the word “syndrome” incorrectly implies a diagnoses or illness, when it is in fact a diagnosis of exclusion. There are no clinically significant findings that indicate cause of death.
Five years ago, your baby’s cause of death probably would have been ruled SIDS. The fact that there is no national standard for terminology for these types of infant deaths AND that medical examiners/ coroners are increasingly reluctant to use SIDS as a cause of death has led to parental and bureaucratic confusion. The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics lists ALL of the following as definitions of SIDS for coding purposes:
Sudden Death in Infancy or SDII
Sudden Infant Death or SID
Sudden Unexplained Death or SUD
Sudden Unexplained (unexpected) Death in Infancy or SUDI
Sudden Unexplained Infant Death or SUID
Sudden plus (Unexpected) or (Unattended) or (Unexplained)
Death plus (Cause Unknown) or (in Infancy) or (Syndrome)
Infant Death plus (Syndrome)
Presumed SIDS, Probably SIDS, Consistent with SIDS
As you can see, sudden infant death syndrome has been so muddled and mucked up, that it is no longer being reported accurately, honestly or without massive confusion. This is why the “Back to Sleep” campaign aimed to get parents to stop putting babies to sleep on their stomachs seemed like a roaring success. On the surface, the rate of infant deaths per 1,000 live births seemed to have dropped 1.5 to 0.5. After true research, the actual rates have not dropped, but the reported SIDS causes of death have.
From 1992 to 2001, the postneonatal SIDS rate dropped by an average annual rate of 8.6%. However, other causes of sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) increased. For example, the postneonatal mortality rate from ‘suffocation in bed’ increased during this same period at an average annual rate of 11.2%. The postneonatal mortality rate from ‘suffocation other’, ‘unknown and unspecified causes’ and due to ‘intent unknown’ in the External Causes of Injury section all increased during this period as well. (Source)
With all of this in mind, it’s quite possible that SIDS rates could be much closer double or even triple the reported numbers, closer to 10,000 cases per year rather than 1,300-3,000 a year!
What Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is NOT
The most puzzling red flags to me as a parent were the interchangeability of SIDS and suffocation. Every time I would research on how to prevent SIDS, I was given the following advice:
Do not sleep with your baby
Do not put any soft bedding in your child’s crib
Do you put any stuffed animals or toys in your child’s crib
Place your child on their back to sleep
Do not use a pacifier
Immunize your child on time
These recommendations have nothing to do with a child dying suddenly and unexpectedly. Listed above are ways to prevent your child from suffocating. SIDS and suffocation are NOT the same thing. Suffocation is an outside influence blocking and restricting the airway of your child, resulting in lack of oxygen and death. Sudden infant death syndrome is your child suddenly dying, with no outside restriction to air flow.
With this conflicting evidence, it really just showed me that the ideology of SIDS is still widely unknown and mainstream advice is providing no real knowledge on what caused it how to prevent it.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) The Cover Ups & The Truth
Although there are many theories on the cause of SIDS, sudden infant death is not much of a mystery when the evidence presents itself. Let’s go back to the beginning.
Prior to contemporary vaccination programs, ‘Crib death’, called SIDS today, was so infrequent that it was not mentioned in infant mortality statistics. In the United States, national immunization campaigns were initiated in the 1960s when several new vaccines were introduced and actively recommended. For the first time in history, most US infants were required to receive several doses of DPT, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines. Shortly thereafter, in 1969, medical certifiers presented a new medical term, and that’s when “sudden infant death syndrome” was first coined. (Source)
An archived copy of the Center For Disease Control’s website showed the CDC stating that, “From 2 to 4 months old, babies begin their primary course of vaccinations. This is also the peak age for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).” If you try to go this page now, it says the page has been moved. Let’s just say that this isn’t the first time that the CDC has omitted or covered up incriminating facts and data. Learn more about CDC deception here.
SIDS Listed As Adverse Reaction on DTAP Vaccine Insert
If you read the Tripedia insert for the DTAP vaccine, you will read the following:
Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting.
You can take a look here. (Scroll down to page 11)
CDC Reports That Show “No Link” Between SIDS and Vaccines
Despite admitting to incriminating information within the vaccine inserts themselves, The Center For Disease Control still claims multiple times on their websites that vaccines are in no way linked to SIDS. They kindly offer reports to view on this topic. The maddening part is that all reports listed follow the same trend:
Report #1: Includes reviewer Gina T. Mootrey who is clearly noted to be directly associated with Vaccine Safety and Development Branch, Epidemiology and Surveillance Division,National Immunization Program and most importantly Centers for Disease Control andPrevention.
Report #2: Clearly notes in the introduction, “Support for this project was provided by Centers For Disease Control and Prevention”.
Report #4: Includes reviewers Katrin S. Koh |
this might be something other than an awful accident. In time, the hints became no easier to avoid than news of the search itself. After all, there was Wayment's ex-wife, Brenda, telling detectives and TV cameras that she believed Paul had hidden Gage in order to deny her custody.
As the search widened and more hours slipped by and the snow fell heavier, not just Brenda voiced suspicions. There were whispers about the Wayment family's "marital problems." There was talk of protective orders and a thick Division of Child and Family Services file. Those who hadn't seen Paul in the early hours wondered why he now appeared so stoic, so lacking in remorse. Some wondered why, with dogs and horses and computers and helicopters, they still couldn't find Gage. Many searchers came to believe that Gage was not in the forest at all. Many thought Paul Wayment guilty of foul play or deception.
When darkness fell Sunday night, four days after Gage disappeared, officials called off their search. Sheriff's deputies invited Wayment to their headquarters for a polygraph exam and what they promised would be "a lengthy and detailed interview." The lead detective believed they needed to investigate the "ever-growing possibility that Gage had been abducted or hidden by his father."
From the Bench, the Human Stories
It's an honest world when you're running, Robert Hilder believes. He can think clearly. So he jogs often, sometimes five or six miles a morning.
The Wayment affair now sometimes crept into his thoughts as he ran, but he made no conclusions. He couldn't, for he had to keep this matter at arm's length. He had to prepare himself to judge its meaning. What manner of story might he hear this time in his courtroom? If he felt some unease, he also felt anticipation. It was human stories like this that first drew him to the bench.
Hilder had always wanted to be a judge more than a practicing attorney. He was not at core committed to the adversary system, to the role of lawyer as advocate. He was much more interested in the narratives and issues heard in a courtroom. He liked to try to resolve them. He thought he was good at resolving them.
Sentencing, on the other hand, he found hard. There was always that horrible moment, after he heard the tremendous advocacy, the arguments, the pleas. Suddenly there was silence--and he had to decide. That was hell. That also was what he'd signed up for.
He didn't have a typical judge's background. For one thing, he'd never finished high school. He grew up in Australia, one of four siblings. His alcoholic father was abusive with his mother. By the time Hilder was 14 and more than 6 feet tall, he was intervening, getting his dad in headlocks. By 15, he'd left home.
For years, he found jobs where he could. He apprenticed on a farm. He labored over pipelines in underground tunnels. He worked as a bartender and bouncer by night, a bank clerk by day. He was making his way, but at the age of 24, he thought his life empty. He had few friends and little social life beyond the bars where he drank.
Then, as he sat in his apartment one night, reading a book on Lenin and Stalin--one of many history volumes in his self-improvement program--there came a knock on the door. A reformed drinking buddy had sent two Mormon missionaries his way. At first Hilder listened only out of curiosity. The curiosity soon turned to interest. He admired these young men's commitment and aestheticism, but what he embraced most was the sense of family they offered. They made him feel part of something.
Within two weeks, he'd joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; within six months, he was a Bible teacher and Sunday school president. He felt so needed. Asked if he wanted to do missionary work, he readily agreed, setting off on a two-year tour of southern Australia.
There he grew close to the mission president, a lawyer from Salt Lake City. Hilder thought him an excellent role model. Far more so than his own father. When Hilder returned to Sydney from his mission, he found his dad in a halfway house, recently released from jail. He was 60 and looked pathetic. Once a successful wool and sheepskin broker, he was living a drunken transient's life that took him to dry-out cells and psychiatric wards. Hilder had visited him as often as he could in these places. Yet it seemed as if his father wanted more from him--a rescue. He wrote Hilder letters, saying we need to make plans. I'm feeling stronger, he reported, as if to show he could be like his son. I'm reading the Book of Mormon, I'm meeting missionaries.
Hilder had hated his father for a time but had never deserted him. Now he could not think of a way to help him, for he'd met a woman on his Mormon mission, and they planned to move to the United States. Two weeks before he was to leave, Hilder got the call on a cold May morning: His father had hanged himself. This, Hilder believed, was his dad's response to hopelessness, to the prospect of his son leaving. At the funeral, an elderly aunt mentioned that his father had left a letter for him. Hilder never asked for it, never saw it. He was starting a new life. He just didn't want to know.
A month later in Utah's Mormon Temple, he married the woman from his mission. Ten months later came their first son. Hilder was 28, with a 10th-grade education. For a while, he made a living at day labor, then found a job as bookkeeper for a demolition company.
Desperate to do better, he took a high school equivalency test and then the college Scholastic Aptitude Test, scoring in the 99th percentile on both, a feat he credits to a lifetime of voracious reading. In January 1979, he was accepted at the University of Utah, from which he graduated 2 1/2 years later, a political science major with a nearly straight-A average. By the time he enrolled in the university's law school, he had three children. He earned his law degree at 35. Within 11 years, he was a Mormon bishop and managing partner at a Salt Lake City law firm.
That's when Utah's governor appointed Hilder, a Democrat in a very Republican state, to the bench. Eventually, he began sitting in Summit County, commuting from his Salt Lake City home. Over the last six years, he has earned the trust and warm regard of prosecutors and defense attorneys alike. Their testimonials on his behalf focus as much on his humanity as his legal acuity. They say there "probably is no more decent person in the legal profession than Judge Hilder." They call him "one of the kindest, most compassionate, gentlest people to sit on the bench." They think no jurist is "more prepared, fair and understanding than Judge Hilder."
That's not to say he's a pushover. He is seen as more complex than that. In one well-publicized case, Hilder sent a child molester to prison against all recommendations. Yet in another case, he spared a teenage boy who'd somehow accelerated his car into a crowd, killing two people. Hilder knew he should lock him up, but what he saw before him was a sweet kid he just couldn't send to jail.
Four days had passed now since Gage Wayment went missing. In Hilder's home, the news managed to filter through, as did images of Gage, for a house guest sometimes watched television. When would they find the body? When would this be Hilder's story to hear?
Rising Suspicions as the Search Goes On
The Utah Division of Child and Family Services did its best to quell the rising suspicions about Paul Wayment. For more than a decade, their own attention had been focused not on him but his ex-wife, Brenda, who had five children and two husbands before Paul, one husband after, and a 10-year history of domestic troubles. The agency director made this as plain as he could when he publicly confirmed that they'd intervened with the Wayment family, but only due to Brenda's alleged behavior.
"We've had no allegations against him for any type of mistreatment," Ken Patterson told reporters. It was Brenda, he said, who had been referred to the agency in the mid-1990s; it was from Brenda that all six children, including Gage, had been taken. In June, the court, pending a final hearing, had awarded Wayment sole custody of Gage. Subsequent visits by social workers to his home had been "uneventful."
The suspicions would not subside, however. Paul's sister Valerie Burke became convinced that authorities were dropping their search because they believed Paul had killed or hidden Gage. So even before the county withdrew Sunday evening, she made a public plea for volunteers to take their place.
By mid-morning Monday, about 150 citizens from across the state were swarming the snow-covered mountains above Coalville. Among them was James Wilkes, 35, the husky proprietor of a self-service pet wash shop in a Salt Lake City suburb.
He brought with him his dog Dino, a giant schnauzer. At the base camp, he met a shy muscular man who seemed consumed by pain. Paul Wayment introduced himself, tears welling in his eyes. He could not look at Wilkes. Instead, he offered a sandwich. Wilkes shared it with his dog as he sat in his pickup trying to warm up by the truck's heater. Then he climbed out and plunged into the forest.
It had started to snow, a foot deep in places. Wilkes lost the trail and his bearings. He slid into a gully. It began snowing harder. He couldn't tell north from south. Guessing, he started up a mountain. He stumbled. On his hands and knees, he crawled. Darkness fell. In time, he and Dino settled under a large sheltering pine tree. There he dug a hole, 2 feet by 4, and climbed in, his body wrapped around his dog. They each kept the other warm, the two covered by a blanket of broken branches.
It was the longest night Wilkes ever spent. He feared falling asleep, afraid he'd never wake up. Near 5 a.m, he rose and began to walk. Within minutes, Dino's nose went down. The schnauzer darted up a slope to the base of a pine tree. From below, Wilkes could see his dog licking a mound of snow. Then, as he approached, he saw two little feet.
By the time Wilkes reached the tree, Dino had cleaned off Gage's face. Six inches of snow covered the small body. Gage lay in a fetal position, his hands clenched, his eyes wide open. His pajama legs were up to knees; his feet had worn through his thin booties. His throat was blue. In his eyes were frozen tears.
A Decision on the Charges
To those who wonder why he takes on the daunting role of judging others, Robert Hilder says: "What am I going to do? Not do this job and instead let someone get up there and decide instead of me? Someone who sees it all in black and white? Some come in so sure. They don't see the complexity. I'm 52. What worries me is people who can't see the complexity."
Watching the Wayment case unfold from afar, it was hard now for anyone to ignore the complexity. They had a body. They also had new suspicions. Some were asking how James Wilkes could have located Gage when hundreds of others had failed. Some wondered whether a conspiracy might be the explanation--a conspiracy between him and Paul Wayment.
Yet it still wasn't Hilder's turn. Maybe it never would be. The immediate issue--perhaps the toughest of all--was what, if anything, to charge.
That decision rested with Summit County Atty. Robert Adkins. Like Hilder, his first response to news of a missing boy was as a parent. He knew the rugged terrain up there--he was a former hunter--and that gave him concern. Then he saw Brenda on TV, accusing Paul of hiding Gage. He hoped she was right; better that than a lost boy.
Adkins could feel Paul Wayment's anguish clear to his bones. In 1989, he'd lost his own 8-year-old son in an accident. The boy had been playing with his cousins across the street at his grandmother's house. Someone activated the automatic garage door, which lacked an auto-reverse. The door pinned Adkins' son, obstructing his breathing. He died 21 days later. Adkins, who'd been at work, at his desk, never forgave himself. Something had told him, go home. But he'd thought, I'll just finish up.
Now they had Gage Wayment's body.
Adkins knew that those investigating Wayment didn't believe he should be charged with a crime. The deputies and detectives had spent more time with him than anyone. They had also met with the family services staff, whose account convinced them that domestic abuse accusations against Wayment could not be substantiated. Brenda had twice sought protective orders against him, but the judge had dismissed one, and Brenda herself eventually moved to dismiss the other. To a man, the detectives felt Wayment had already suffered enough. To a man, they felt Wayment would already be punished for the rest of his life.
When Adkins received the sheriff's report, he tried to focus on the facts, not the mounting public furor. Wayment drove into the wilderness with Gage dressed lightly in pajamas. He left Gage in a rugged, isolated area, with the pickup parked on a slant, which meant the car door could easily swing open, pulled by gravity. He was gone some unknowable length of time, anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes.
Certainly, it was not OK to do what Wayment did. Still, this was clearly a good man who had made a horrible mistake. He was a straight arrow, in fact, who didn't drink or use drugs. But for a stint in the Army, he'd lived at his mom's home until he met Brenda at age 34. He had no criminal history. Despite the headlines and whispers, Gage's death involved no conspiracies.
To forgive and empathize, or condemn and punish?
Adkins had never forgiven himself for failing to protect his own son. Now he had a chance to forgive another father. That was his inclination. Yet there were two other prosecutors in his office's criminal division, and they were of different minds.
For days, the three debated around a conference table. At times, voices rose. Adkins was most inclined toward leniency, David Brickey and Mary-Kathleen Wolsey toward exacting a severe punishment. Unable to sway his colleagues, wishing to give them their due, Adkins sought the advice of two consultants, who themselves couldn't agree.
In the end, Adkins had to make the call himself. Adkins struggled, wavered--and finally decided they must charge Wayment with something. If they didn't, they'd be saying it was OK, or at least not criminal, to leave children alone in a remote area.
Adkins didn't really want to punish Wayment, though. He chose one of the mildest recommendations, negligent homicide, a misdemeanor. He also decided he would not seek a jail sentence. He just couldn't argue for incarceration. Not in this situation, not where the man's son had died.
Robert Hilder learned of the prosecutor's choice when a detective appeared in his chambers one morning with a document that described the "probable cause" for charging Wayment. Hilder glanced at the pages as the detective stood before him formally swearing to their truth. The judge kept his face blank, not saying or showing anything. What he saw distressed him, though.
It would have been so much easier if they hadn't charged Paul Wayment. They didn't have to. By filing, the prosecutors had handed their quandary to the judge.
There would be no right answer in this matter, he believed. In no way could he make a good decision when this came down. Sentencing would be the hardest. In fact, if Paul Wayment wasn't acquitted, sentencing would be impossible.
A Plea That Reflects the Defendant
Judge Hilder first saw Paul Wayment face to face at his arraignment on Jan. 9. At 6 feet, 2 inches and 205 pounds, Wayment was big and muscular, with strawberry blond hair and bulging shoulders. Although he showed no emotion, the judge knew his pain and shame must be unbearable. He thought Wayment a decent, stoic man.
Yet there Paul stood, not just being stoic but pleading not guilty. A guilty plea would not have surprised Hilder, given that Wayment had openly accepted responsibility. Instead, it looked as if his public defenders were digging in for a vigorous fight.
Hilder thought he understood. This didn't necessarily mean Wayment wasn't accepting responsibility. This meant he was deferring to counsel. The defense lawyers, in turn, were just doing their job.
As it happened, Hilder was only partly right. Paul Wayment's plea that day reflected something more complex than his attorney's natural reflexes. The plea reflected Wayment's own attitude.
From the beginning, Paul and his sister Valerie had talked of the consequences he faced. He felt he had to go to jail. He said it over and over. "I know I'm going to jail." It was almost as if he were willing it, Valerie thought, as if he wanted to pay a price.
Yet Wayment recoiled when the prosecutors finally did file charges. They were calling what he'd done "criminal" negligence. Negligence he readily admitted, but he had a hard time with criminal. He felt they were saying he intentionally killed Gage. So he was adamant that he wouldn't plead guilty. Valerie sensed that it was somehow important for Paul's sanity that he not see himself as a criminal.
He was already tormented enough. There were terrible nightmares now, Paul waking up in a panic, reliving Gage's loss. He'd go out to his pickup in the middle of the night, trying to figure how Gage opened the car. He'd sit in the cab, locking and unlocking the door, asking, "How could he get out?"
He'd regularly go up to the mountain, driving as far as he could in the winter snow, trying to reach where he'd lost Gage. Once he enlisted the help of James Wilkes, who'd served as honored pallbearer at Gage's funeral. They rented snowmobiles and plunged deep into the frozen wilderness but had to turn back when one of the vehicles caught fire.
Paul wrote a letter to Gage: So strong so sweet an angel, a warrior, my dreams with you had only begun. If I could only be with you again. To hold you again... to kiss your tiny face.... Oh how I love you.... You were my most precious gift, heaven sent....
Valerie and Paul talked openly in these days about suicide. She'd ask whether he thought about hurting himself. He would always reassure her. He couldn't do that, he pointed out, because then he'd never see Gage. Since he died so young, Gage went to the highest level of the Mormon heavenly kingdom. If Paul killed himself, he'd never get to that level, never rejoin his son. "So don't worry," he told Valerie. "I won't kill myself. This is my test. I have to live through this."
His test only intensified in the days after his arraignment. The public debate about Wayment expanded steadily, consuming much of Utah. There he was in newspaper articles and on TV news broadcasts, a magnifying glass put to his past domestic troubles, to his spotty employment record, to his love for hunting. People wrote letters to the editor, called radio talk shows, sent Internet messages, rendered verdicts on Web site polls. Those opposed to guns and hunting were heard from, and those horrified or victimized by child abuse. It was as parents, particularly, that so many spoke out--parents who could imagine themselves in Wayment's place and parents who could not. There were those who shuddered, thinking of their own past lapses. There were many more who thundered, unable to accept Wayment's failing.
Wayment cringed at the attention. He withdrew ever deeper into his stoicism. He hesitated to leave his house. He phoned his sister Valerie, in a monotone asking what was in the newspapers that day. One morning, it was Brenda's sister, publicly accusing him once again of domestic violence. He couldn't bear that. Nor could he bear being called a killer.
"Why do they hate me?" he asked Valerie.
In an e-mail to a friend, she wrote: "I'm wondering if it will stop once he kills himself."
Legal Maneuvering Takes Its Toll
The fevered public discourse about Paul Wayment reached even into Judge Hilder's bedroom. Because his daughter had changed the station on his alarm clock radio, there were two mornings when he awoke to talk show conversations. In both, he heard rabid voices declaring that the death penalty was not a sufficient punishment for this man.
Then, in late March, came an evidentiary hearing. Again a stoic Paul Wayment stood before Robert Hilder, saying little, visibly uncomfortable in a coat and tie. Three detectives took the stand, offering detailed accounts of what transpired in the days after Gage went missing. The lawyers followed, rising to argue over what photos of Gage and statements by Paul could be admitted at trial. Listening, Hilder for the first time gained direct exposure to this distraught father's grief and his ex-wife's suspicions. Nothing he heard persuaded him that this case involved anything more than a tragic mistake.
That was not, however, how the Summit County chief criminal prosecutor, David Brickey, saw matters. He saw in Paul Wayment a neglectful father. Brickey had a son himself, a 10-month-old. He couldn't forget Gage, couldn't forget that this little boy had been a real person.
Like Hilder, Brickey loves stories. What he must do in the courtroom, he believes, is tell the better story. He learned that much when he attended a prosecutors' school in South Carolina. There Brickey took a course on child abusers. The class taught him you always want to use any information that suggests the parent isn't a perfect person. He came back to Utah promoting the fact that prosecutors don't use "prior bad acts" nearly enough. He started planting that idea with his boss, Summit County Atty. Robert Adkins. Let's try to use prior bad acts to our advantage.
In the Wayment case, Brickey believed there were "prior bad acts" in Paul's domestic problems. He believed this despite the fact that Adkins saw nothing in the family services file they could use at trial. They weren't going to wade into that history, Adkins had resolved. They definitely weren't going to call Brenda's other children to the stand.
Adkins hadn't shared that decision with Wayment's attorneys, though. In fact, for bargaining purposes, he'd argued in court that the family history should be admissible. Brickey took that thought further in his own talks with the defense attorneys. He meant to use whatever he could, he told Glen Cook and Julie George. If you don't plea bargain, he warned them, if you go to trial, we will seek to establish that Paul has done this before.
Cook and George, unsure where Hilder might land, saw no alternative: If Brickey was going to fling accusations, they'd have to respond, they'd have to disprove. That meant bringing in Brenda, bringing in the kids, bringing in the whole juvenile file.
Outrage and frustration consumed Wayment when his lawyers told him what might be coming. "All that stuff isn't true," he shouted. "Just look at the documents. I don't understand why you have to disprove anything. I don't want the kids involved. I don't want Brenda involved."
While they debated, they heard again from David Brickey. One Friday afternoon, he called Julie George to say he might also charge Paul Wayment with witness tampering. Wayment, it turned out, had contacted James Wilkes. He'd asked Wilkes if they could try again to visit where Gage died. Wilkes had balked, for he had a lawyer now, a lawyer who'd ordered him not to talk with Paul, not to fuel suspicions about their connection. They'd talked anyway, among other things about the coming trial. Wilkes' lawyer had alerted Brickey. The prosecutor paid Wilkes a visit--and brought a tape recorder.
Clutching her phone, Julie George swore at Brickey, screaming and threatening, reminding that Wilkes wasn't even a subpoenaed witness. Then she called Wayment. This latest development stunned him. He began to cry.
Refusing to plead guilty--in his mind, refusing to say he intentionally, criminally harmed Gage--was the strand of sanity Wayment had been clinging to for months. Now he let go, now he conceded.
Julie George's phone rang three days later. "I need to take a plea," Wayment told her. "I want it over. I can't take any more."
During the course of two hours and three calls, they argued and anguished. It was no use. Wayment spoke in a monotone. "I can't put my family through this anymore," he said. "This is hurting too many people. Nobody else should be hurt by this except me."
Wayment quit going to church. He quit talking to Julie George. Using directions provided by a sheriff's detective, he started weekly pilgrimages to the spot where Gage had died. He brought Gage's toys with him, he carved their names in a tree, he built a memorial. There he sat for hours on end, reading the Bible.
He Knew He Had to Land Somewhere
To say that Paul Wayment made a tragic mistake did not, in Judge Hilder's view, mean there was no culpable negligence. That's what bothered him as Wayment stood before him on June 5. Once again this man looked so stoic. Rather than admitting guilt, he was entering a no contest plea, which meant he was only conceding the state could prove its case. In exchange, the prosecutors were not seeking a jail sentence.
Hilder couldn't help wonder: If this was what it came down to, then why were they all here?
I understand your deal, he told those gathered before him. But I'm not bound by it. I retain the right to impose jail or any other penalty.
Hilder pondered for days about Paul Wayment, often while jogging through the dense stand of sycamores that shaded his urban Salt Lake City neighborhood. Influenced by his tenure on the bench, he'd strayed from his Mormon faith in the last two years. After looking at so many good but fallible human beings, it was hard to live with any religion certain it had all the answers. The truth was, Hilder's role as a judge had caused him to question the nature of God, and particularly the certainty of the Mormon faith.
Yet he finally had to land somewhere.
For Paul Wayment, he decided, there's got to be a consequence. Wayment was not a monster; Wayment was no more or less than any man. All the same, he'd exposed Gage to significant risk. He'd caused Gage to wander through the forest, terrified and suffering.
There was no need for deterrence here, and no need for punishment. There was need for society to make a statement, for society to say, this is wrong. There was also need for rehabilitation. Hilder felt Wayment must pay some kind of penance, or he would never be able to put this behind him.
Was this a court's job, to worry about atonement? Hilder thought it was. Of course, he had to be careful not to step over a line. He wasn't a priest; he didn't want to play God.
And yet: In a way, a judge was a god.
"God."
Hilder would later speak that word out loud, reflecting on the Wayment case. Then he'd say, "I shudder at how that will look on paper. But it's true."
An Admission; an Acceptance of Fate
When his sentencing hearing began on the morning of July 17, Paul Wayment seemed not just stoic but hollow, as if he weren't there. Rising first, Summit County Atty. Robert Adkins talked of how "difficult" this case was, of how much "sympathy and empathy" his office had for the defendant. Then came defense attorney Glen Cook, arguing that Paul's "punishment will continue until he and Gage are together again." Finally Paul Wayment spoke, in an expressionless monotone:
If I could change places with my son, I would give up my life without question. But I can't. The life that I now live in is the hell that I alone created. The pain is incomprehensible.... The word "sorry" does not even begin to express the feelings I now live with.... I admit full responsibility for my actions and will accept whatever punishment you deem appropriate.
Soon enough came the horrible moment that Hilder thought such hell. Silence fell in the packed courtroom. Even those lawyers and defendants there for other matters stopped conferring and turned to the bench. As Hilder began to speak, Paul Wayment remained impassive while around him his relatives blinked back tears. Paul's sister Valerie Burke thought the judge seemed so soft-spoken, so kind, so determined to explain his decision to Paul. She also thought the judge seemed full of heartache.
He'd planned to give Wayment a 90-day sentence, a quarter of the possible one-year maximum. But after hearing the arguments--and seeing that the probation department also opposed jail--he chose to reduce the penalty and require a mental evaluation, followed by counseling if recommended. "The pre-sentence report...," Robert Hilder began, "says that nobody associated with this case believes serving jail time will serve a useful purpose. The problem... is that none of these people have to make the decision. The decision comes here.... The court understands that there is nothing it can do that would be a greater punishment to Mr. Wayment than the suffering he's going to endure daily for the rest of his life. But the court cannot fully accept the argument that there shouldn't be some further consequence.... The court rules there must be a consequence."
Moments later, Hilder imposed a 30-day jail sentence and invited Wayment to pick the date when it would start. Paul and his attorney Glen Cook conferred privately for 90 seconds. Then Cook said, "Thank you for the courtesy, judge. Tomorrow morning."
At the defense table, Julie George hugged Paul. Of the coming jail time, Wayment said, "It's three hots [hot meals] and a cot." George offered to walk him to his car, as she'd done before to buffer him from reporters. "You don't have to anymore," he said, patting her on the back. "It's over."
Robert Hilder did not rise from the bench this morning feeling he had made the right decision. He did not walk out thinking, I got it right. He walked out thinking, I did the best I could.
A Father's Final Choice
The questions still haunt about Paul Wayment's final choice, for they can't be answered. Why did neighbors see him outside planting flowers just days before? Why had he just gotten a new hunting license, a new truck, a new job? All people know is that Paul, as he left his sentencing hearing, said he was "going to the ridge." No one stopped him, for he always went up the mountain for comfort. Valerie told him, "Phone me when you get home."
Around nightfall, she started calling his house. By midnight, she was scared. In bed, in the middle of the night, she heard his voice speaking to her. Valerie. That gave her a warm feeling, a sense that Paul was home, Paul was OK. She fell back asleep.
Only in the early morning did she learn he still hadn't returned. Maybe he stayed for sunrise, she told herself. But in her heart, she knew.
So did Julie George. "I have my four-wheel drive," she told colleagues at 9:45 a.m. "I'm going to go look for him."
They found his body on a sloping ridge next to a pair of binoculars, a Pepsi Big Gulp and a Winchester.243 hunting rifle. He'd picked a spot, surrounded by quaking aspens, that provided a view of the hills where they'd searched for Gage. Julie George imagined his final afternoon. He'd sat with the binoculars, surveying where Gage died. At sunset--he would have waited for his beloved dusk--he'd put down the binoculars and picked up the rifle.
By the time Valerie Burke arrived on the ridge, a news media helicopter was hovering overhead. Julie George and others rushed to cover Paul's body, not wanting his mother to see it on TV. But the helicopter kept blowing the cover off.
At the courthouse that afternoon, Hilder sat dazed in his chambers. Tears filled his eyes. For a moment, he fixed on the far wall. There hung an aboriginal bark painting, an image of a shearing shed in the Australian outback. That was a memory; he'd worked in just such a shed in his teens. Hilder wanted nothing more now than to call his wife, Jan. When he reached her, she offered to come be with him. "I don't think that would help," he said. "I have to go on the bench."
What consumed him as he walked into the courtroom was his father's suicide. He'd never stopped wondering what he could have done. Suicides made their own decisions, he realized, and his father was never a happy man. Could he have prevented his death, though? He'd left his father's farewell letter unclaimed, not wanting to know what it might say.
This time, with Wayment, he did want to know. He didn't want to fight off his sense of responsibility.
On the witness stand, a water rights expert was testifying. Only occasionally did Hilder listen. Mostly, his eyes were on the legal pad beside his right hand. Judges never do such things, but he felt compelled to compose a public statement. He wanted to let people know why he sentenced Paul Wayment to jail. Blame me for this, he would tell them. Blame me if you will. But not because I didn't think about it.
Hilder picked up a pen and began. The first sentence he scratched out. The rest came without struggle or revision.
It is a judge's worst nightmare that his or her actions may lead to unforeseen and tragic human consequences. The death of Paul Wayment is such a tragedy.... As hard as it is for me to contemplate any contribution of mine to Mr. Wayment's death, his family and the public have a right to know how I feel as a person and as a judge. As Paul Wayment's fellow man, I am devastated, I hurt deeply.... Having suffered through my father's suicide over 20 years ago, I know the survivors' anguish.... As a judge, however, my sworn duty is to all who appear before me.... If the jail sentence I imposed was a factor, large or small, in Mr. Wayment's decision, I regret that result with all my heart, but I cannot change my decision.... For the rest of my career I will remember Paul Wayment and try to never lose sight of the human consequences as I discharge my responsibilities.
There Is Much Anguish Now
Among those besides Robert Hilder whose choices affected Paul Wayment in his final months--the lawyers, detectives, journalists, relatives, hunters and friends--there is much anguish now. Many berate themselves. Many look to themselves when talking of responsibility.
It was Hilder, though, who faced the greatest barrage of criticism immediately after Wayment's death. A few particularly harassing letters prompted the county to provide temporary protection. Where once there were calls for accountability and consequences, now there was outrage at the judge who provided just that. People assailed Hilder, demanding his resignation or dismissal, charging him with "a pathetic lack of wisdom," declaring him "directly responsible for the death of Paul Wayment."
Soon enough, there came an even greater wave of support for Hilder from lawyers, pundits, hundreds of citizens and--over and over--Wayment's sister Valerie Burke. "I don't believe the 30-day sentence caused Paul to kill himself," she told reporters. "I think the judge was compassionate. Our family understands where the judge was coming from, and we don't blame him at all. He had to do what he felt was right."
Hilder can only shake his head at that phrase, "what he felt was right." He takes comfort from all the support but is no more certain now than before of making correct decisions. This latest experience, above all, has made him look even harder at the role of the judge.
He reflects on what the law accomplishes, what the law can't accomplish. He loves the law but does not worship it. He believes it does not have the answer to everything. In matters full of ambiguity, he suggests, there may be no good solution. "Black and white answers are not always what's needed," he says. "But sometimes they're the only answer."
He says something else as well: "It's not a bad thing to have Paul Wayment's face forever part of my life."If you have something to say about Ron Lindsay’s insulting and contemptuous talk at the Women in Secularism 2 conference, and/or about his insulting and contemptuous follow-up post responding to the controversy… say it to the CFI Board of Directors.
Don’t just say it on Twitter, or on Facebook, or on blog comments, or even on your own blog. Say it to the people who can do something about it. If you’ve already said something on some other forum, please copy and paste it, edit as appropriate, and send it to the CFI Board of Directors.
The CFI Board of Directors can be emailed via the Corporate Secretary, Tom Flynn, at [email protected] They can also be reached by snail mail, at:
Center for Inquiry Board of Directors
PO Box 741
Amherst, NY 14226-0741
The CFI Board of Directors, as posted on the CFI website, are: R. Elisabeth Cornwell, Kendrick |
investigation in the southern city of Salerno for alleged money-laundering stemming from a 560,000 euro cash withdrawal he made from his IOR charity account in 2009. Sica, the attorney, has said Scarano arranged complicated transactions with dozens of other people and eventually used the money to pay off a mortgage.
The group of five cardinals who oversee the IOR accepted the resignations of Cipriani and Tulli and tapped the IOR's current president, German financier and aristocrat Ernst von Freyberg, to serve as interim director, a Vatican statement said.
Von Freyberg, who was named IOR president in February, thanked Cipriani and Tulli for their years of work and said much progress has been made in recent years to bring greater transparency to the Vatican's finances.
"While we are grateful for what has been achieved, it is clear today that we need new leadership to increase the pace of this transformation process," von Freyberg said in a statement.
The IOR has in the past three years undergone tumultuous changes as it tries to adhere to international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing — changes that apparently didn't always sit well with the old guard, who had long-standing relations with their clients.
Italian banker Rolando Marranci was named as acting deputy and another banking expert, Antonio Montaresi, was brought into a new position as chief risk officer to help ensure the IOR complies with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism norms. Both belong to the Promontory Group, an expert in the field of anti-money laundering which has been retained by the IOR to help it comply with international norms.
The IOR's board has begun the process of finding a permanent director and deputy director, the statement said.
It wasn't immediately clear how von Freyberg would handle his new role essentially running the IOR's day-to-day operations as director, while also retaining his oversight role as president and member of the bank's board. It also wasn't clear how the new management team of Promontory executives would be able to act independently from the other more senior Promontory officials who remain as advisers to the IOR.
The Vatican bank was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. Located in a tower just inside the gates of Vatican City, it isn't open to the public — only to Vatican employees, religious orders and diplomats accredited to the Holy See.
Last week, Francis announced a commission of inquiry into the bank's activities and legal status to ensure it is in "harmony" with the Catholic Church's mission. It's part of his overall effort to reform the Vatican bureaucracy, mandated by the cardinals who elected him pope in March.
The reason for concern about the IOR is well-founded: The bank has long been the source of some of the greatest scandals of the Holy See, famously implicated in a scandal over the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s, in one of Italy's largest fraud cases.
Roberto Calvi, the head of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 in circumstances that still remain mysterious.
Banco Ambrosiano collapsed following the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans the bank had made to several dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans.
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While denying any wrongdoing, the Vatican bank agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors.
The late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, an American prelate who headed the Vatican bank at the time, was charged as an accessory to fraudulent bankruptcy in the scandal, but Italy's Constitutional Court eventually backed the Vatican in ruling that under Vatican-Italian treaties Marcinkus had immunity from Italian prosecution. Marcinkus long asserted his innocence and died in 2006.Aug 23, 2014; Los Angeles, CA, USA; New York Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy (28) strikes out in the ninth inning of the game against the New York Mets at Dodger Stadium. Dodgers won 7-4. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
UPDATE (10/20): After it was mentioned in a comment (h/t Brooxy), I went back to look at the teams’ numbers with Runners in Scoring Position (RISP). Those numbers, in the comments below, have also been inserted into the article.
In a column early Thursday in the Daily News, sportswriter/apparent-Sandy- Alderson-Pitchfork-Chaser- Wither John Harper wrote about the San Francisco Giants’ execution in the playoffs shortly after another comeback win over the St. Louis Cardinals.
Before we go further, a quick note:
The Giants are good. They pitch well, they play good defense, and they have a very good manager.
But in traditional New York columnist fashion, the article was inevitably turned into an opportunity to bash on the Mets. The turning point started with an ordinarily bland quote from Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy:
“Not striking out, putting the ball in play… You try to put pressure on the other club and that’s how it happens, with good baserunning and doing the little things.”
He ties this into an NL scout, who discusses how the Giants look to put the ball in play, and with that comes positive results. In most situations it would generally end there, or jump into a discussion about how the Giants’ bullpen dominated St. Louis – particularly former Met Yusmeiro Petit, who threw three dominant shutout innings to take the lead they would not relinquish. But this isn’t most situations, because there’s an opportunity to blast Mets GM Sandy Alderson and the Mets. Here’s the money quote:
“It’s quite the opposite of the patient, work-the-count-philosophy that GM Sandy Alderson preaches with the Mets – one that baseball people say needs to be updated.” – John Harper, here
There’s another quote from the scout that follows, explaining that how modern bullpens have kinda reduced the advantage of getting the starter out of the game, because everyone throws 98 and has a good second pitch. That’s largely true (the Mets themselves will have Jeurys Familia, Vic Black, and Bobby Parnell who all throw 98 and have great second pitches), but it’s not the point we’re worried about. The question is – is there a tangible difference in the outcome of the Mets & Giants “offensive philosophies”? Well, we have numbers! That can prove that Harper’s scout is wrong, and that this argument is nonsense!
(Note: numbers are among non-pitchers)
The Giants, who Harper commends, struck out in 19.3% of their plate appearances this season, and got on base at a.319 clip.
The Mets, who Harper condemns, struck out in 19.4% of their plate appearances this season, and got on base at a.318 clip.
These differences would correspond to six additional strikeouts, and six fewer trips on base. Over 6000 plate appearances.
The Giants, who make things happen, posted a.138 isolated slugging percentage.
The Mets, who are too passive, posted a.132 isolated slugging percentage.
So where’s the difference?
There’s two, really. First – the Giants’ batting average on balls in play was a healthy.309, nearly matching their.318 expected BABIP.
The Mets?.291 against.322.
Did the Mets just get unlucky? Quite possibly. The NL East was a superior defensive division. The Mets’ NL East opponents posted a collective +16.4 DEF rating according to Fangraphs. The Giants’ NL West opponents posted a -17.6 mark. It’s a lot easier to “put pressure on the defense” against worse defenses.
*Updated* This impact was compounded further with RISP, where the Giants’ position players hit.278 compared to the Mets’.256. However, Mets hitters struck out less often (18.9% vs. 19.3%), walked more (12.3% vs. 10.8%), and hit for more power (.163 ISO vs..139) than Giants hitters. But the Giants had a.325 BABIP vs. 320 expected, and the Mets.285 against an identical.320 expected. They did everything as well or better, but opposing defenses got it done more often against the Mets.
It’s also important to note that the Giants play at AT&T Park, which is one of the pitcher-friendliest parks in baseball. The fact that they posted virtually identical numbers to the Mets should tilt in their favor; and they do. Weighted Runs Created+, which adjusts for park and league factors, rated the Giants at 107, compared to the Mets’ 100 (where 100 is league average).
The real difference between the Giants and the Mets? Left field. This isn’t about who the Giants ran out there (though Michael Morse had a solid season), but who the Mets ran out. Mets left fielders collectively hit.219/.306/.309, with six home runs. Six! Ruben Tejada hit five, in nearly 300 fewer plate appearances! The average left fielder in the National League hit.256/.320/.405 in 2014 (and that’s including Mets’ aggregate left fielder Dump Sterfire) If the Mets had that average left fielder, they’d have expected to score about 21 additional runs this year – a large cut into the 36 run advantage currently held by the Giants.
Much has been said about the Sandy Alderson “philosophy”. Based on what’s said about it, very little is actually known about what it encompasses. I’ve written about it before, but I’ll save you the trouble of another diatribe:
Hit good pitches. Don’t hit bad pitches.
This sounds reasonable; and it is. It’s the philosophy held by an estimated 30 of the 30 major league franchises. The Mets put the ball in play only slightly less often than the Giants (while still getting on base by virtue of a higher walk rate) and did perhaps a better job of making quality contact, hit for power at pretty much an identical clip to the Giants, and got on base at pretty much an identical clip to the Giants. They also played in a much better defensive division.
John Harper wants you to think that the problem is the Mets’ philosophy, because he wants you to think the problem is Sandy Alderson. It’s why he constantly harps on Alderson’s first draft pick: Brandon Nimmo. Because Brandon Nimmo could have been someone else. Like NLCS second basemen Kolten Wong and Joe Panik, either of whom could have stepped in as the replacement for Daniel Murphy. Which is a huge blunder, because according to John Harper, Dilson Herrera doesn’t actually exist.MPP Announces Marijuana Legalization Plans for 7 States
WASHINGTON, DC — Following landmark victories in Colorado and Washington on November 6, many people are asking, “What states will be next to enact measures to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol?”
The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), one of the nation’s largest marijuana reform organizations which has been instrumental in passing medical marijuana, decriminalization, and marijuana legalization bills in several states nationwide, has announced the next seven states that they plan perusing marijuana legalization.
Topping the list is Alaska, where MPP hopes to capitalize on the nation’s strongest level of voter support with a tax and regulate ballot initiative in 2014. Presently, possession of up to a quarter pound of cannabis in your home in Alaska, while not legal, carries no criminal penalty or fine. Alaska legalized the use of medical marijuana in 1998.
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Up next is Rhode Island, where MPP lobbyists hope to follow up on successful bills passed in the state legislature that legalized medical marijuana in 2009, and decriminalized possession of marijuana in 2012. MPP insiders say they are hopeful that following the legalization of marijuana in Washington and Colorado this year, the Rhode Island legislature will enact a tax and regulate bill in 2013. If the legislature fails to do so, look for a ballot initiative in 2o14.
In Maine, like Rhode Island, lobbyists will push for a legislative approved tax and regulate marijuana legalization bill in 2013. Should the legislature fail to pass marijuana legalization on their own, MPP plans to introduce local tax and regulate initiatives in 2014, leading up to a potential statewide ballot measure to legalize adult use of cannabis in Maine in 2016. Maine voters, like most of their New England neighbors, are favorable to marijuana reform. Maine overwhelmingly legalized medicinal marijuana in 1999, with 61 percent voting in favor in the early days of the modern marijuana reform movement.
Also in New England is Massachusetts, where voters have long supported marijuana law reform. MPP and local reform organizations hope to follow up their successful 2008 marijuana decriminalization campaign, which voters approved with a 65% majority, and the 2012 medical marijuana campaign, where 63% of voters approved the Bay State becoming the nation’s 18th medical marijuana state, with a 2016 tax and regulate for adult use campaign. If legalization campaigns in Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island are successful, the Northeast will have a strong anchor of legalized marijuana use, which could see many other states along the Eastern seaboard follow suit.
Back on the West Coast, activists in Oregon will be working closely with MPP lobbyists to pass a tax and regulate measure through the state legislature in 2013, continuing the momentum from Measure 80, which narrowly failed on November 6. The underfunded and little known legalization bill surprised activists and reformists with a strong showing at the polls, but was narrowly defeated 46-54%. Reformists will work with the state legislature to pass a similar bill through the state legislature in coming months, while building up to a potential – and better funded – ballot initiative in 2016 if needed.
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Marijuana legalization on the West Coast would’t be complete without California, who’s successful 1996 Proposition 215 campaign sparked new life into the marijuana reform movement. Since California legalized medical marijuana, 17 other states and the District of Columbia have followed suit. Marijuana reform in California was set back with the failure of 2010’s Proposition 19, which was opposed by many in the medical marijuana industry. MPP plans on working closely with reform organizations statewide to build momentum and support for a planned legalization initiative for the 2016 ballot.
Finally, MPP hopes to bring legalized marijuana to Sin City and the rest of Nevada with a tax and regulate campaign slated for 2016. This follows up on successful campaigns to legalize medical marijuana in 2000, and decriminalize possession of small amounts of cannabis in 2006.
As the New Year begins, 2013 and beyond appears to be the dawn of a new era of the end of marijuana prohibition.
Tags: adult useLiverpool FC has today announced that Michael Owen will become the club's first official international ambassador.
This new role will see the former Liverpool striker engaging with fans around the world and representing the club at various fan and commercial events.
Owen, a product of the Reds' youth system, notched 158 goals in 297 appearances across seven seasons and was part of the team that won the historic treble of 2001, most notably scoring both goals in the 2-1 FA Cup final win over Arsenal.
He remains the last Englishman and only Liverpool player to be named the best in Europe while at the club, having been awarded the Ballon d'Or in 2001.
As international ambassador, Owen makes a welcome return to the club that gave him his first-team debut 20 years ago.
On the appointment, he said: "As a Liverpool fan I am honoured and delighted to have been asked to play this international role for the club.
"Liverpool FC is the world's greatest football family and it's great for me to be able to represent the club in an official capacity once again."This isn't what Green Bay Packers fans want to read: Oft-injured defensive end Mike Neal left practice Tuesday because of what the team is tentatively calling a sprained left knee. Coach Mike McCarthy said he would have a more definitive diagnosis following an MRI exam.
According to those in attendance, Neal crumpled to the ground, clutching his knee, when his feet got tangled during a defensive line drill. McCarthy told reporters: "I saw how he fell. It makes you nervous."
Neal walked off the field under his own power, but that doesn't necessarily indicate the injury's severity. At the very least, it will be another bump in the road for a promising player who hasn't been able to stay on the field since the Packers made him a second-round draft choice in 2010.
Neal got a lot of people excited by his lively performance during training camp last summer, but a strained muscle near his rib cage and then a major shoulder injury limited him to a pair of regular season games. His recovery was one of the reasons the Packers felt comfortable allowing veteran Cullen Jenkins to depart via free agency, and he started last Saturday's preseason opener against the Cleveland Browns.
At this point, everyone should just take a deep breath and await the final diagnosis. The Packers have some depth at the position, beginning with C.J. Wilson, but they were clearly counting on Neal to be a special player and not just a big-bodied place-holder on their defensive line. Stay tuned.
*Update: Neal told Tyler Dunne of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that "nothing's torn at all" and that he has nothing more serious than inflammation in the knee. Neal did say that an MRI won't be performed until Wednesday.Bitso integrates Bitwage into exchange to offer payroll services to Mexicans
Mexican startup Bitso which operates a bitcoin exchange has added a new feature which they hope will enable Mexican freelancers and anyone that works internationally and lives in Mexico to receive their payments using a new integration with Bitwage.
Bitwage helps workers receive their wages in flexible distributions in bitcoin and also local currencies. By using bitcoin, Bitwage is able to reduce payroll costs, transfer fees and times. This integration allows businesses to make payments for services via bank transfers in another country while receiving payments in Mexican pesos to a local account.
The integration looks to attract more Mexican users including businesses and larger value clients to the exchange. Bitso received $1.8 million in investment capital in April with the goal of expanding their remittance business. Mexico’s remittance alone per month is a $2 billion industry, and as many know already using bitcoin as a means to transfer value globally for pennies and nearly-instantly, is a huge attraction. Bitso also launched a new API library for iOS earlier this month.
Around the world bitcoin exchanges are growing quickly, in particular in Mexico there are other bitcoin exchanges that are trying to bring on the same customer base, for example MexBT, Volabit, and others.
As part of the integration announcement, Bitso and Bitwage are offering $5.00 for each user to sign up for a Bitwage account.We recently announced the release of a limited run World of Tanks edition of the great tank book Firepower. It's not exactly cheap, so it's engendered some discussion. This has been something of a pet project of mine, so allow me to fill you in a little bit on the background.
A little while back, Echo Point, obviously a group with great taste and knowledge, acquired the rights to reprint the ten Hunnicutt books. They've been releasing them from time to time, but so far, the books have reached only a small audience. Given that I think it's a bit of a shame that folks are being asked to shell out ridiculous amounts of money for a copy of the original books, as a responsible citizen of the tanking world, I'm all for increasing the exposure. I'm not joking when I say "ridiculous:" check out this screenshot from Amazon on my Facebook page. $7,000+ for a book (plus $3.99 shipping)?
To this end, we approached Echo Point with the idea of a WoT-branded book we could make available to our players. We focused on one of the icons of the lineup, Firepower. I cannot think of any other book which covers the entirety of America's heavy tank program to the same level of detail, though certainly there are excellent books which cover some of the subject matter in great detail (Ken Estes' recent M103 book, for instance).
We're not naïve. We know that in today's world, if all you're interested in is the information on the page, you can find a copy of the book for free/illegally. So why would you pay $52 plus shipping in order to buy this physical copy?
Well, as already demonstrated, you can't use a PDF to beat the ignorance out of someone.
Why Buy?
Some folks, like me, just like to have a physical book to leaf through. If you're the sort of person who can and will pay for a physical book, this may be worth considering. If not, so be it.
Part of the idea behind the offer was that we were going to provide you with more than a simple copy of the book. There have been some concerns made about the other reprints of the series. Unfortunately, they are copies, and there's inherently going to be a loss of detail to some extent. We can, however, make up for it in other ways.
The most significant is the printing method. I'm obviously not in the printing business, but I'm informed that because the Hunnicutt books sell in low volumes, "print-on-demand" technology was used for what's Echo Point have released thus far. Echo Point have informed us that once a print run reaches a certain size, it becomes commercially viable to move to a somewhat higher quality technique, "offset printing." This is why we're doing the pre-order method.
The other reason is that offset printing has a substantial lead time. The time between the decision to do it and when they start rolling off the presses is about two months. The best case scenario is we hit this minimum order size in the first two or three weeks, start the process, and things are shipped out within three months of the first pre-orders being taken. The worst case is that after the offer period closes, we have insufficient orders, revert to the faster 'print on demand' and the books still go out in that amount of time. If it looks hit-and-miss, we'll probably wait. We've been waiting decades for a reprint, so an extra couple of weeks in the hope of the best possible quality product shouldn't be an issue.
Another action we took to increase the quality of the print has been that I've scoured everything I have scanned in the Archives, or taken from the Hunnicutt film collection we have, and sent it on to Echo Point. If it's a better quality image than the one they have, they'll use it.
A further question is what to do with errors that are in the book. There are not many, but some. We could either release the book exactly as the original print, or add corrections. As a compromise, so as not to alter the original, I have a bit of an addendum of a few pages at the end of the book, with some additional information.
As one more teaser, we're sort of subsidizing the book a bit. We're taking a hit on profit in order to make the book more accessible. Part of the discussion with Echo Point was that if they decide to offer a non-WoT edition of the book in the future (similar to the other books in the series they have published), it won't be as nice a price as our edition.
Prototype, may not look quite the sameA list of device IPs and credentials has gone viral since Thursday, kicking off an effort by researchers to notify the owners of these connected devices before they’re hacked.
Researchers are in a full-out sprint to notify the owners of a substantial list of connected devices and associated telnet credentials that has been available on Pastebin since June but gone viral since Thursday when it was posted on Twitter.
The list has more than 20,000 views as of Saturday morning, up substantially from fewer than 1,000 on Thursday.
The credentials, many of which are default and known (i.e., admin:admin, root:root, or no authentication required) afford anyone access to a multitude of routers and other devices. Similar devices been co-opted in the last nine months to carry out DDoS attacks against a number of high-value targets.
Victor Gevers, founder of the GDI Foundation, has analyzed the list and told Threatpost Friday afternoon that of the 33,000-plus IP addresses on the list, 1,775 were still reachable.
“The other ones were ‘filtered’ so the telnet service was not reachable anymore,” Gevers said, adding that he sent emails to the 1,775 reachable hosts warning them to change their credentials and/or close off telnet access. Most of the reachable IPs (61 percent), he said, were in China, and most of the remaining in the rest of Asia.
Many of the 33,000 IP addresses on the list are duplicates, some 10 times over, indicating either there are multiple accounts on the same IP, or they’ve already been abused over and over.
“They are starting to behave [badly] and end up on an IP-block list,” Gever said.
Some of the default credentials have been changed already, and Gevers said there are more than 8,200 unique hosts, and 2,174 still running open telnet services as of Friday.
The Pastebin was found by researcher Ankit Anubhav who made the data public for other researchers. The account has been viewed more than 36,000 times. The Pastebin also contains numerous other scripts, some with malicious-sounding names such as “Easy To Root Kit,” “Mirai Bots,” “Mirai-CrossCompiler,” “Apache Struts 2 RCE Auto-Exploiter v2),” “Slowloris DDoS Attack Script,” and many others referring to known and recent attacks or disclosures.
“This person who pasted the Pastbin has a collection of scripts that could have been used [maliciously],” Gevers said.
Gever said that as of Friday afternoon, he had 12 replies to his email notifications and a few direct messages on Twitter.
Any time a situation like this surfaces, people harken back to the Mirai attacks of October 2016. Mirai is the name of the malware that automates the infection of connected internet of things devices and corrals them into botnets.
Infamously, a Mirai botnet was used to take down DNS provider Dyn, taking with it a handful of popular internet services. It was also used to DDoS French webhost OVH and security news site Krebs on Security.
That botnet was composed mostly of IP-enabled cameras and DVRs, the first time connected devices had been abused in such a public fashion, at the same time heralding a new age of awareness around the insecurity of these devices. Experts cautioned that this problem extends beyond security cameras and DVRs, and that IoT vulnerabilities can be leveraged against connected health care devices and critical infrastructure.
Expert Bruce Schneier, for one, testified before a Congressional committee that market forces would not be enough to solve this issue, and that legislation might be inevitable.The latest statistical almanac for biking and walking, released Wednesday, puts Minneapolis ahead of most of the nation’s largest cities in almost every major category. The city also fares much better than the state of Minnesota as a whole.
Minneapolis ranks second in bike commuting and ninth for walking to work.
The survey also finds that Minneapolitans are far less likely to die walking or biking, with rates about half the average for the 52 largest U.S. cities. The city is tied for ninth in bike fatalities per 10,000 bikers and tied for seventh in pedestrian fatalities by a similar measure during 2009 to 2011. Pedestrian and bike safety concerns have been fanned recently by the February deaths of cyclist Marcus Nalls, 26, on a high-crash portion of Franklin Avenue and pedestrian Caitlan Barton, 25, on Lake Street.
Safety in the city is helped by the fact that Minneapolis bikers are more likely to have bike lanes or off-road paths to use, the survey found, with 3.9 miles of such routes for every square mile of land area.
That’s more than double the national average among large cities of 1.6 miles. Minneapolis ranked eighth overall in that category and 10th specifically for painted bike lanes.
By the numbers Bike route miles per square mile: Minneapolis: 3.9, tied for 7th 52-city average: 1.6 Pedestrian fatality rate per 10,000 walking commuters: Minneapolis: 4.5, tied for 7th 52-city average: 8.3 Biker fatalities per 10,000 biking commuters: Minneapolis: 2.3, tied for 9th 52-city average: 4.9
“I certainly won’t rest until we’re at the top of those lists,” said Ethan Fawley, executive director of the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition, a local advocacy group. Fawley said good biking conditions improve the tax base and attract residents.
The federally subsidized study comes from the Alliance for Biking and Walking, a national nonprofit advocacy group that has documented trends in walking and biking since 2003. Much of the data comes from federal statistics and surveys completed by state or city bike and pedestrian coordinators.
$28 million helps
The high Minneapolis rankings in part reflect the $28 million in federal money directed to the Twin Cities in recent years by the federal Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program, championed by former U.S. Rep. James Oberstar.
Even before that investment, Minneapolis had developed miles of off-road bike routes, including the Grand Rounds bike and walking trails that date to the 1970s, and the more recent Midtown Greenway, Cedar Lake Trail and Kenilworth Trail. But the Oberstar money allowed the city to rapidly expand its on-road lanes, said Jon Wertjes, the city’s director of traffic and parking services.
It also helped Minneapolis to rank third nationally among cities in the share of its federal transportation dollars spent on biking or walking improvements at 24 percent, the study found.
With almost all the money spent, that percentage could plunge. But Fawley looks to the city’s five-year $568 million capital spending budget and state money as sources to keep the bike infrastructure growing. Wertjes said the city will look for opportunities to do bike-pedestrian projects with the state and Hennepin County.
Push for protected lanes
The next big wave of potential bike improvements is a push for protected bike lanes, in which biker space is protected from traffic by a raised surface, curbs or posts. One has already been approved for part of Washington Avenue downtown, and the city is working to develop a plan for where to install more.
The alliance report portrays protected lanes as a way to attract more female commuters, saying they are less willing to ride in mixed traffic.From the horse’s mouth: For fear of upsetting readers, the paper silenced any commentary in the first days after the Paris attacks that might have suggested there was a causal relationship between western foreign policy in the Middle East and those events.
Instead, writes the Guardian reader’s editor Chris Elliott, the paper waited several days before giving some limited space to that viewpoint:
On the Opinion pages, one factor taken into consideration was timing – judging when readers would be willing to engage with an idea that in the first 24 hours after the attacks may have jarred. The idea that these horrific attacks have causes and that one of those causes may be the west’s policies is something that in the immediate aftermath might inspire anger. Three days later, it’s a point of view that should be heard.
In other words, the liberal Guardian held off offering a counter-narrative about the attacks, and a deeply plausible one at that, until popular opinion had hardened into a consensus manipulated by the rightwing media: “the terrorists hate us for our freedoms”, “we need to bomb them even harder”, “Islam is a religion of hatred” etc.
Excluding legitimate analyses of profoundly important events like those in Paris when they are most needed is not responsible, careful journalism. It is dangerous cowardice. It is most definitely not a politically neutral position. It provides room for hatred and bigotry to take root, and allows political elites to exploit those debased emotions to justify and advance their own, invariably destructive foreign policy agendas.
In the paragraph above, Elliott happily concedes that this is the default position of mainstream liberal media like the Guardian.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. This article is reprinted from his blog with permission.Marshawn Lynch made his graceful exit from the NFL this offseason, hanging up his cleats (quite literally) after nine years. He’ll forever be known for eating Skittles, his Bill Belichickian press conferences and most importantly, bulldozing defenders as Beast Mode.
All of those things were made abundantly apparent during his playing days, but there was a side of Lynch that we didn’t all see. He had a serious, kind-hearted side that wasn’t always in the public eye.
That part of Lynch’s personality came through during one of the scariest moments of last season – one that threatened former Seahawks receiver Ricardo Lockette’s life.
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Lockette suffered a serious neck injury against the Cowboys last season that nearly killed him. The former Seahawks receiver said he thought he was going to die on the field as he was taken to the hospital, never to see a football field again.
Lynch was there for Lockette during a frightening time, and it went mostly unnoticed by everyone outside of the organization and family.
Via Jayson Jenks of the Seattle Times:
“We were in there with Ricardo and everything was in a sad mode,” said Earl Lockette Sr., Ricardo’s dad. “A nurse comes up and says, ‘We don’t know much about football, Mr. Lockette, but there’s a guy outside who says he needs to be in here. He says he plays with Ricardo, and his name is Marshawn Lynch.’ I go to the lobby, and Marshawn has his bags. He said, ‘I knew it was more than what they told me when I saw him go down. I knew it was more severe than that and I could not leave him here.’
“What Ricardo didn’t know is that Marshawn peeked in the room and saw he was in there, in the bed, strapped down, couldn’t move, and he cried like a baby. Marshawn did. I won’t tell you everything he did, but he took a couple steps back and soaked those tears up, and he went in there and made my son feel like he could run and jump.”
Lynch cheered up Lockette and his family by cracking jokes and being the character that he is. But he was also incredibly helpful to Lockette’s loved ones. Lynch made sure they never had to worry about transportation or anything besides Ricardo, who wasn’t sure what the future held for him.
“He said” ‘I’ve got you guys. You don’t have to worry about anything.’ When I say he meant that, he really did,” Ricardo's dad said. “He took care of us for a period of time to make sure we didn’t have to worry about getting places, transportation, anything. He did that.”
Lynch may not be with the Seahawks or in the NFL any longer, but he left a huge mark on everyone he came across.SteelSeries played catch with Blizzplanet and threw us a fast-ball special. Patiently and eagearly, I have been checking downstairs at reception to see if the shipped goodies had arrived. SteelSeries had told me the box was on its way the day the SteelSeries Diablo III Gaming Mouse and the SteelSeries Diablo III Gaming Headset were out on sale.
The reception had removed the paper to verify which rooms had mail and I was already leaving when out of the corner of my eye I saw a logo. It took my brain a few seconds to post-process once the window was out of view. I then back-paddled to check out whatever my eye caught. There it was. It was on the counter table standing tall on its side, a huge box with the SteelSeries logo.
Immediately, I told the receptionist that was for me. I took the box home, and started to unpack the contents.
My ego deflated when I saw the large box was half empty. I don’t know which thought won in my head: “Why ship it in such a large box to have it half empty?”, or “Zomg, they could have added some extra ones to fill up the other half (grins)”; but don’t listen to this troll’s back-of-my-mind arguments. All those nonsense thoughts evaporated, and my ego inflated at a dangerous rate when I looked at the bottom of the box …
SteelSeries Diablo III Mouse Unboxing
All the photos you will see in this page are taken by me at the moment of unboxing this product. The SteelSeries Diablo III Gaming Mouse and the SteelSeries Diablo III Gaming Headset boxes were there staring back at me.
The box is made of hard cardboard to protect the content. It can be used later to store your eSport Professional Mouse, and fits easily in a backpack. Imagine taking this box out of your backpack in front of your friends. Their jaw will drop definitely. You can’t deny you love to do that. You, evil you.
What’s behind the box? Basically a round up on the specs in four languages: English, French, German and Spanish.
1. Optimal comfort with an ambidextrous shape and size, making it versatile for all types of gamer grips.
2. 7 ergonomically placed programmable buttons.
3. World’s most durable switches – guaranteed lifespan of 10 million clicks.
4. Programmable Diablo III®-themed illumination options.
5. Durable, double-braided nylon cord with a gold-plated USB connection.
6. Quick and effortless remapping of mouse buttons with Drag & Drop, pre-defined game actions/functions/skills as well as illumination settings. All of which are easily configured in an intuitive Diablo III®-themed driver available for Windows and Mac OS X users.
As I attempted to open the box, I noticed the front of the box actually opens up like a book to show the interior letting you see the mouse covered by a plastic, and on the left side of the inner-book-cover is an artwork of Tyrael. I was dumbfounded. How did the cover didn’t come out loose whenever I kept moving the box around to see the back and side? Took me a bit to figure it out. It keeps itself closed because the packaging designer added a magnet for flavor which keeps it tight closed.
The text is localized in the same four languages: “The fast-paced action of Diablo III requires quick response times and a weapon that will withstand the fury of the Prime |
and the Lamanites. Moroni continues to record information on these plates as late as 35 years after they were given to him (Moroni 10:1). Some LDS apologists suggest that the method by which the plates reached New York was that Moroni carried them there during this long interim (Sorenson 1985, pp. 44–45).[71] On this point, no Central, South American or Malay setting for the Book of Mormon is exactly limited, in that these settings require Moroni to have traveled thousands of miles beyond the confines of his homeland (and his warring brethren), to deposit the plates in a land whose soil had not gathered the dead of his people.[72]
One author criticizes this theory as being "problematic" because "Moroni makes it clear that he buried the plates in the vicinity of the Nephites' destruction, not 2,000 miles (3,200 km) away in some remote region." To support this assumption, it is postulated that Moroni buried the plates near the scene of the final battle and then returned 20 years later to retrieve them and add information to them before his final farewell, in which he states that his intention to "seal up these records" (Vogel 2004, p. 648).[73] The assumption that Moroni hid the plates at the time of the final battle is based upon Mormon 8:3-4, in which Moroni states "Therefore I will write and hide up the records in the earth; and whither I go it mattereth not." Continued reading of the text reveals that Moroni abridged the Book of Ether and added it to the record after making this statement. Moroni later writes "wherefore, I wander whithersoever I can for the safety of mine own life. Wherefore, I write a few more things, contrary to that which I had supposed; for I had supposed not to have written any more." (Moroni 1:3-4) There is no explicit mention in the Book of Mormon of Moroni either having hidden the plates at the time of the final battle or having returned to this location to add more to them years later.
LDS apologist Vincent Coon cites non-LDS archaeologist Salvatore Trento, who posits the possibility that Joseph Smith actually discovered buried metal tablets engraved with "weird markings".[74] Trento notes comparable discoveries in Northeastern America which Coon points out are not likely the result of a singular ancient individual traveling thousands of miles from Central or South America.[75]
Great Lakes setting [ edit ]
Map showing possible lands and sites of the Book of Mormon near scriptural Cumorah (Doctrine and Covenants 128:20)
Some LDS researchers have proposed a limited Great Lakes setting for the Book of Mormon (Aston 1998). One of these proposals has the histories of the Jaredite, Nephite and Lamanite civilizations taking place in a small area of southern Ontario and western New York. According to Delbert Curtis, ]the seas surrounding the land are said to be Lakes Huron, Ontario, and Erie(Curtis 1988)).
LDS scholars have given the following reasons for discounting some of these theories:
Beginning in the spring (the month of the "Abib", a critical stage of barley maturation), and continuing through the year, four seasons are required for keeping all of the ordinances of the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 16:1-12, Exodus 23:14-17, Exodus 34:18-22, Leviticus 23).[80] Tropical Mesoamerica experiences a wet and a dry season year round. There is presently no evidence of pre-Columbian barley in Central America. Evidence of barley cultivation in ancient northern American has been found near the Great Lakes (Bennett 2000). When the Book of Mormon mentions "seasons", it is clear from the context that only part of the year is referred to (Mosiah 18:4, Alma 46:40). It may be concluded that Book of Mormon lands were subject to more than two seasons with no impediment to keeping the ordinances of Israel (2 Nephi 5:10). Evidence indicates that winters were milder in western New York during Book of Mormon times.[81] Even in modern times, humid, western New York occasionally experiences a heat index of 80 - 90 °F (32 °C) in the spring and early summer (Alma 51:33).[82]
Opponents of a limited Great Lakes setting say that the cultures of the ancient inhabitants of the area (mound builder) do not match the Book of Mormon narrative, even though North American peoples associated with these cultures, are known to have been accomplished metal workers, and to have made impressive works of earth, timber, rock, and plaster ("cement", see 19th century definition, Oxford Dictionary; Joseph Smith History 1:52), not unlike the constructions described in the Book of Mormon (Alma 49:2-18, Alma 50:1-4, Helaman 3:9). Joseph Smith affirmed that at least some of the mound builders were the Nephites of the Book of Mormon. [83]
In opposition to placing the setting for the Book of Mormon in lands near the Great Lakes (lands now occupied by the United States of America, 1 Nephi 13:30, 2 Nephi 10:10-11, Doctrine and Covenants 10:48-51) it has been suggested that a feature as significant as Niagara Falls could not escape mention in the Book of Mormon had this been the area in which the civilizations described in it existed (Palmer 1990). However, in the limited Great Lakes setting proposed by Olive, Niagara Falls situate on a watery western extremity and would not have been encountered in any of the situations detailed in the abridged Nephite narrative. The fact that western New York was inundated in antiquity fits the description found in Ether 13:2. Olive points out that there were several cataracts along the northern escarpment, resulting from the overflow of old Lake Tonawanda (believed to be the Book of Mormon's land-dividing sea, Ether 10:20). More than one of these may have rivaled the falls of Niagara (Olive 2008). The land northward in Olive's Book of Mormon settings certainly qualifies as a land of "many water, rivers and fountains" (Mormon 6:4). It may well be asked why Niagara Falls should have received so much attention.[84]
Particularly troublesome to the Mesoamerica geography hypothesis, is the fact LDS scripture places Cumorah, a land which the Book of Mormon says is "in a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains", near New York's Finger Lakes, just south of Lake Ontario (Doctrine and Covenants 128:20; Church History maps 1, 2 and 3 accompanying the Doctrine and Covenants). Based on LDS scripture and statements of early church members, several General Authorities of the church have publicly opposed the idea that Cumorah is in Mexico or Central America.[85]
It is clear that the Book of Mormon "land northward" has a limiting northern boundary. The land is likely bounded on the north by the exceedingly large "waters of Ripliancum", whereas Southern Mexico is open on the north to the continent (Ether 15:8-11, 3 Nephi 4:23, 3 Nephi 7:12, Alma 50:29, Helaman 3:8). In counties near Lake Ontario, E.G. Squier, commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution, documented the remains of numerous earth and timber "castles" and "towns" constructed by the indigenous peoples of western New York (Squier 1849). With the expansion of modern civilization, aboriginal monuments and antiquities have vanished from the New York landscape.[86]
From written statements made by Joseph Smith, it may be concluded that Book of Mormon peoples or their descendents migrated from "the lake country of America" (near Lake Ontario) to Mexico and Central America. There is no known statement by Joseph Smith, however, which explicitly asserts that Book of Mormon lands are to be found in Mexico and Central America.[87]
During the fall of 1842, Joseph Smith found it necessary to go into hiding (Doctrine and Covenants 127:1, Doctrine and Covenants 128:1). During this time, several anonymous and contradictory articles, doting on the discoveries of John Lloyd Stephens, were published in the church's Times and Seasons newspaper. Joseph Smith thought highly of Stephens' bestseller but only made minor mention of it in his "AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES" editorial (July 15, 1842). The anonymous "ZARAHEMLA" article (October 1, 1842), on the other hand, alleges that the Central American ruins of Quirigua (now known to date more recent than Book of Mormon times) are none other than the ruins of Zarahemla or some other Book of Mormon city. This sensational piece was published in the same issue as a signed letter to the church from Joseph Smith (in hiding). Inferred in Joseph Smith's epistle (dated September 6, 1842) is the Finger Lakes location of Cumorah. A careful study of the Book of Mormon shows that Zarahemla cannot be thousands of miles distance from the land Cumorah (Mosiah 8:7-8, Mosiah 21:25-26, Mormon 6:2-6, Ether 1:1-2, Ether 15:11-12).
It is unlikely that things as common as monkeys (translated "apes" in the KJV) and palm trees could escape mention in the Book of Mormon had Mesoamerica been the area in which the civilizations describes in it existed. In the Book of Mormon, the only reference to anything like a jaguar is "leopard", and this occurs only in quotations from the biblical prophet Isaiah. On the other hand, "lions" (possibly cougars) are mentioned more than once in Nephite history (Mosiah 20:10, Alma 14:29).
Contrary to several artistic depictions, there is no explicit reference to any temple or pyramid made of hewn stone in New World Book of Mormon lands. We read that the Nephites constructed their temples from timber (2 Nephi 5:15-16, Helaman 3:9). Hugh Nibley remarked:
In the Nephites we have a small and mobile population dispersed over a great land area, living in quickly built wooden cities, their most ambitious structures being fortifications of earth and timbers occasionally reinforced with stones. The vast majority of Book of Mormon people, almost all of them in fact, are eligible for the title of "migrating and nomadic" peoples. We have seen that the Lamanites were a slothful predatory lot on the whole, and that even the Nephites were always "wanderers in a strange land.[88]
The Book of Mormon is a history of a related primitive church, and one may well ask what kind of remains the Nephites would leave us from their more virtuous days. A closer approximation to the Book of Mormon picture of Nephite culture is seen in the earth and palisade structures of the Hopewell and Adena culture areas than in the later stately piles of stone in Mesoamerica.[89]
By comparison, there are numerous references to buildings made of hewn stone in the Old Testament (1 Kings 5:15). Mexico and Central America are renowned for stone ruins.
A place of inheritance by a west sea:
The Book of Mormon indicates that there was a western sea near the place of the American land of "first inheritance". (Alma 22:28) There is nothing in the Book of Mormon indicating that this west sea was saltwater. The biblical word "yam", translated "sea", doesn't necessarily mean ocean.[90] An early Mormon document in the handwriting of Frederick G. Williams speculates that Lehi's company "sailed in a southeast direction and landed on the Continent of South America in Chili [Chile] thirty degrees south latitude." This document greatly influenced a tradition that Lehi's family voyaged across the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the vast Pacific Ocean. Twentieth Century LDS Church authorities, however, called the Williams document into question.[91] The idea that the "west sea" of the Book of Mormon is the Pacific Ocean has, nevertheless, persisted in localized Central American, South American and exaggerated hemispheric settings for the Book of Mormon.[92]
Mesoamerican setting advocate John E. Clark writes that all seas that bordered New World Book of Mormon lands "had to be the Pacific and Atlantic oceans..."[93] This statement is without clear scriptural support. Citing Alma 22:28, Clark alleges that "Lehi arrived from the Old World across the west sea". Great Lakes, and American Heartland setting advocates point out that this verse (cited by Clark), does not in fact say that Lehi voyaged across "the west sea".[94] Clark alleges that the designations of west and east seas in the Book of Mormon "... are tied to... original arduous journeys across oceans and the receding direction of their [the voyaging immigrant's] forfeited homeland." But LDS scripture does not clearly identify "the waters of the great deep", "the great waters" or "the many waters" that Book of Mormon peoples voyaged across, with either of the seas immediately west or east of the lands of Zarahemla and Nephi.[95] Clark's broad oceanic reference frame(s) seems inconsistent with the clearly local designation of "the sea on the west and on the east" of a terrestrial location "by the narrow pass...".[96] It can only be concluded, based on LDS scripture, that the American land of "first inheritance" extended to and included a place by the shore of a sea that situated west relative to the land of Nephi. To allege that all Book of Mormon seas are oceans is to make extrapolations beyond what the scripture actually states.[97] The logic that sea = ocean, fails in the case of many biblical verses that refer to a "sea" or "the sea".[98] Even "the great sea" (the Mediterranean, Numbers 34:6) bordering the biblical Promise Land, is essentially an inland body of water.
Rejecting hemispheric settings and accepting the scriptural location of Cumorah (D&C 128:20), LDS authors Olive, May and others, have concluded that the "many waters" crossed by Lehi's family involved the Atlantic Ocean.[99] This view is clearly at odds with the Indian and Pacific Ocean tradition alleged in sources like the Williams document. A prophetic vision recorded in the Book of Mormon describes how "a man among the Gentiles" was seen navigating "the many waters". The reference to "the many waters" in this instance, is unequivocally interpreted by LDS to mean the Atlantic Ocean, and the implicit descriptions (in the scripture) of events in colonial American history, seems to support this conclusion.[100]
The scenario advanced by Heartland and Great Lakes setting advocates considers that events at Jerusalem and teetering family relations, had made it unwise for Lehi's family to flee to the populated Mediterranean coast. The prospect of sailing to another land of promise by way of the Mediterranean was therefore out of the question. In an effort to avoid adversaries, Lehi's family fled into the southern desert, eventually arriving at an isolated location on the southeastern shore of the Arabian Peninsula. There they constructed a ship. Currents and seasonal winds at this location could have carried them to the coast of Africa and southward.[101] There may have been more than thirty individuals in Lehi's company at this point. They would have had only so much stowage aboard their vessel for food and fresh water. The preferred route to the land of promise would have been one that would stay within easy reach of a coastline (food and much needed fresh water) most of the voyage. After "many days" at sea, they confronted a fearsome tempest (proposed to have occurred near Africa's horn). Thereafter, with enough fresh water and supplies stored on board, they crossed over to the Western Hemisphere along the shorter and more direct route between the Old World and the New World – assisted by the prevailing winds and equatorial currents of the Atlantic. Still aided by currents and winds, they sailed along American coasts and island chains until they arrived near the Gulf of Mexico. At this point the opinions of Olive and May diverge as to the final landing of Lehi.
Favoring a setting more localized near the Great Lakes, Olive writes that Lehi's company were directed by divine guidance across the Gulf of Mexico and up interconnected North American rivers such as the Mississippi, Ohio and other navigable ancient water ways, to within a short distance of the Book of Mormon's "west sea" or "west sea, south" – the freshwater Great Lake Erie (according to Olive).[102] Both May and Olive agree that the northern arrivals of other ancient peoples in the Book of Mormon occurred by way of the Atlantic Ocean and St. Lawrence Seaway.
Joseph Smith was open to the possibility that Book of Mormon peoples migrated from lands as far north as present-day Quebec to Mexico and Central America, but clearly placed the arrival of the Jaredites in the region of "the lake country of America" (near Lake Ontario).[103] Non-Mormon Josiah Priest, whose written work Joseph Smith editorialized, explicitly associated the title "lake country" with the Great Lakes region of America.[104]
A Feasible Voyage to the American Promised Land - expandable
South American setting [ edit ]
A commonly held belief among the LDS for many years was that Lehi's group landed on the coast of Chile. This is supported by a record written in 1836 by Frederick G. Williams which suggests that Joseph Smith once stated that Lehi "landed on the continent of South America, in Chile, thirty degrees, south latitude."[105] In the mid-1970s, several books were published by LDS researchers that proposed this geographical model (Priddis 1975).
A booklet published in 1882 by Franklin D. Richards made the claim that this information had been received by revelation through Joseph Smith.
LEHI'S TRAVELS.—Revelation to Joseph the Seer. The course that Lehi and his company traveled from Jerusalem to the place of their destination: They traveled nearly a south, southeast direction until they came to the nineteenth degree of north latitude; then, nearly east to the Sea of Arabia, then sailed in a southeast direction, and landed on the continent of South America, in Chili [sic], thirty degrees south latitude.[106]
Challengers of the limited geography model use this statement, along with the teachings of early Mormon missionaries supporting the idea of a landing in Chile, as evidence that the widespread belief in the hemispheric geography model was based upon a revelation through Joseph Smith, and that any information to the contrary constitutes "apologetic denial" (Vogel 2004, p. 629 note 18). In addition, the story of Zelph is used to support the idea the Joseph Smith promoted a hemispheric geography for the Book of Mormon. LDS scholars point out that in the earlier document authored by Frederick G. Williams, that the words "Lehi's Travels" and "Revelation to Joseph the Seer" do not appear in this text as they do in the subsequent 1882 publication (Roper 2004).
A paper authored by LDS affiliated research group FARMS notes that the document authored by Frederick G. Williams "does not attribute the statement to Joseph Smith and, although Richards follows closely the Williams account, he gives no source for the statement or the title. There is no known earlier historical evidence associating this specific statement with Joseph Smith."[107]
The claim of a landfall in Chile may have actually originated with Orson Pratt, who often included the Chile landing hypothesis in his writings and said that "this view was actually based upon his own inference from the Book of Mormon text" (Roper 2004). In a talk given in 1872, Pratt described Lehi's group as "landing on the western coast of what is now called South America. As near as we can judge from the description of the country contained in this record the first landing place was in Chili [sic], not far from where the city of Valparaiso now stands" (Pratt 1872, p. 325). Pratt's opinions were incorporated into the geographical footnotes that he added into the 1879 edition of the Book of Mormon (Sorenson & Roper 2002).
Malay Peninsular setting [ edit ]
In 2004, Ralph A. Olsen suggested that it is possible that the events recorded in the Book of Mormon took place in a limited area somewhere other than the Western Hemisphere. In his opinion, many Book of Mormon events could plausibly be placed in the Malay Peninsula.[108] This author has acknowledged that consideration of his "Malay hypothesis" by LDS scholars would require Book of Mormon archaeology to "undergo a radical paradigm shift—one that many would consider quite far-fetched."[108]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Well! It seems that a user from GameFaqs, has got an early hands on Gameinformer’s December issue. Due to this some serious information has leaked out. Please take this information with a grain of salt.
First off, Grand Theft Auto 5 will have multiple playable characters. Albert DeSilva, a 42 year old man, who has an ex-wife and two kids. The second playable character is Dougie Vejo, a criminal from Los Santos.
Also, car customization is back along with character traits like clothes, hair and facial hair. Unfortunately, unlike previous GTA games there will be no gym or tattoos.
The complete list of leaked information is below:
-You play as Albert DeSilva a half american half puerto rican american
-He is 42 years old and has an ex wife and 2 kids
– the show breaking bad has a little influence on the game as Albert is drawn to the life of crime from an older age for the money.
-You also play as Dougie Vejo a younger criminal just coming up in Los Santos
-Los Santos is the only large city, smaller towns round out the countrtyside.
– Grove Street makes a return, however Carl and Sweet are not in the game.
-Money plays a large part as Albert lost most of his in a ponzi like scheme.
-Property buying is back
-The only customization for characters are clothes/hair/facial hair. no gyms or tattoos
-one or more characters from 4 may show up
-car customization is back, seems more fitting for Dougie however Albert may be going through a midlife crisis.
-the triumphant return of Lovefist!!! or as the band is now known as the Jezzies.
-Songs confirmed so far: My Michelle-Guns and Roses, Magic Power- Triumph, California Dreaming- The beach boys and Beautiful-Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell.
-New mini games include golf, tennis and surfing
– Mission played was called “Alimony” featured the scene from the trailer in which they rob the jewelry store
Of course there will be a lot more information when the December Issue of Gameinformer hits the stands. The game is confirmed for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 for spring 2013. GTA 5 is not confirmed for the PC yet.
Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more news and updates.btctalk
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Full MemberActivity: 135Merit: 100 Super Bitcoiner Keychain (Open Source) February 09, 2016, 04:45:12 AM
Last edit: February 24, 2016, 07:52:12 PM by btctalk #1
As a fun project I started designing a keychain that I would like, and to be honest I love the end result.
It's 10 USD payable with Bitcoin (Shipping included, Worldwide).
You can see more information and buy it at:
Here are a few pictures of the keychain:
I'm only selling them with Bitcoin or give them for free to anyone that I believe is a true Bitcoiner, Just for the fun of having a secret community
P.S. If you think you are a real bitcoiner and have done real work in this sphere, let me know and I'd be happy to send one free of charge for you. Hi,As a fun project I started designing a keychain that I would like, and to be honest I love the end result.It's 10 USD payable with Bitcoin (Shipping included, Worldwide).You can see more information and buy it at: http://superbitcoiner.com Here are a few pictures of the keychain:I'm only selling them with Bitcoin or give them for free to anyone that I believe is a true Bitcoiner, Just for the fun of having a secret communityP.S. If you think you are a real bitcoiner and have done real work in this sphere, let me know and I'd be happy to send one free of charge for you.
Super Bitcoiner Club
Persian Bitcoin Community - http://fb.com/IranBitcoin Persian Blockchain Consultation Group: http://shiryakhat.net Super Bitcoiner Club http://superbitcoiner.com Persian Bitcoin Community - http://btctalk.com
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In Memory of Zepher
Copper MemberLegendaryActivity: 1652Merit: 1522In Memory of Zepher Re: Super Bitcoiner Keychain (Open Source) February 09, 2016, 12:42:12 PM #4 Quote from: btctalk on February 09, 2016, 04:45:12 AM
As a fun project I started designing a keychain that I would like, and to be honest I love the end result.
I'm only selling them with Bitcoin or give them for free to anyone that I believe is a true Bitcoiner, Just for the fun of having a secret community
You can find more pictures and details on how to buy them from the website:
P.S. If you think you are a real bitcoiner and have done real work in this sphere, let me know and I'd be happy to send one free of charge for you.
Hi,As a fun project I started designing a keychain that I would like, and to be honest I love the end result.I'm only selling them with Bitcoin or give them for free to anyone that I believe is a true Bitcoiner, Just for the fun of having a secret communityYou can find more pictures and details on how to buy them from the website: http://superbitcoiner.com P.S. If you think you are a real bitcoiner and have done real work in this sphere, let me know and I'd be happy to send one free of charge for you.
Great keychain. Seems to be nice quality!!
PM sent.
Thanks Great keychain. Seems to be nice quality!!PM sent.Thanks PHYSIBIT MANTIS CRYPTOS CRYPTO QUILTS - The best and most trusted places to shop for physical bitcoins and more!!10 Steps to Avoid Becoming a Millionaire
Hey Stumble Upon visitors! Thanks for coming by.
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About No Debt Plan: From my about page:
My name is Kevin and I author this blog. I write No Debt Plan to help readers eliminate debt, learn how to budget and save, and move themselves towards financial freedom. I began writing on personal finance in late 2006 on my personal blog, but started No Debt Plan in January of 2008 to give my personal finance articles a permanent, focused home.
* * * * *
Jonathan over at Master Your Card recently asked his readers, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?“. He gave ten tips on how to achieve becoming a millionaire.
I thought it might be fun to provide the mirror image of those tips. In short, to show you how to not become a millionaire. Here goes!
Ten Steps to Avoid Becoming a Millionaire
Accept whatever salary an employer offers. Negotiating is a hard, scary process. Don’t bother with it and just be happy you have a job. Don’t try to improve yourself at work. Stick to the status quo. Act like you’re in a union. Only do what you are told to do. Ignore naysayers or people warning you of an upcoming layoff. Never leave the company you work for. Unless you are fired or laid off, don’t leave your current employer. Remember, they gave you a shot! You owe it to them to stick around for as long as possible. Don’t track how much you earn and spend. Budgeting by far is the most difficult thing to do in personal finance. It takes a lot of time and can expose our true financial selves. That can be painful. Just don’t do it. Spend more than you earn. If the credit card company is willing to let you pay off that plasma TV next year, why shouldn’t you? You’re in your prime! You can save later and catch up. It’ll be easy then. But for now, that Porsche Boxster, 4,000 sq. ft. house for two, and an exercise machine look mighty fine. Ignore work benefits. 401k plan? Sounds kind of funny to me. Why would the company want to give me money? Plus, I’d miss that 3% in every paycheck. Honest. I’m actually going to write an entire post on this soon, so stay tuned. Ignore your tax withholdings. Huge refund checks at the end of the year always save you from financial disaster. Why would you ever want to change that? It’s so much easier to just get the big check after tax season. Don’t open any IRAs. You’re already doing that darn 401k thing — that’s more than enough! 3% of your income already hurts. Plus, doesn’t IRA stand for Independent Righteous Arsenal? Invest sometime later. Remember, you’ve got bills to pay. There isn’t enough money to sit aside for investing. Just wait. You’ll use next year’s raise, or wait until the kids move out of the house. Then you’ll have time and money. Saving is complicated. Those guys on late night TV with the $99 investment programs must have gotten it lucky. Now look at them — making money by sharing their tips with the world. Hold on. I’ll be right back. I need to go order one.
Phew, that was hard. Time to go be a couch potato. Or maybe I’ll keep sitting here…
Update: This post has been featured at MSN’s Smart Spending Blog, has been all over Stumble Upon, and has been linked to by various personal finance sites. I hope it inspires all of you readers to do the right things, and learn how to retire a millionaire. I’m here to show you how to retire with millions by first getting out of debt. We’ll get to wealth building in the future as the No Debt Plan progresses.While it was difficult to not be warmed by the sight of Johnathan Thurston's daughter clutching her dark-skinned doll during her father's celebration of his NRL Grand Final win, it's worth pausing to ask why this image resonated so much with viewers?
Why would a black doll, belonging to a little girl with a high-profile Indigenous father, who lives in Townsville, in a region with a large Indigenous population, be newsworthy not just here, but also to organisations like Britain's BBC and Independent?
The moment: Johnathan Thurston with daughter Frankie after winning the 2015 NRL Grand Final. Credit:Cameron Spencer
One explanation could be it's just so rare to see a positive or, at least, uninflected image of an Indigenous person in mass media. If you live in a major city, it's a good chance you have little or no contact with Indigenous people because 65 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders live in outer or inner regional Australia or remote or very remote areas, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
I'd bet my own daughter's favourite doll, the majority of people tweeting about "how cool" or "inspirational" it was to see a black doll being held by an Indigenous child have never witnessed an Indigenous person buying a bottle of milk, picking up their kid from school or going fishing either.FEATURE – Too often we tend to focus on trying to replicate success, rather than analyze failure. Yet, learning from mistakes is a fundamental principle in lean. This account of a transformation gone south offers an insightful critique of lean.
Words: Dan Riley, writer and blogger, The Nobby Works
When a large outside consultancy firm brought lean to the place where I had been employed for 13 years, it landed with all the subtlety of a shock and awe campaign. The disruption to the workplace was alarming and ultimately counterproductive.
I say this as one of the few people at the company who had been familiar with lean due to my long-time friendship with Michael Ballé and my predisposition for lean by virtue of what I knew of Michael’s success with it as documented in his book The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround.
So sudden and disorienting were the changes brought to our company in the name of lean that I found myself in contact with Michael from the start to confirm the validity of the lean practices coming our way in such rapid succession.
I believe that many of the bad turns our company took under our lean initiative were due to the specific business model of the outside consultants hired to bring lean through our doors. I’ve documented those that I witnessed first hand in my book Look Before You Lean: How a Lean Transformation Goes Bad – A Cautionary Tale by Employee X. For the purposes of this article I will try to focus on issues that complicated our company’s lean transformation that may not be unique to the consultants we hired to lead that transformation.
It seems that a methodology that aims for an ultimate goal of continuous improvement would best unfold in an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary manner. On my first visit to Planet Lean, I noticed that Jim Womack had already addressed the question of taking an evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary approach to bringing lean into a workplace. In The Pace of Change: Evolution or Revolution he discusses kaikaku (revolution) vs. kaizen (evolution) and questions the advisability of leading with the revolutionary approach. Allow me to augment his more authoritative conclusion from my position as both a lean gadfly and the subject of a somewhat disruptive lean transformation.
I don’t know that many employers are aware of this essential truth – so it is not surprising that outside consultants would be unaware of it – but the one thing employees value above all else (even above their safety, I dare say) is workplace stability. This encompasses stability across the board – their company’s future, their paychecks, their assigned tasks, their supervisors, their co-workers, their workspace, their schedules. Anyone who presumes to disrupt that stability should take the metaphor of whacking a beehive with a stick very seriously. However much one thinks the beehive deserves a good whacking or might be better off with a good whacking, it is an open invitation to unintended consequences and letting matters fall quickly out of hand.
This is all especially true in a company such as the one where I worked, which had such a long tradition of making change at such a glacial pace that it was an open joke among the employees. Now one might say that such a culture sounds prime for what the consultants like to call a “shake-up”… and maybe so. But if you’re going to shake a company up as dramatically as ours was, you’d better be prepared with a plan for managing the forces the shake up unleashes.
Our lean shake-up consisted, in stunning fashion, of the immersion of most of the workforce in a breathless succession of Rapid Improvement Events; the redeployment of managers to meetings for mastering the intricacies of lean at the cost of leaving their departments unsupervised; papering every available wall space and blocking windows with Post-its and white boards filled with diagrams, flowcharts, and incomprehensible lean jargon; purging of materials and equipment deemed obsolete by the measure of standing in disuse for six months or more; eliminating offices and cubicles for an open floor plan.
The plan for helping employees cope with this enormous and sudden disruption was to tell workers ad nauseum that “change is hard.” Human beings know almost instinctively how hard change is – that’s precisely why we have such an ambivalent relationship with it. The priority, it seems, for the one introducing and directing the change – the one with the greatest investment in the success of the change – is to make it not so hard… to do everything possible to minimize the fear factor.
A non-revolutionary approach would involve the space of change as well as the pace of it. Ours was a global company with multiple divisions. A key division, and one that would actually be most readily attuned to a lean transformation, was our lab. A sensible introduction of lean would have started in the lab with the goal of creating over a period of a year or two demonstrable successes that could then be used to build credibility throughout the rest of the company. In addition, such an approach would have created a cadre of insider advocates for lean. Instead we went for the whole enchilada. Eating an enchilada, as we know, can be a messy, spicy enterprise that can come back on you. And so it did.
I would say that a second factor that led to my company’s lean failure was missing an early opportunity to model the kind of employee involvement necessary for lean to genuinely thrive.
In the first week of our lean initiative, a fellow employee of mine – known for her contrary nature even before lean arrived – asked why we were going through lean. She took a strong, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” stance. After patronizing attempts to mollify her, rather than directly and honestly answer her, she was “excused” from any further participation in lean events. As I write in my book, as a former high school teacher I was often confronted with contentious students demanding to know why they had to read this or write that, or even be in school. I learned early on that whatever time it took to answer that student’s question fully was worth it – if not to that particular student’s satisfaction at least to the greater enlightenment of the other students in the class who would be observing the exchange intently. The biggest problem in a classroom is not the noisy student, but the quiet ones who are afraid to speak up and don’t know or care how to question. Our school systems specialize in sending people into the |
Korea ]
“I informed South Korea it would be appropriate if they paid. It’s a billion-dollar system,” Trump said in an interview with the Reuters news agency. “It’s phenomenal, shoots missiles right out of the sky.”
The South Korean government had been reluctant to deploy the system, aimed at guarding against the North Korean threat, because it would anger China, its biggest trading partner.
South Koreans demonstrate on April 28 against the deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system called Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, near the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. (Lee Jin-man/AP)
The U.S. military urged Seoul to deploy the system, and the government agreed to it in July. Under the accord, the United States would pay for the system while South Korea would supply the land for it.
But it has remained controversial. Fierce opposition mounted when the U.S. military moved key pieces of THAAD equipment onto the deployment site in the middle of the night this week.
Pressure to make South Korea pay for THAAD is likely to boost support for liberal presidential candidate Moon Jae-in, who has vowed to review the previous government’s decision to host the system.
Moon already has a strong lead in polls ahead of the May 9 election. Among his policy proposals, he wants to resume engagement with North Korea, pursuing a starkly different course from Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach.
When progressives were elected president before — Kim Dae-jung in 1997 and Roh Moo-hyun in 2002 — anti-American sentiment rose sharply on both occasions, Straub said.
Moon’s team seized on Trump’s statement.
“It has become obvious that the deployment decision process was seriously flawed from the start,” Youn Kwan-suk, a spokesman for the Moon campaign, told reporters in Seoul.
[Twenty-five million reasons the U.S. hasn’t struck North Korea]
“As the THAAD system will have a big impact on our security and impose huge economic costs, it’s essential that we seek approval for it from the National Assembly,” Youn said, reiterating Moon’s intention to review the plan.
Centrist Ahn Cheol-soo, who has pledged to abide by the previous government’s deal with the United States, said that the agreement must be honored and that any changes would need National Assembly approval.
Even conservative parties that support the THAAD deployment said the issue was “a matter of trust” between the allies.
In another slight, Trump said the U.S. trade agreement with South Korea — forged during the George W. Bush administration and implemented in 2012 — was “a horrible deal” and threatened to terminate it.
“It was a Hillary Clinton disaster, a deal that should’ve never been made,” he said in an interview Thursday night with The Washington Post.
During a visit to South Korea earlier this month, Vice President Pence said the administration wants to overhaul the deal to make it fairer to the United States.
South Korean authorities said Friday that they had not been informed of either proposal.
“Our basic position remains unchanged,” South Korea's Defense Ministry said in a statement. The THAAD agreement reached last year remains in force, it said.
A Trade Ministry official said Seoul has not received a request to renegotiate the trade deal or a notice scrapping it. “We are trying to understand what President Trump said exactly and the context of his remark,” a ministry official told local media.
Read more:
N. Korea puts out video showing White House in crosshairs, carriers exploding
Here are the missiles North Korea just showed off, one by one
N. Korea’s Special Operations forces are numerous, mysterious and formidable
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign newsSan Antonio TV anchor's 'Shark Week' tip saves man
WOAI co-anchor Delaine Mathieu WOAI co-anchor Delaine Mathieu Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close San Antonio TV anchor's 'Shark Week' tip saves man 1 / 12 Back to Gallery
SAN ANTONIO — A San Antonio TV station is celebrating a quick-thinking news anchor.
Delaine Mathieu of WOAI News 4 San Antonio, used a scarf as a tourniquet to save a man's life who'd been hit on U.S. 281 in January, according to the station.
Mathieu, who co-anchors weekdays at 5 p.m., was reluctant about sharing the story on air, but received recognition Monday from her co-anchor Randy Beamer.
“She didn't want it to seem like she was patting herself on the back,” Beamer wrote. “But a man says he is alive today because of you... So I'm going to at least tell the basics of the story because we're proud of you and because it's a heck of a story.”
On Jan. 24, Paul Hernandez blew a tire on U.S. 281 near the Quarry and his car hit the median and ended up facing oncoming traffic, Beamer writes. Dazed from the accident, Hernandez got out of his vehicle and was struck by another car, which nearly severed his left leg.
Mathieu, on her way home from work, stopped to assist the man.
“While another passerby, Tech Sgt. Marc Esposito, calmed down Hernandez and tended to the severe wounds on his face, Delaine saw that Hernandez's lower leg was barely attached,” Beamer writes. “So she decided to use a scarf to tie a tourniquet around that leg, with the help of another woman who had stopped at the scene.”
Since the accident, Mathieu and Esposito have visited Hernandez in the hospital and doctors have said the tourniquet saved him from bleeding to death.
The anchor explained to Beamer on air that she picked up the tourniquet technique from “Shark Week.”
Mathieu is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and previously worked in Miami. She has won multiple journalism awards.
[email protected]
Twitter: @KoltenParkerWe start with some photos of Spike and PeeWee,
Though he is not in this episode, we'll see.
He's discovered by Twilight and at her behest,
The chick is returned to his parents and nest.
Owlowiscious appears, for some reason awake,
And we flip to Spike baking a gem-infused cake.
He munches on his gems as he makes his creation,
Finding them all gone he airs his frustration.
The owl indicates that the chef is to blame,
Causing Spike to sadden and loudly exclaim.
Fluttershy comes by to pawn off her pet,
And Spike soon accepts for her green garnet.
Angel is aghast and catches a ride back,
While Spike seeks to add some more gems to his snack.
RD and Rarity are two more to sway,
But Rainbow just laughs and promptly says neigh.
A series of crashes turns her view around,
With Spike soon promising to keep Tank off the ground.
Rarity does not even think to resist,
And Spike finds himself with a Twilight-sized list.
She leaves him in charge of her monstrosity,
Gem rather unfit for generosity.
He heads to Pinkie Pie's and starts talking to Gummy,
Pinkie not wondering when they became chummy.
Pinkie sees the point and leaves him in his care,
Scene then changing back to Twilight and Spike's lair.
To their pets the owners then say goodby,
With angry yelling from our own Pinkie Pie.
RD looks nervous but gives a cute pose,
As she grins and gives Tank a rub on the nose.
The mane six then leave and the trouble does start,
As their pets proceed to tear the house apart.
Spike does his best, soon calling a roll,
But Angel bunny he can't hope to control.
He puts them on leashes and begins his hunt,
Using the dog's nose he does locate the runt.
He's hanging with fillies unwelcome in cliques,
Fitting they'd be present in the one for sidekicks!
Over the pet rabbit the fillies do fawn,
And the other pets Spike soon is able to pawn.
Spike first is relieved, he will soon know elation!
But he returns soon for Tank's decapitation.
The fillies are frazzled, pride wounded and hurt,
Owlowiscious is pinned and covered in yogurt.
Spike takes the pet back but not his gem pay,
And I soon find poor Spike and his sad display.
I know I must help him overcome his greed,
His gem he finally is able to concede.
I donate his jewel and continue my stroll,
Giving Celestia a fight for best troll.
Spike continues to prove a less than great nanny,
Coming to the point where he's paying off Granny.
Spike is upset but only gets bad news,
As the train out of town Angel decides to use.
He goes in a panic; he must get on that train,
If Angel reaches Flutters it all is in vain!
He grabs the Crusaders and then hops aboard,
But the Crystal Empire they're now headed toward.
They look out the windows at white, falling snow,
As Spike whimpers and pays off one Donut Joe.
At the Crystal Empire they soon do arrive,
With Angel's owner quest still very much alive.
The bunny takes off and heads straight for the six,
Spike using his gem to get out of this fix.
They hide in the car and we get a great pun,
But soon it looks like the bunny has won.
Spike then breaks down and admits his defeat,
All he'd ever wanted was his own cake to eat.
The entire time he's been digging his grave,
This he deserves for how he did behave.
Angel then relents and grabs Spike a green jewel,
And Spike keeps himself from looking like a fool.
They arrive without problem and Spike soon confirms,
That he and the animals are now on good terms.
He goes back to the tree house to finish the confection,
But munches his last gem and eats the whole collection.Giannis Antetokounmpo, Tyreke Evans (USA TODAY Sports- Kelley L Cox)
If mistakes are the portals of discovery, summer is the perfect time to make them. Every player and team enters each offseason with several goals in mind, many of which hinge on whether or not certain skills can be developed and honed before the coming season kicks off. But training and practice performance only matters so much; if those additions and improvements can’t be made in-game, they’re all for naught. With that reality in mind, Summer League play has become something of a test lab for the league’s young players. And what was our favorite experiment among a host of many? Giannis Antetokounmpo, point guard.
No other Las Vegas Summer League image looms larger in our minds than this one: The Greek Freak lining up to jump tip; easily winning the Bucks possession; and retrieving the ball from a teammate to initiate halfcourt offense.
The results of Antetokounmpo’s time at point guard were mixed to say the least. Though he averaged 17.0 points per game on solid shooting numbers, Giannis also committed 18 turnovers against just seven assists over four games. For every one time he impressively split a double-team and aggressively attacked the rim after receiving a high ball-screen, Antetokounmpo made an errant pass or lost his dribble on three more occasions.
And that was fine. It was Summer League play, after all; it’s not like the Bucks were planning on using Giannis on the ball so frequently come the 2014-2015 season.
Except apparently they are.
In an interview with Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders, Antetokounmpo confirmed that he’d be playing some point guard this season and says the guidance of coach Jason Kidd and special advisor Gary Payton will be instrumental to growth at his new position.
“I’m not going to say I was shocked by it,” Antetokounmpo told Basketball Insiders when asked about the move to point guard. “It’s something that I feel comfortable with and I’ll play wherever Coach wants me to play, especially when it’s Coach Kidd who thinks that I can play point guard. That makes me feel like, ‘I can play it. I can play point guard.’ I’m going to try my best and just listen to Coach. I’ll do whatever Coach says to do and I’ll get more comfortable.” […] “Oh man, it’s really important and nice, since they’re some of the best point guards in NBA history,” Antetokounmpo said of Kidd and Payton. “Not only are they great point guards, they’re great basketball players and can help us all basketball wise. Whatever they say, that is what I’m going to do. I’m so happy to have guys like them as I figure out the position and to have them teach me. I’m really excited.”
Don’t be fooled by The Greek Freak’s diction, though – he won’t play point guard full-time this season. What’s far more realistic is that Kidd will afford him the freedom to grab a defensive rebound and set the offense himself, and that he’ll be used as a playmaker in general with greater frequency than his rookie season. Milwaukee isn’t grooming The Greek Freak to be Magic Johnson.
Instead, the Bucks are simply trying to maximize his vast array of raw tools by hoping he develops into a legitimate secondary ballhandler – or perhaps even more. That makes sense considering Antetokounmpo’s natural gifts, the young roster surrounding him, and the style Kidd will likely implement.
In Antetokounmpo and Jabari Parker, Milwaukee has a pair of big, athletic, versatile players that can occupy multiple roles. And given the position-less nature of Kidd’s Brooklyn Nets last season, the team’s young bucks – sorry – represent picture-perfect building blocks for the style preferred by its forward-thinking coach. So yielding The Greek Freak ample playmaking opportunities now won’t only make him a better player in the long-run, but also help foster the identity Milwaukee hopes to establish. It’s a win-win.
And from a purely selfish perspective perspective, it will definitely be fun to watch, too.
What do you think?
Follow Jack on Twitter at @ArmstrongWinter.
Follow Dime on Twitter at @DimeMag.
Become a fan of Dime Magazine on Facebook HERE.Today’s idea: You’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore. So why not build your own island nation and declare yourself enlightened despot?
Seasteading Institute
World | There are those who “blue sky” ideas to re-imagine society and there are those who “blue sea” them — like the folks at the Seasteading Institute of Palo Alto, Calif.
Bankrolled by a PayPal co-founder and run by a grandson of the free-market economist Milton Friedman, the institute’s goal is self-sufficient, deep-sea platforms “where those who are dissatisfied with our current civilization can go and build a different (and hopefully) better one,” as its Web site says.
Bloomberg
Such dreamers aren’t alone, or the first, as several articles note (links below). “For decades, an assortment of romantics and whack jobs have fantasized about fleeing the oppressive strictures of modern government and creating a laissez-faire society on the high seas,” Wired observed earlier this year. “Over the decades, they’ve tried everything from fortified sandbars to mammoth cruise ships. Nearly all have been disasters.”
True, but one difference today is improved knowhow, as The Futurist notes — be it in the design of floating utopias or built-up artificial islands (the latter a specialty of Dubai, above).
Let’s just hope they’ve prepared for rising sea levels, and the reaction of powerful governments onshore. Wait, wasn’t this a James Bond movie? [Times of London, Popular Science, Wired, The Futurist, Cato]
Associated Press
More Recommended Reading:Photograph by Erlend Aaby / Flickr
In the 1960s, the moral philosopher Philippa Foot devised a thought experiment that would revolutionize her field. This ethical puzzle, today known as the “trolley problem,” has become so influential—not just in philosophy but also in neuroscience, behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology, and meme culture—that it’s garnered its own tongue-in-cheek sub-discipline, called “trolleyology.” That body of commentary, wrote one philosopher, “makes the Talmud look like Cliffs Notes.”
The person largely responsible for popularizing the trolley problem was the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson. Her 1976 paper, “Killing, Letting Die, and The Trolley Problem,” tweaked the original scenario. In Foot’s version, five workers are on a track in front of a runaway trolley, and you, the conductor, must choose whether to change tracks, which will put you on a collision course with just a single worker—you could be responsible for the death of one instead of five. But in Thomson’s version, you are a bystander on a footbridge positioned behind an extremely fat man. You notice that, if you were to push him onto the tracks, he’d be large enough to derail the runaway train, saving everyone (except him). Should you?
Most recoil at the option, even though sacrificing the fat man would ultimately save five people. On the other hand, changing tracks to avoid killing five people seems like a moral no-brainer, even though one person ends up dying as well. Why we have different moral responses to these numerically identical scenarios seemed, to many sorts of researchers interested in ethics and moral psychology, a question worth asking: Jesse Prinz, a philosopher of psychology at the City University of New York, for instance, thinks moral obligations can be empirically discovered. Others think it may help clarify our moral intuitions; and maybe, by putting subjects in an fMRI when they’re reasoning about this, it could also illuminate why we think the way we do about the dilemma in its different forms. But what if this dilemma is too simplistic to be useful?
That’s what Christopher Bauman, a social psychologist at the University of California, in Irvine, proposed, along with some colleagues, in a 2014 paper. They were “concerned” by these dilemmas for three reasons: First, “they are amusing rather than sobering”; second, “they are unrealistic and unrepresentative of the moral situations people encounter in the real world”; and three, “they do not elicit the same psychological processes as other moral situations.” For example, as the authors go on to say, “People often scoff at the notion that the fat man’s body could really stop a train, question whether there really is no place for workers on the track to go, and dispute whether anyone could really appraise all of the important aspects of the situations with certainty and in time to act.”
While most people aren’t fazed by the certainty assumed in each dilemma (you take it for granted that the fat man will, if you push him off the bridge, stop the train), some can’t get over it. In a 2009 paper on the trolley problem, for instance, authors noted that approximately 5 percent of their subjects in one study, and 12 percent in another, circled the choice, “I did not find the description from the preceding pages to be realistic, and my answers reflect my inability to take seriously the description that was given.”
It turns out that introducing uncertainty changes how people think about the dilemma. In a 2014 study, psychologists Katherine Kortenkamp and Colleen F. Moore first gave subjects a version of the trolley problem where outcomes were guaranteed to occur, and then one where they weren’t. Subjects in the latter case were less likely to think killing one to save five was either “appropriate” or “moral” (they were asked about each). Under uncertainty, “participants may have relied more on deontological,” or rule-based reasoning, “than utilitarian moral reasoning,” the researchers say. The latter relies on being able to know what the consequence of your action will be—but if you are unsure, you might feel it safer, and not just ethically, to act according to a moral precept.
This explanation aligns with the results of a 1992 study titled, “The disjunction effect in choice under uncertainty.” That paper found “that uncertainty of outcomes leads to less consequentialist decision making in nonmoral decision scenarios,” Kortenkamp and Moore say. “These findings suggest that if research on moral judgments and reasoning is to apply to uncertain situations, the fact of uncertainty must be considered.”
Maybe it’s simply time for us to put the brakes on moral dilemmas like the trolley problem, with their built-in, clear-cut consequences and embrace more ambiguity—real life is full of it.
Matthew Sedacca is an editorial intern at Nautilus.
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Watch: Simon DeDeo, who studies cosmic microwaves and crime, describes how feedback loops shape our morals.
The lead photograph is courtesy of Erlend Aaby via Flickr.SEATTLE – Feb. 6, 2014 – Seattle Reign FC today announced that they have reached a multi-year agreement with Seattle Public Schools to play their regular season home matches at Seattle’s Memorial Stadium. The venue will also serve as the official training complex of Reign FC. Seattle Reign FC trained and played their inaugural season at Starfire Sports Complex in Tukwila, Wash.
UPDATE: 2014 season schedule released
Memorial Stadium is a 12,000-seat stadium located on the northeast corner of the Seattle Center campus, with the iconic Space Needle serving as the stadium’s backdrop. Built in 1947, the stadium was dedicated to honor the Seattle youth that lost their lives in World War II. The historic stadium has been the site of many significant moments in Seattle history. In 1962, Memorial Stadium served as the venue for much of the opening ceremonies of the World’s Fair. The venue has played host to legendary music groups such as Pearl Jam, The Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan. Memorial Stadium was also the original home of the NASL Seattle Sounders during their first two seasons in 1974 and 1975.
“Seattle Public Schools is proud that Seattle Reign FC have selected Memorial Stadium as their home field and we look forward to a long partnership,” said Seattle Public Schools Athletic Director Eric McCurdy.
“This move exemplifies our desire to continuously improve our club on and off the field,” said Reign FC Owner Bill Predmore. “We are thrilled to call Memorial Stadium home and we are excited to build a strong and enduring partnership with Seattle Public Schools.”
Despite Memorial Stadium’s long history, its playing surface is contemporary. Designed by Seattle’s own award-winning firm, D.A. Hogan, the field is built on top of the same Elastic Layer (E-Layer) utilized at CenturyLink Stadium, which provides consistency and shock absorbing properties; the current AstroTurf synthetic field was installed in July of 2013. The fibers utilized in Memorial Stadium’s field are in use on more than 3500 fields globally, including on several fields at Starfire Sports Complex. Reign FC will be painting over the field’s existing football lines, and in doing so will expand the length and width of the field dimensions when adding soccer-specific lines.
Sydney Leroux and Hope Solo had the opportunity to experience a substantially similar playing surface recently when the US Women’s National Team hosted Brazil at the Florida Citrus Bowl, home of Major League Soccer expansion team Orlando City SC. The Reign duo fared well with Leroux scoring twice while Solo made several spectacular saves and was named Budweiser Woman of the Match.
“Everyone at AstroTurf joins me in congratulating Reign FC on this momentous move into the heart of Seattle.” AstroTurf’s Director of Soccer, Anthony DiCicco added, “Our commitment to Seattle Reign FC, Seattle Public Schools and Memorial Stadium is to provide ongoing support and service to ensure that the home field of Reign FC lives up to the high standards set by the organization and Seattle’s renowned soccer community.”
“From a football perspective, the pitch is exactly what we were looking for,” said Reign FC head coach and general manager Laura Harvey. “The stadium itself represents a massive opportunity to enhance the experience we can offer to our fans.”
As part of the partnership with Seattle Public Schools, Reign FC has begun major renovations to two of the locker rooms at the stadium and has started the planning process for many other improvements to the stadium grounds.
The concourse of Memorial Stadium will offer an outstanding match-day experience for all Reign FC fans. Reign FC has partnered with local food truck vendors to enhance the in-stadium food experience at matches. Contigo Modern Mexican andPompeii Wood Fired Pizza will be featured numerous times throughout the season. In addition, Where Ya at Matt—whom The New York Times ranked as the ninth-best food truck in America—will be appearing at the season opener.
goalWA.net Local Soccer News is sponsored by Pro Roofing Northwest, Kirkland, Bellevue, Seattle, Redmond, Woodinville, Federal Way, Everett, Snohomish, Issaquah, Renton, Kent, Bothell, Edmonds Washington roofing company.
Beer and wine will not be sold during Reign FC matches, as per Seattle Public Schools policy. However, Reign FC is working with local pubs and restaurants to organize and host pre-match events.
Reign FC plans to open only one side of Memorial Stadium for seating during the 2014 NWSL season, setting the maximum seating capacity at 6,000 people.
Grandstand seating – all covered – will be available at three different price levels. In addition, a limited number of pitch-side VIP tables will be available for purchase. Single match tickets in the Premium Grandstand section will be sold for $29, or at a discounted rate of $288.00 for the entire 12-match season. The remaining seats in the grandstand will be split into two sections – Grandstand A and Grandstand B – and single match tickets will be sold for $24 and $19 in those sections, respectively. Season tickets in the Grandstand A section will sell for $228, while season tickets in the Grandstand B section will sell for just $168. Tickets can be purchased by visiting the Reign FC website at www.ReignFC.com.
Fans that purchased season tickets to the 2014 Reign FC season prior to this announcement will be eligible for a full refund if they prefer not to attend Reign FC matches at Memorial Stadium. Fans wishing to request a full refund for their season ticket package should call (206) 330-0611 or send an email [email protected]. A Reign FC representative will immediately process any refund requests.
Reign FC has designated Seattle Public Schools as its Premier Community Partner. As a key component of this partnership Reign FC will be donating tickets to faculty members and parents of students in the District. In addition, Reign FC will provide tickets and memorabilia items that can be used to help raise money to fund District student athletic activities. Seattle Reign FC players and coaches will also visit with student athletes in an effort to inspire students, reinforce healthy behaviors and to serve as community role models.
The stadium’s namesake will be celebrated throughout the season by means of the league-wide partnership between the Army National Guard and the NWSL. The Army National Guard will have the opportunity to host a “Military Night” at a Reign FC match, during which Guard members will participate in the first kick and coin toss, and will also partake in a halftime presentation. The Army National Guard will also have an on-site presence at Reign FC games throughout the season and will receive in-stadium signage at nationally televised games as well as video and public address announcements to build awareness of the Army National Guard’s Grassroots Soccer program.
Memorial Stadium is located at 401 5th Ave. N in Seattle, Wash. The stadium is easily accessible via public transportation as fifteen different Metro bus routes stop at Seattle Center. Additionally, the Seattle Center Monorail operates daily from Westlake Center to Seattle Center.
For fans commuting by car, the stadium is most conveniently accessible via I-5 or Highway 99. Parking will be available to Reign FC fans in multiple locations surrounding Memorial Stadium. On-site parking is available in the Memorial Stadium parking lot at the southwest corner of Republican St. and 5th Ave. N. Additional parking is available at the 5th Ave. N. Parking Garage, located across the street from the stadium at the northeast corner of Harrison St. and 5th Ave. N. on the campus of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. All parking facilities are managed independent of Seattle Reign FC.
The new home of Seattle Reign FC neighbors many other Seattle civic attractions. Seattle Center is also home to the Experience Music Project Museum, Seattle Center Armory, SIFF Film Center, Seattle Opera, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Pacific Science Center and the Space Needle. Fans interested in dining before entering the stadium can choose from an array of local restaurants and bars within walking distance of the stadium grounds.
“We are excited to welcome Seattle Reign FC to the Seattle Center campus and look forward to watching them march towards a National Women’s Soccer League title,” said Robert Nellams, Director of Seattle Center.
“Our objective since day one has been to become one of the best women’s football clubs in the world. Moving to Memorial Stadium moves us a step closer to creating the foundation that will allow us to achieve that goal,” said Harvey. “We have found a place to call home in the heart of downtown Seattle and we couldn’t be happier about that.”
AdvertisementsRemember how I was just gushing about my love for cycling?
Well, yesterday I fell off my bike. And when you fall off a bike with clipless pedals the bike goes right along with you. Meaning, it falls on top of you. Before I could unlatch my foot from the pedal I somehow rode off the sidewalk, got caught at the edge, and then fell flat over on the sidewalk. Good thing I was at almost a complete stop and good thing for that helmet. If you have ever worn clipless pedals before you most likely have had a similar experience.
This doesn't dampen my love for cycling, I just found the timing to be funny.
Of course there was a witness to the scene about 10 steps in front of me. To see someone on their bike almost at a complete stop fall flat over must have been quite the site. Embarasssing.Today, it's rare to stumble across an album that works on so many levels at Alt-J's An Awesome Wave: musically, lyrically, and overall as an album.
Musically, the album is phenomenal. The group draws from a wide range of influences. Most interestingly, there is a definite electronic influence: the ambient noises and audible textures that are produced electronically for some groups are created acoustically by Alt-J's fantastic percussionist. Balanced with a broad range of acoustic and electronic instruments, the album's music shows a great range by the band's members.
Lyrically, it becomes apparent upon the first listen that the songwriter is well-read. He draws inspiration from anything from Where the Wild Things Are to Leon the Professional, doing so while keeping the lyrics relateable and interesting. Vocally, the lyrics are performed with an often-syncopated rhythm that itself becomes part of the music. On top of that, the lead singer has a vocal quality that is difficult to describe and sings with a huge range.
I find this album particularly interesting, however, because of the arrangement of the tracks. In a world of digital downloads and the option to buy any track separately, I find it encouraging that Alt-J went through the trouble to be sure that the album holds together so well as an album rather than a collection of songs. Overall, the album loosely tells the story of a relationship from the perspective of one person through the themes of it's tracks; it opens with a story about a girl with OCD praying for a good life, the high points of the relationship with Tessellate and Breezeblocks, troubled times with Something Good, Dissolve Me and Matilda, loss with Ms, anger with Fitzpleasure and Bloodflood, death (in this interpretation it would be of the relationship) with Taro, and Handmade, a song about scars and not being to move on.
Five stars. I can't wait for the next album.Damien O'Donohoe, the chief executive of the Caribbean Premier League, believes there is space in the cricket calendar for the CPL and the new English T20 league, set to start in 2020, to co-exist and eventually benefit each other.
The 2016 CPL was staged from June 29 to August 7, which is likely to be the timeframe the ECB will try to exploit with the new T20 league that is causing much angst in the county game. The ECB is keen to make use of the school summer holidays, which run from mid-July through August, to try to attract a new, younger fan base to the sport.
But the fact that English cricket is only now looking to revamp its domestic T20 competition - and is still three years from having the new venture ready to launch - means other T20 leagues are well ahead in their development. While the ECB has managed to find a way of accommodating the IPL, allowing players who wish to compete to take part in the tournament, and in some cases actively encouraging participation in the Big Bash League, which has no impact on the English summer, the direct competition from the CPL could cause problems.
There may be an indication of the impact during the 2017 English season when the NatWest Blast returns to a block in later summer after three seasons of being played largely on Friday nights from mid-May until late July. In those three years, the CPL has forged its position as an attractive proposition for overseas cricketers. Staging the NatWest Blast at the same time might mean missing out on the West Indian T20 stars - some of the more attractive signings in the game - who will already be in action for their CPL teams.
"It probably will be a similar window but we work quite closely with the ECB and at the end of the day there will be room for both leagues," O'Donohoe told ESPNcricinfo. "The ECB has their own challenges, and I really wouldn't envy their job, but they are real professionals who will make it a success. What we'd love in time is that we get the English stars in the CPL and they get some of ours."
But there is no denying that English cricket is playing catch-up with the format of the game they launched in 2003. "They have much bigger challenges in terms of the politics of the game than anybody else," O'Donohoe said. "Of course, they created this form so they should be leaders in this space, but they are not. But they have huge plans…so there will be great things to come."
Of more immediate interest to O'Donohoe is the continued growth of the CPL. He was speaking in London on Thursday when St Lucia Zouks became the last of the six sides to become a privately-owned franchise after its acquisition by Jignesh Pandya, the founder of the Rohan Group of companies, who currently serves as the Chairman of Global Sports Ventures and Royal Sports Club. Global Sports Ventures was recently announced as having signed a $70million deal with USACA.
The CPL staged six matches in the USA during the 2016 season and its plans for expansion in the country are well documented. O'Donohoe hopes that "in the not too distant future" there will be two franchises based in the US. He is also determined, though, that the CPL, which he believes stands second to the IPL among the various T20 leagues, needs to continue to play to its own strengths.
"When we speak to the guys at the Big Bash, which we do on a daily basis, they have a very different idea of what they are trying to do, trying to bring a whole new audience to the game. Some of their games get 80,000 people, which we could never do in the Caribbean, but from an international point of view we have 80 million TV viewers in India, are the first professional league to go into America and have our six franchises sold and hopefully in the not too distant future we can have two franchises in the US.
"Our single-biggest issue with the CPL has always been time zones and when we play our games. We have a huge international audience but if we play games during the day it doesn't fit with our product, we are a local product and can't fit it just for an international audience. The great thing about the east coast would be the time zone. Los Angeles would be fantastic so would San Francisco and Silicon Valley. We would love to go there in time, but the east coast will be our focus initially. New York would be No. 1 on our list. But we have a lot of work to do."These three snow leopard cubs were born at the Nordens Ark zoo in Bohuslän, Sweden on May 31. A webcam in their den is beaming their daily activities around the world to help raise awareness for the endangered cat.
The three cubs, two boys and a girl, currently spend much of their time sleeping. Their spotted camouflage often makes it difficult to make out the individual cubs as they cuddle for warmth.
Snow leopards are a famously elusive species, making field observations difficult. It wasn’t until 1970 that they were photographed for the first time in the wild, and since then scientists have only been able to gather snapshots of their solitary lives in Central Asia. Their wild population is estimated to be fewer than 7,500, according to the International Snow Leopard Trust. Although protected, they are still hunted occasionally by poachers for their fur and bones, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Captive-born snow leopards have never been released into the wild because biologists don't know if it could be done safely. At Nordens Ark, zoologists will watch the mother and cubs to learn more about their behavior, in hopes they will be able to apply that knowledge in the wild.
Nordens Ark is a non-profit organization whose mission is to study and breed endangered species. They hope their captive snöleopard breeding program, which provided another round of cubs in 2008, will help these shy cats come back from the brink. Thankfully, they’re letting us watch alongside them.President Trump issued an executive order late Friday afternoon that, as the New York Times summarizes, “suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely, and blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.” There has been a lot of action on the order in the courts today, and the disputes may be the first serious test of how the Trump Administration will deal with checks and balances.
Apparently, the usual agencies were kept out of the loop in the drafting of the order. On Fox News, Rudy Giuliani has taken credit for assembling a group of people who he claims drafted it. Giuliani states that Trump wanted a “Muslim ban” and that he needed a way to do it legally. According to Giuliani, his team decided to focus on countries rather than religion to give it “a factual basis” in terrorist threats, “not a religious |
Orange County lawyer Matthew McLaughlin, is fit to practice law.
McLaughlin did not respond to a telephone call seeking comment on Wednesday and has not spoken publicly about the proposal since he paid $200 to file the ballot language last month.
California is one of 21 states where citizens can petition to have laws put on the ballot through the gathering of voter signatures. Under California’s initiative process, state officials do not have authority to refuse to administer initiatives they find objectionable, the California Supreme Court has ruled.
Although few of the dozens submitted to the attorney general each year make it on the ballot, the ease with which residents with pet peeves can gain clearance to circulate their proposals while seeking signatures has prompted calls for reform.
University of California, Davis law professor Floyd Feeney said he wasn’t sure a court would agree to halt McLaughlin’s measure at this stage despite its obvious legal deficiencies.
“The courts, rightly or wrongly, treat the initiative as sort of the citizen right, and they are reluctant to get involved in trying to get rid of it, at least in advance, by using the law to keep something from being presented to the electorate,” Feeney said.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Dr Andrew McCormick named Dr Andrew Crawford while giving evidence to Stormont's PAC
An adviser to former first minister Arlene Foster exerted influence over a flawed renewable energy scheme, a senior civil servant has said.
Dr Andrew McCormick said that, without direct evidence, he understood Dr Andrew Crawford influenced the decision to keep the Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI) running.
Mrs Foster set up the scheme in 2012 when enterprise minister and Dr Crawford was her then adviser.
Mr Crawford denies the allegation.
The RHI or "ash for cash" scandal, as it has become known, led Stormont's deputy first minister Martin McGuinness to resign from powersharing with the Democratic Unionist Party in protest and forced the collapse of the executive and a snap election.
Mrs Foster, from the Democratic Unionist Party, had refused to stand aside while an investigation into RHI was carried out.
The aim of RHI was to increase consumption of heat from renewable sources but businesses received more in subsidies than they paid for fuel, and the scheme became heavily oversubscribed.
It could lead to an overspend of £490m over the next 20 years.
Dr McCormick told Stormont's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Wednesday that initially no advice was given to Mrs Foster that she needed to get cost controls into the RHI as the uptake was low when she was minister.
The Economy Department senior official added that she followed her officials' advice on the scheme and that "ministers have the right to expect civil servants will get this kind of thing right".
Mrs Foster had moved on from the department by summer 2015.
In a statement Mr Crawford said in discussing RHI with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment special adviser, he "would have been offering informal advice and assistance as a colleague to my successor in the department and not on behalf of the finance minister or the party".
"However, as I pointed out to the BBC in December I did not attempt to keep the RHI scheme open at the original tariff against the wishes of the minister. Indeed, I specifically stated on 31 July 2015 that the department, 'will need to make changes from 1st October'," he added.
Image caption Dr Andrew Crawford was an adviser to the then enterprise minister Arlene Foster when the RHI scheme was created
Who is Dr Andrew Crawford?
A son of a farmer from Beragh in County Tyrone, Dr Andrew Crawford is a former employee of the Ulster Farmers' Union.
He was an assistant to the former DUP MEP Jim Allister before the North Antrim politician quit to form the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV).
Dr Crawford was an adviser to Arlene Foster when she was enterprise minister during the time the RHI scheme was created, and followed her to the Department of Finance and Personnel last year.
Jonathan Bell, who succeeded Arlene Foster as enterprise minister, accused him of preventing the closure of the scheme, but Dr Crawford has denied that claim.
These days, he advises another DUP minister, Michelle McIlveen, in the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs.
Dr Crawford's poultry-farmer brother is a claimant of the RHI scheme.
Civil servants wanted to cut the rate paid to businesses involved in the scheme in July 2015. It was eventually reduced that November but not before a massive surge in the number of applications.
Dr McCormick said insider information may have had a significant impact on the £490m overspend.
He said there was "an extra level of information" in the renewable heating industry in the summer of 2015 that the RHI tariff could be reduced, so people should "get in quick".
Image caption Former enterprise minister Jonathan Bell (top right) in attendance during Dr McCormick's evidence
Dr McCormick added that anonymous letters showed the information came from his department.
Among the other revelations made by Dr McCormick to the PAC were:
A meeting with former enterprise minister Jonathan Bell to review ministerial papers in December may have been recorded "without my knowledge or consent"
He is aware of at least one case in which energy consumer watchdog Ofgem has been talking to the PSNI over possible abuse of the RHI scheme
About 90% of 1,400 people had objected to a request by the Department of the Economy to be named as beneficiaries of the RHI scheme. He said the department is now going through the individuals on a case-by-case basis to see if they can be named in line with the Data Protection Act
The department did not know about flaws in the RHI scheme in the summer of 2015, so conversations over closing the scheme or introducing cost controls were "not seen as sinister".
Earlier, the Nolan Show revealed Dr McCormick believed a DUP special adviser had exerted influence to delay cost controls.
It said that Dr McCormick told the DUP of his concerns but had no evidence. The DUP confirmed to the programme that Dr McCormick told the party of his belief.
Jonathan Bell was in the public gallery while Dr McCormick gave evidence to the PAC.
He broke ranks from the DUP when he made serious allegations about how the scheme was run in a BBC interview in December. He was later suspended from the party..
Speaking under parliamentary privilege on Tuesday, Mr Bell also claimed he was told when he was minister that two DUP special advisers' "extensive interests in the poultry industry" would prevent scrutiny of the RHI scheme.
The advisers, Timothy Johnston and John Robinson, and the DUP denied the claims.NSWRL has today announced its 2017 NSW Women’s Origin Pathways Squad to contest the annual Interstate Women's Challenge next month (23 July).
The squad will assemble tomorrow (Saturday, 1 July) in Wollongong, to be put through a series of fitness and strength tests, mental performance education sessions and on-field positional skills training sessions.
See the squad below.
Brittany Constable Berkeley - Illawarra Div. Isabelle Kelly Berkeley Vale Jayme Fressard Berkeley Vale Talia Atfield Bomaderry - Illawarra Div. Georgie Brooker Corrimal Allana Ferguson Cronulla-Caringbah Corban McGregor Cronulla-Caringbah Jessica Sergis Cronulla-Caringbah Ruan Sims Cronulla-Caringbah Ruby Ewe Cronulla-Caringbah Talesha Quinn Cronulla-Caringbah Vanessa Foliaki Easts Brisbane Nicole Backhouse Forestville Tahlia Hunter Glenmore Park Elianna Walton Greenacre Kezie Apps Helensburgh Samantha Bremner Helensburgh Simaima Taufa Mounties Victoria Latu Mounties Caitlin Moran North Newcastle Kylie Hilder North Newcastle Rebecca Young North Newcastle Simone Smith North Newcastle Ashlee Harrison Penrith Panthers TGC Jasmin Allende Redfern All Blacks Maddison Studdon Redfern All Blacks Kandy Kennedy Redfern All Blacks Lavina Phillips Redfern All Blacks Nakia Davis-Welsh Redfern All Blacks Rebecca Riley Redfern All Blacks Rikeya Horne St George Illawarra TGC Ben Cross Head Coach Chris Studdon Assistant Coach Danny Allende Development Coach@erick and I have created a crowdfunding campaign to cover the costs of producing Lecture 2.
There were a few technical issues during Lecture 2 (December 16) and so @erick and I decided to meet again to record it as a screencast. For Lecture 3, I will have someone taking care of the live stream and I will try to be more prepared. I’m very sorry that the event of Lecture 2 didn’t went well.
We separated Lecture 2 into 6 videos and I just released 3 of them to give you an idea of what to expect.
The audio is a bit better than the one for Lecture 1 because we were recording in a soundproof room. As for the video, ideally it should be in full screen 1080p. But when @erick created the Keynote presentation for Lecture 2, he used standard size (4:3) instead of widescreen (16:9). In the future, he will use widescreen size so that we can get full screen 1080p.
For Lecture 3 (I will announce it soon, it will be in mid-January), we might do a video in front of an audience combined with slides (like Lecture 1) + a screencast (like Lecture 2). After that, @erick is going in Europe until the end of April, so during that time we will do screencasts only.
Unreleased videos:
How are Routing Tables built?
How does a node join the SAFE Network?
How does the SAFE Network compare to BitTorrent’s Mainline DHT?
If you contribute to the campaign, you will get privileged access to the unreleased videos of Lecture 2 as soon as the tilt (1000$) is reached.
If you haven’t seen Lecture 1, I would suggest watching this Youtube playlist that I just created.Robert MacDonald speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
Robert MacDonald, mayor of Lewiston, said on Sunday that he wanted to publish a registry of welfare recipients because he was annoyed by disabled children coming to the state for help.
In a column last week MacDonald explained his plan to publish names, addresses and other personal information of welfare recipients.
“We will be submitting a bill to the next legislative session asking that a website be created containing the names, addresses, length of time on assistance and the benefits being collected by every individual on the dole,” he wrote. “After all, the public has a right to know how its money is being spent.”
During an “Entitlement Nation” segment with the caption “Name and Shame” on Sunday, the mayor explained to Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Sunday that it was not fair for the names of state pensioners to be public while welfare recipients were not.
“This is something born out of frustration,” he said. “For three and a half years, I’ve been putting all kinds of welfare laws, I’ve been submitting them. And the legislature is just tanking them. And what really hurts is the legislatures from Lewiston are basically stabbing me in the back.”
According to MacDonald, Somali refugees were not the problem in his city because they had jobs. But he complained that “the domestic people” were abusing welfare benefits.
“They’re coming into our state, and what’s happened here is we have a school system,” MacDonald opined. “And one of the things about our schools system is second to none, it’s special ed education department that attracts them all.”
Watch the video below from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Sept. 27, 2015.One of the main reasons Federal Reserve policy makers have been able to keep monetary policy so stimulative in the face of an economic recovery is their steadfast confidence that inflation is, and will remain, quiescent.
But two new papers from the central bank challenge that outlook. One, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, warns price pressures may rise more quickly than thought in coming years. Another, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, notes the uncertainty of the Fed’s framework for divining the nation’s inflationary potential.
What happens with inflation is always a key matter for the Fed. But in the current environment, tame price pressures and the expectation they’ll stay that way are even more important.
Low inflation gives the Fed considerable breathing room to keep interest rates low and provide other forms of support in an environment in which economic growth is tepid and halting. If price pressures were to accelerate, the central bank would likely have to respond with a tightening in policy, even if economy was ill-prepared to deal with that action–a choice it would rather not have to make.
The St. Louis Fed paper, written by bank economist Kevin Kliesen, sees inflation risks coming from several sources. One problem spot could be that the Fed misjudges the economy’s ability to create price pressures. It’s possible policy makers will misgauge the so-called output gap, which is the difference between the economy’s potential–its ability to growth without fueling inflation–and actual rates of growth. The wider the gap, the lower the economy’s likely level of inflation.
“The size of the output gap might be smaller than conventional wisdom might believe,” Kliesen wrote. “If so, those who foresee little risk to the near-term inflation outlook because of a large, persistent output gap may be too optimistic.”
He also warns the Fed’s current policy stance–interest rates are effectively set at zero percent, mortgage asset purchases continue until the end of the first quarter–may distort financial markets.
“Although low interest rates are a key part of the FOMC’s strategy to boost economic growth and cement the health of the economic recovery, there might still be a danger of inflating asset prices by encouraging investors and speculators to shift out of low-yield assets like Treasury securities into higher-yielding assets like commodity contracts or other tangible financial assets,” Kliesen noted.
And while it’s not part of the Fed’s portfolio, huge government budget deficits also pose a risk to a stable inflation environment, he wrote.
The St. Louis Fed economist’s anxiety over the output-gap issue is backed up by Thomas Lubik, an economist at the Richmond Fed. In his paper, Lubik warns “uncertainty” over the correct way to measure the gap makes this concept, as central bankers now understand it, “a potentially faulty gauge” for assessing the economic situation and guiding monetary policy. That increases the chance of policy leading to a bad outcome.
Some of the worries shown by the Fed economists extend to the policy-making level. In a speech Thursday, Kansas City Fed chief Thomas Hoenig reclaimed his role as the most aggressive advocate for undoing the current state of policy. He said he’d like to see policy tightened “sooner rather than later” lest the central bank let inflation bloom and allow overly-easy policy to distort financial markets.
For now, however, most of the central bank’s weight rests behind maintaining the status quo of low interest rates. While the economy appears to be recovering, there is even a reappraisal of Fed’s mortgage-buying program now. The program is scheduled to conclude at the end of the first quarter but some officials are now leaning toward keeping the effort alive longer, fearing the critical mortgage market may not yet be able to function properly without Fed support.California’s attorney general lacks the authority to nix absurd and sadistic proposals Photo by Vepar5/Shutterstock.com
In February, California attorney Matt McLaughlin paid $200 to propose a ballot measure called the Sodomite Suppression Act. McLaughlin’s measure describes gay sex as “a monstrous evil that Almighty God … commands us to suppress on pain of utter destruction.” Given these high stakes, McLaughlin suggests all gay people “be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”
Considering the total outrageousness of the proposal, almost everybody assumed it would be quickly quashed. It seems, however, that quietly suffocating McLaughlin’s measure won’t be so easy. In fact, the proposal is almost certain to make it to the signature-gathering stage—despite the total illegality of its central goal.
The problem here is so foreseeable that it’s hard to believe California hasn’t fixed it before. Under state law, any citizen who properly submits an initiative (and pays the $200 fee) is entitled to gather signatures for their pet proposal. The attorney general is tasked with penning an official title and summary for the measure. She does not, however, have any discretionary authority to nix even the most absurd and sadistic of proposals. This rule, initially promulgated by the California Supreme Court, was designed to prevent partisan attorneys general from scrapping proposals for political reasons. But by refusing to give the attorney general any discretion over what measures pass the first hurdle, the court inadvertently protected crackpot proposals like McLaughlin’s.
California legislators are currently debating other methods of screening out insane and/or murderous ballot initiatives, such as significantly raising the filing fee. They can at least rest easy knowing that McLaughlin’s proposal almost certainly won’t attract the 365,880 signatures it needs to make it to the ballot. Even if the measure fails to meet that threshold, however, McLaughlin can try again next cycle. The California State Bar only disciplines attorneys for acts of “moral turpitude”—usually in relation to their work and clients, not their protected free speech activities. In the end, then, McLaughlin will probably keep his law license and face no official sanction.
As bizarre as McLaughlin’s stunt may be, it shouldn’t draw attention away from the slew of anti-gay measures, which, while less horrifying, stand a much better chance of passing and harming gay Americans. Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma are currently rushing to pass bills that would actively demean and degrade gay people and their families. They may not be as fun to talk about as the Sodomite Suppression Act. But they could ultimately do far more damage to the dignity of gay people in America.South Africa attempted and failed to domesticate a large part of the sorting, cutting and polishing and create a large diamond beneficiation industry.
Under its recently completed sales agreement with De Beers, Botswana has obliged the marketing arm of De Beers Diamond Trading Company to move its selling functions from London to Gaborone. A revolution in global diamond marketing and processing is taking place that will see the diamond industry literally go south.
The question being asked is whether it and Namibia, which also has a beneficiation programme, will succeed in creating a sustainable industry. Most observers see Botswana, with its massive remaining reserves, as the only Southern African Development Community country that will be able to develop anything resembling a sustainable downstream diamond industry.
Diamonds are a business in which the big profits are made at two points in the value chain.
The first is at the mine gate and some of Botswana's mines are among the most profitable in the world. The south-central Jwaneng mine reputedly produced a dollar of diamonds for 10 cents at its peak.
The second part of the value chain in which serious money is made is at the retail end where the besotted husband-to-be parts company with what has become an obligatory price of two to three months' salary to demonstrate to his love that, despite the depressing divorce statistics, his feelings will indeed last forever.
<strong>Bottom end</strong>
The cutting and polishing of rough diamonds is simply not a profitable part of the value chain and that is why the big four diamond miners, De Beers, Alrosa, BHP-Billiton and Rio Tinto, generally leave the cutting of stones at the bottom end of the market to Indian cutters from Surat and increasingly competitive firms in China and Thailand, where workers are frequently paid a pittance. India is reported to have about 500 000 people employed in diamond cutting and polishing and has made its name on being able to cut stones that were once considered too small and of too little value to bother.
At the top end of the diamond market, where large and valuable stones are processed, cutting is done in high-cost locations such as Antwerp, New York and Tel Aviv, which have the technical expertise.
Botswana, and to a lesser degree Namibia, fits into the middle, processing expensive but not top-end diamonds.
Until 2000, none of the big miners were interested in the retail end, but following the formal end of the 80-year-old De Beers diamond cartel in 2000 after a tumultuous decade of blood diamonds, anti-trust suits in the United States and the European Union, rising competition from new producers and an increasing difficulty in controlling all its "sightholders", as buyers are called in De Beers- speak, the company abandoned the cartel arrangement whereby it would in effect buy any excess diamonds to maintain market price. It then adopted its so-called supplier of choice strategy, which its sightholders irreverently dubbed "supplier of no choice".
De Beers also partnered with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and headed for the top end of the retail market as part of its new strategy. It opened diamond shops in the most expensive locations around the world and started trading branded diamonds in its own name. It is said that this end of the value chain can be as profitable as mining, but De Beers, the only diamond miner to have gone into retail, has never made as much from retail as it initially expected.
<strong>Weakening market position</strong>
Until 2 000 almost no processing of diamonds took place in Southern Africa, because De Beers strongly opposed it and argued that cutting should happen where it was most profitable. But with its weakening market position and the advent of its supplier of choice strategy, the company needed to curry favour with its African suppliers and reversed its policy to become a vocal supporter of local beneficiation.
For Botswana, beneficiation of its diamonds is a long-standing policy objective of the government and the product of a decades-long struggle between different views of government and policy. The government has successfully managed to create an industry of more than 3 000 employees based on the cutting and polishing of what have been wrongly considered its diamonds.
Yet neither Botswana nor its smaller diamond-producing neighbour, Namibia, cut and polish their own diamonds. Sightholders receive an allocation of diamonds based on several criteria, one of which is their commitment to processing those diamonds in-country. But the boxes or "sights" are an aggregation of diamonds from all De Beers mines or mines in which De Beers is a partner. Therefore, a Namibian cutting firm supplied by De Beers cuts diamonds from Botswana, Canada, Namibia and South Africa.
In 2011 Botswana exported 4.9-billion pula (about R5.3-billion) in processed diamonds. Although it is still a small fraction of total diamond exports, it is by far Botswana's single largest manufactured export. The exports of unprocessed diamonds were 25-billion pula in 2011, so the cutting and polishing industry still has significant room for growth.
Diamond sightholders prefer their diamonds rough so that they are able to process them wherever in the world is most profitable, but given a choice between a regular allocation of diamonds from the Diamond Trading Corporation and thus processing a part locally, or buying from other suppliers or on the secondary market, most of the sightholders will simply accept the relatively high cost of processing to procure a steady supply.
Botswana is working to lower the cost of processing, but no one is under any illusion that either it or Namibia are cost-competitive with Asian cutters and polishers. What sightholders do is take a portion of their allocation – about 20% – that is not economical to cut profitably locally and send it to their Asian subsidiaries.
<strong>Raising productivity</strong>
It is frequently asked whether Botswana's model is sustainable. Revenues from known diamond mines will go off a cliff in 2027 or thereabouts. This is not because large-scale mining of diamonds will end, but rather that costs will have risen substantially at existing mines and most revenues come from profits, not taxes.
Relatively large-scale diamond mining and, by extension, cutting and polishing will continue in Botswana until the late 2030s at least. Thus Botswana basically has an entire generation to make the cutting and polishing industry more profitable by raising productivity and lowering costs.
Diamonds are forever, as the celebrated De Beers marketing slogan goes, but diamond cutting and polishing is not. After 25 to 30 years of processing, the Botswana diamond industry will either stand on its own, or the country will adjust and move on to new industries. The coming decades of processing will create new skills, industries and enterprises that will mean either Botswana will develop a competitive industry like India, or be forced to exit. In either case, the diamond cutting and polishing industry will have played a vital role in transformation.
<em>These are the views of Professor Roman Grynberg and not necessarily those of the Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis where he is employed.</em>President Barack Obama
One is surely entitled to say that President Obama’s repeated claim that he seeks “empathy” in a replacement for Justice David Souter is something less than a crisp constitutional standard. But the Republican war on empathy has started to border on the deranged, and you can’t help but wonder to what purpose.
Webster’s defines empathy as “the experiencing as one’s own the feelings of another.” Obama, in The Audacity of Hope, described empathy as “a call to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes.” To Obama, empathy chiefly means applying a principle his mother taught him: asking, “How would that make you feel?”before acting. Empathy in a judge does not mean stopping midtrial to tenderly clutch the defendant to your heart and weep. It doesn’t mean reflexively giving one class of people an advantage over another because their lives are sad or difficult. When the president talks about empathy, he talks not of legal outcomes but of an intellectual and ethical process: the ability to think about the law from more than one perspective.
But Republicans have gathered up their flaming torches and raised their fists to loudly denounce empathy and all empathy-based behavior as evil. Last Friday, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, sitting in for Bill Bennett on the Morning in America syndicated radio show, blurted out, “Crazy nonsense empathetic! I’ll give you empathy. Empathize right on your behind!” Nice.
Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, speaking on This Week, warned that if a jurist were to show empathy, “politics, preferences, personal preferences and feelings might take the place of being impartial and deciding cases based upon the law, not upon politics.” In an opinion piece in the Washington Times warning that Obama is poised to be the “first president to make lawlessness an explicit standard for Supreme Court Justices,” Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network saw empathy as a kind of temporary insanity that so distorts a jurist’s vision as to make it difficult “to uphold the federal judicial oath to dispense justice impartially.” Over on Fox News, Sean Hannity warned that empathy is the first step toward “social engineering.” And in a delicious Freudian slip, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama snorted: “I don’t know what empathy means.”
You don’t say.
When did the simple act of recognizing that you are not the only one in the room become confused with lawlessness, activism, and social engineering? For a group so vociferously devoted to textualism and plain meaning, conservative critics have an awfully elastic definition of the word empathy. It expands to cover any sort of judicial malfeasance they can imagine. Empathy—the quality of caring what others may feel—signals intellectual weakness, judicial immodesty, favoritism, bias, and grandiosity. John Yoo also seems to be of the view that the kind of emotional incontinence that begins with empathy for others quickly leads to being “emotive” on the bench. Evidently it’s a short hop from empathy to having the judicial vapors.
But as used by the president, the word empathy does not strike me as “code” for anything. I don’t believe he used it as a proxy for female or for varied life experiences or for something that exists outside of the law at all. Oh, and empathy—at least as Obama has used the word—decidedly does not mean favoring only the poor, women, or minorities in every dispute. Again quoting from The Audacity of Hope:“Empathy … calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal, the powerful and the powerless, the oppressed and the oppressor. We are all shaken out of our complacency. We are all forced beyond our limited vision.”
What a tragically crabbed worldview one must have to believe that empathy means being sensitive only to “groups A, B, and C” because they share certain features or beliefs with you. That isn’t empathy—that’s bias. True empathy turns that notion on its head. It means, as Ruth Marcus wrote, the ability to recognize the ways your own experiences color your judgment. Empathy means knowing what you don’t know and questioning why you think you know what you do.
Professor Douglas Kmiec of Pepperdine Law School has a thoughtful piece in America: The National Catholic Weekly in which he suggests, reflecting on the prophet Micah, that “one can be empathetic toward all sides of a dispute.” Empathy means being impartial toward all litigants without being blind to the consequences of your decisions. You can send up such concerns as gooey judicial sentimentalism, unmoored from any fixed legal principle. Or you can admit that judging requires acts of judgment beyond the mechanical application of law to facts and that it’s best for judges to know when the mechanical act of deciding cases gives way to ideology and personal preference. Empathy isn’t sloppy sentiment. It’s not ideology. It’s just a check against the smug certainty that everyone else is sloppy and sentimental while you yourself are a flawless constitutional microcomputer.
When a court fails to put itself in the shoes of a 13-year-old girl who is strip-searched at school because it is too worried about the liability of a school administrator, that’s not really a lack of bias. When a court fails to read a civil rights statute to protect civil rights in a pay discrimination case because it’s worried about future employer liability, that’s not really a lack of bias. Obama may be wrong that empathy is the single most important quality a jurist can possess. But his Republican detractors cannot possibly be right, or even wise, in suggesting that a judge who listens only to herself is preferable to a judge who both listens to others and also considers her impact on others.
Now, if the GOP really wants to run out on a rail anyone with empathy or anyone who values it, far be it from me to object. Democrats will be more than happy to feel their pain. But to the extent that the debate over empathy may shape every Supreme Court discussion we are going to have this summer, let’s just be clear that the opposite of empathy isn’t rigor. It’s pretty close to solipsism, or the certain conviction that everything you’ll ever need to know about judging you learned from your own fine self.It's a road trip even worse than Griswald vacations when a Grand Canyon-bound bus breaks down, and the passengers find themselves facing history's greatest serial killers.
In “The Butchers,” hitting DVD and VOD on November 11, a dark ritual turns a ghost town with a serial killer museum into a new hunting ground for the likes of Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jack the Ripper, The Zodiac Killer and Albert Fish.
Director Steven Paul Judd has held many positions in front and behind the camera throughout his career, but after working as a writer on Disney's “Zeke and Luther,” he decided to focus on directing, and this darkly comic take on “Night at the Museum” caught his attention when he heard the producers discussing it at a Christmas party. “I thought the premise was really interesting and something I hadn't heard before.”
While the movie's travelers largely begin as broad stereotypes with whose names are almost secondary to The Loud Black Woman, The Born-Again Christians, The Goths, The Haunted Veteran, as the film progresses, more details are revealed, humanizing the cast.
“I think we tried to hit archetypes to represent all different ones,” Judd said. “They are all going into Dante's Inferno, basically, going through their own hell for things that had happened. We didn't have enough time to delve into everyone's back story the way we would have liked. Even some of the serial killers had a bit more back story, like Jack the Ripper had a little back story that I wish we could have told why we made the choices we made for that character.”
Like many slasher films, the action is set almost entirely at night, but with a great deal of exteriors, the shoot proved challenging, especially filming the climactic battle.
“We had to get it done in a little over two weeks, and we were shooting at night just trying to fight the sun and get in as many pages as we could each day.”
“That fight was even supposed to be even more elaborate than what you saw. We actually had a crane to crane over them, but because we shot everything at night, and the sun was about to come up, we didn't get to shoot that the way I wanted to shoot it, but I think it turned out pretty well considering.
“Because that was the final fight, we were trying to slowly build up, and that was going to be this huge epic battle, that pretty much became, 'Alright, just start fighting,' and we had a DP follow them with a hand-held camera.”
Shooting on such a tight schedule is always challenging, but Judd was fortunate to be part of a group, from the producers and crew to the actors, that had a similar vision and dedication to the project.
“I think the good thing is that everyone who came to the project knew what they were getting into, that it was a low budget film. No one was there to try and get rich. They were just there because they thought it was a cool project that they wanted to get into. Everyone came to set knowing their lines, and everyone working hard. Everyone wore many different hats; we had producers helping with craft services.
Judd is currently shooting another horror film in Missouri with the same producers, and plans are to have another shoot coming up in February. He also has the short film, “Ronnie BoDean” starring Wes Studi.Plugs Tailored For you
BMA Modified strives to produce and provide the body modification market with the best organic, stone, wood, horn, bone, steel, and precious metals plugs. We carry sizes from the smallest gauges all the way to 3" to make sure every lobes can be adorned. Our plugs are sold as one set, so the prices you see will be the exact price for one pair unlike other sites that hooks you in for one piece. Our custom stone plugs are exclusively cut for the clients. Starting from a rough material all the way to polishing. We carry plugs for thinner and thicker lobes, smaller and larger flares. Like clothing, plugs need to be tailored to the wearer and we understand that. Choose from the drop down menu to shop by size, materials, and prices. If you can't find what you need from our larger variety of in stock plugs give us a hoot. Our experienced gemstone, wood, bone, and metal artisans can work with you to find the exact organic plugs you are looking for. We offer free shipping within the US for $40+. Free shipping around the world for $65+. Keep your eyes out for bonuses and gifts that we promote all over the site.Although many Android users wouldn’t give you tuppence for making their device more like an Apple iPhone, there are plenty of ways to bring some of that Apple functionality to your Android device, if you’re just that little bit jealous.
The good news, for everyone, is that there’s been a realisation in the past 18 months or so that keeping a feature as a platform exclusive isn’t good business practice. You only have to look at the way that Microsoft has adopted iOS and Android compatibility in Windows 10 to see that. So if you’re an Android user and have some secret desires to make your phone more Apple-like, here’s a few ideas.
iTunes
The good news here is that, after years of stalling, Apple Music is now in beta for Android. It’s a logical move for the company as now the company is offering mp3 downloads, a subscription streaming service, and it’s much hyped BeatsOne radio station. But the Android equivalent is just as good with Google Play Music offering millions of songs for streaming, purchase and a healthy dose of regular promotions that’s included a free album and three top albums for 99p every day. There’s no podcast support yet, but it is due to be added very soon.
Finally, if you just want to sync your Android device with iTunes on your computer, there’s loads of apps for that. I’m rather fond of Doubletwist, but you can find loads at different price points from free, upwards.
3D-Touch
This feature, currently limited to the latest generation iPhone 6S, detects the amount of pressure of each button push to change the action carried out. The nearest equivalent in Android is the long press/short press idea. At the moment there’s nothing completely equivalent in Android, but it’s said that Sony and Huawei are both working on implementing something similar. In the meantime, I’m yet to be convinced of how much-added value 3D-Touch brings, so I wouldn’t let it influence your decision too much.
Facetime
The video chat platform is one of the few Apple-specific features that has never been opened up to other platforms. There’s an element of pig-headedness on Apple’s part here, but equally, the logistics of opening up the ecosystem would probably be a massive amount to overcome. More than a few times developers have claimed to release apps which bring Facetime and iMessage to Android but they all turned out to be twaddle. Not always malicious twaddle, but twaddle nevertheless. Fortunately, there are loads of alternatives out there. Google’s equivalent, Hangouts works adequately well and is available for iOS, or of course, there’s the daddy of them all, Skype, now owned by Microsoft, which is compatible with just about everything and keeps getting better with every release.
Capacity
Although it’s rare for Android phones to come with as much on-board storage as the iPhone’s maximum 128GB, it is becoming more common. And unlike the iPhone, Android phones generally have a slot for a microSD card. With the top capacity at the time of writing hitting 200GB, that can potentially mean a phenomenal amount of storage, and you can expect that figure to rise in the months to come. And with the newest version of Android, known as ‘Android 6.0 Marshmallow’, the phone no longer sees the SD card as separate. There’s no more moving data about as you’ve had to do up to now. With Marshmallow, if you have a 64GB internal memory and add a 128GB SD card, the phone seems a single repository of 192GB, which, let’s face it, is pretty darn cool |
section of stream flowing through the center of it. It will be crowded with tourists.”
This sounded like a viable plan though, so I thanked her and set off to find some tourist throngs.
The route took me over rolling countryside, fields all laden with wheat, or grazed with sheep.
And “Venice of the Cotswolds” was pleasant, despite the throngs of tourists.
I had lunch in Bourton on the Water. I ordered a steak and kidney pie, and what I got was essentially meat stew sandwiched between two whisps of pastry, served with a genrous helping of veges and chips on the side. It was a good hearty meal that required a solid 45 minutes to get through at a leisurely pace.
Lunch devoured, I pushed on back towards Oxford. While I was eating lunch a heavy rain shower had passed through, and now on my bike, I was subjected to another few decent dousings. But even when it is raining this countryside has a homely feel to it.
The rain showers didn’t last long, and I was soon cycling in brilliant sunshine that lit up more of the inconceivably picturesque little villages.
The way back to Oxford consisted of around 10 miles on the cycleway along the A44 motorway. It was a terrible route, with noisy traffic and an uneven surface. But it got me back to the Oxford Canal, where I was once again able to transport myself right into the heart of the city. I was tired from a long day on the saddle, but happy that I had taken the time out to get some exercise away from a busy course schedule and see some local sights.Advertisement
Even big kids would struggle to outgrow the world's largest model railway.
Northlandz model railroad, in Flemington, New Jersey, was painstakingly constructed by hand and took 16 years to complete.
Bruce Williams Zaccagnino started the project as a hobby in his basement with the help of his wife Jean before opening its doors to the public as a tourist attraction in 1997.
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Northlandz model railroad, in Flemington, New Jersey, was painstakingly constructed by hand and took 16 years to complete
LIfe's work: It took creator Bruce Williams Zaccagnino 16 years to finally bring his dream of Northlandz - the world's biggest model railway - to life
The model railway has an impressive 100 trains, 400 bridges and more than nine miles of track, as well as 3,000 miniature buildings that make up idyllic miniature towns and villages.
There are also 50,000 streets and 40ft bridges spanning across vast canyons, all of which Mr Zaccagnino designed and painstakingly handcrafted on his own.
He said: 'There's just nothing else like it. Visitors come out saying it's one of the wonders of the world.
'I think people might be put off because they think it is just about model trains, but it is so much more than that.
Bruce Williams Zaccagnino started the project as a hobby in his basement with the help of his wife Jean before opening its doors to the public
The model boasts an impressive 100 trains, 400 bridges and more than nine miles of track as well as 3,000 miniature buildings
There are 50,000 streets and 40ft bridges spanning across vast canyons, all of which Mr Zaccagnino designed and painstakingly handcrafted on his own
The hit attraction was recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest model of its kind in the world
Bruce Williams Zaccagnino said most of the scenes are representative of places in the world where you would see trains such as a Swiss village or big city
According to Bruce Williams Zaccagnino visitors describe the model railway as one of the wonders of the world
Historic: The model railway aims to show the history of the railroads across the U.S. through the years with famous scenes
Some people say the model railway is better than the Grand Canyon according to Mr Zaccagnino who spent 16 years building the railway
'Most of the scenes are representative of places in the world where you would see trains - such as a Swiss village or a big city.
'And part of it also shows the history of railroads across the U.S. through the years - with famous scenes including when they connected the East and West Coasts.
'If I could, I'd love to see it all for the first time. People have come in and told me it's better than the Grand Canyon - I wish I could experience that.'
The hit attraction was recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest model of its kind in the world - with competition from Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany.China Change, December 22, 2017
Around 4:30 p.m. on December 19, dissident writer Li Xuewen (黎学文) got off Guangzhou subway’s No. 5 line at the Guangzhou Train Station. Before he swiped his card to exit, two plainclothes officers approached him, flashed their IDs, and told Li Xuewen that he was wanted by the Ministry of Public Security for allegedly “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order.” This refers to Li’s participation in a seaside memorial in Xinhui, Guangdong, on July 19, 2017, four days after the eventual death of China’s most known dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. At least a dozen or so people took part in it, ten have been detained and then released “on bail.”
Li Xuewen told his lawyer Ge Yongxi (葛永喜) in a meeting on Friday that the police then handcuffed him and took him to the nearby police station where he was also shackled, despite his loud protest. At 9:00 p.m., Li was taken to a hospital for a physical and then sent to the Guangzhou Railway Detention Center. Later he was taken to the Xinhui Detention Center.
Li Xuewen believes that he was recognized by China’s sophisticated surveillance and facial recognition system.
Police interrogations focused on the details of the seaside memorial of Liu Xiaobo. Li Xuewen told his interrogators that:
I have not committed any crime; It’s wrong to detain me; I will face all the consequences of my actions.
Li Xuewen thanked friends for their concerns and wished everyone a happy winter solstice. Winter solstice, he said, is when the night is the longest and after that, darkness will wane.
Below is Li Xuewen’s pre-written statement on October 31, 2017, in anticipation of the arrest that has now taken place.
Personal Statement by Li Xuewen I was one of the participants in the July 19, 2017 seaside commemoration of Liu Xiaobo held in Yamen, Xinhui, Guangdong. From July 22, when Guangzhou police began nightly raids and arrests of participants, a total of 9 attendees of the event have been arrested one after another; most were later released on restrictive bail conditions. In late August I got news that police in my hometown in Hubei had, armed with photos of the commemoration event, sought out my elderly parents and demanded that I turn myself in and accept punishment. I had become a national fugitive. Over the last few months I’ve been through an extraordinary period of hiding and changing locations, which has worried my family, girlfriend, and friends. I’ve also gone through a process from utter terror in the first few weeks to no fear at all now. I’ve decided to put an end to living like a fugitive. I’m now willing to openly face arrest. If I’m arrested, I hope that my friends do everything they can to advocate on my behalf. I make the following brief statement: As someone who began reading Mr. Liu Xiaobo’s works as a teenager, I’ve been deeply affected by his ideas and his spirit. I went to grieve Mr. Liu Xiaobo’s death of my own accord, as a way of paying respect to, and fondly recalling, one of my mentors in life. I also wanted to protest the authorities’ persecution of Liu Xiaobo. No matter how the authorities persecute me, I don’t regret my participation, and I firmly believe that I’m innocent. I will not write a repentance statement, and I will not accept any illegal or inhumane persecution I’m subjected to. I’m healthy in mind and body, and if I should be damaged in either regard in detention, it will be purely due to torture and persecution. This long period of misery and suffering we’re going through will end one day! Li Xuewen October 31, 2017
Related:
Mural Censored at the Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, ArtAsiaPacific, December 18, 2017.
From Sea to a Sea of Words: Poet Ensnared as China Shuts Down Commemoration of Liu Xiaobo, Yaxue Cao, September 14, 2017.
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Like this: Like Loading...The Securities and Exchange Commission is charging a senior Microsoft manager with insider trading. Brian Jorgenson, a senior portfolio manager at Microsoft, has admitted he tipped his friend, Sean Stokke, about Microsoft’s Barnes & Noble deal, allowing him to make money on the stock market. In an interview with The Seattle Times, Jorgenson estimates Stokke, his friend, made more than $200,000 and Jorgenson pocketed $40,000 for the information. "Abusing access to Microsoft’s confidential information and generating unlawful trading profits is not a wise or legal business model for starting a hedge fund," says SEC spokesperson Daniel Hawke. "We thwarted the misguided plans of Jorgenson and Stokke as they sought to illegally profit at others’ expense."
The pair made nearly $400,000 in profit
The SEC complaint alleges that Jorgenson and Stokke made a combined $393,125 in profits from their insider trading, which began in April last year. While Jorgenson tipped Stokke to the Barnes & Noble deal, he also allegedly helped Stokke trade in advance of Microsoft’s Q4 earnings report in July. Stokke purchased Microsoft options, allowing the pair to generate $195,000 in profits after Microsoft’s stock price dropped by 11 percent following its financial results. Stokke once again traded Microsoft options for its latest financial results in October, pocketing around $13,000 in profit.
Jorgenson has admitted to The Seattle Times that greed drove him to leak the information to Stokke. The pair had planned to use the money to finance their own hedge fund. Microsoft fired Jorgenson last month when the inside trading was discovered. "I am sorry," Jorgenson says. "It was just greed. I was focusing too much on the material things."
Update: In an email provided to The Verge, a Microsoft spokesperson says that "our company has zero tolerance for insider trading. We helped the government with its investigation and terminated the employee."Mitt Romney's claim in a campaign ad that President Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" earned PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year," the site announced on Wednesday.
"The Jeep ad was brazenly false," Angie Drobnic Holan wrote in her analysis.
The Romney campaign ran the ad in the final weeks of the campaign, drawing sharp rebukes from the automakers and public condemnation from the Obama campaign.
Romney first claimed Jeep was moving to China in a late October campaign speech in Ohio, citing "reports," which he later identified in his ad as a story by Bloomberg News.
But Chrysler immediately rejected the claim, saying the company was reviewing adding production in China, not moving production out of the United States. Chrysler also noted that the Bloomberg story was misinterpreted.
It appeared that the false interpretation was initially made by the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard, who wrote about the Bloomberg story Oct. 25. Bedard's claim was then circulated by the Drudge Report.
Democrats, including the Obama campaign, used Romney's decision to stand by the false claim against him, attacking Romney's honesty.
"After Romney's false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China, Chrysler itself has refuted Romney's lie," an announcer read in an Obama campaign ad that painted Romney as "wrong on Ohio jobs."
PolitiFact suggested Wednesday that the ad was partly responsible for Romney's loss.
"People often say that politicians don't pay a price for deception, but this time was different: A flood of negative press coverage rained down on the Romney campaign, and he failed to turn the tide in Ohio, the most important state in the presidential election," Holan wrote.“ Do you need help to grow your company? I have seen hundreds of creative ideas to get new customers and to increase retention. Call me on Clarity today and get your answers now. ”
Growth hacking is above all a mindset. Having a deep understanding of how people interact with each other in today’s digital world and making use of some psychological tricks is a powerful asset to create a discussion from nowhere. It can increase your chances to get an answer and might definitely lead you to great opportunities in your life. At the end of the day, a lot of people (including myself) like to believe that it’s not only about “what you know” but “who you know”. And from my experience with hundreds of startups, I will add that it is not the smarter who win but the more informed.
“ So let’s get started, here are 10 hacks that you can use to have a discussion with almost anyone in order to quickly get an information while building proximity at the same time for later contacts. If you have a hack in mind that is not listed here, feel free to explain it in the comments. 😉 ”
#1. Use Clarity as an excuse to reach an expert.
Clarity is an online community where you can plan a call with an expert. It’s a great place to get a specific piece of information that you can trust for your decisions. I previously talked about it in this article, but it includes people like Eric Ries, Brian Balfour or Dan Martell. Of course, you have to pay and it can be quite expensive, but I hope you are familiar with the quote “when you pay peanuts you get monkeys“. 😉
“ The thing you have to keep in mind is that who said that it was only to get insights? You could simply use the platform to set a first introduction about yourself, what you are currently building and to convince him to set a meeting date in real life. You could even try to get an introduction from himself to a business angel because you know/discovered that he was very close with the guy. Be smart and use your imagination. In a one-to-one private conversation there is nothing you can’t do. ”
I was with an entrepreneur last week who needed to know something very specific about Expedia. What he did, was to use Clarity’s search engine to find out people who previously worked there. He only had to plan a call to get what he wanted.
#2. Use Twitter to ask the CEO for a demo about the product they are building.
Some people are very active on Twitter. Take for instance, Ryan Hoover, send him a tweet about something you want to know, he will probably tweet back and answer (and there is a reason for that, he discovered that the best users for Product Hunt usually do not come from paid channels but are friends with the people who are already part of the community). Twitter is a crazy place to provoke a bunch of opportunities out of nowhere. It’s a kind of cocktail party where no system can forbid you to have balls and to go talking to someone. Here are two cool stories by the way, that recently happened to me.
Me and my teammate Côme Courteault were looking for a way to have a rigorous software to manage our growth experiments at TheFamily. After some researches, we stumbled upon Canvas (look at this video on YouTube for more), an easy-to-understand website to keep track of all your experiments in a snap. The thing was in Beta but we needed an invite quickly. I ended to tweet Sean Ellis to get one and I will tell you what a great seller does, he gives you what you want in exchange of a demo (it’s all about activation). This is how I got myself in a Skype call with Sean Ellis and I can tell you that only in a few minutes of conversations, I learnt tremendous things (which is priceless in this information economy). What’s funny is that all started with a simple tweet that took me something like twenty seconds to write.
But the contrary can happen too, and that is why you should have an active account on Twitter. One day, one guy reached me with a tweet to know if I was available for some advices. I was in a good mood and my agenda was not very busy at the time so I agreed. Let me be clear, that is one of the best decisions I have made and I often go to his airbnbs all around Paris to chat about the fascinating things that happens within the startup and seduction world. It makes me think about the first advice I would tell a kid: if you want to have opportunities in this life, you better hustle and be an opportunity for others (which leads me to the next hack).
“ When someone smart follows you on Twitter (use sproutsocial ), do not hesitate to follow back and to send him a direct message. You can create some interesting exchanges and build proximity that might be useful later on. ”
#3. Share your knowledge by keeping a blog up-to-date.
Being transparent is one of the best qualities someone can possess. I deeply believe in the power of sharing and it is one of things that drive my actions on a daily basis (I recently discovered an experiment that Buffer is conducting: they are sharing publicly all their metrics including the salaries of everyone). When you see something interesting or just came up with a cool idea, don’t be afraid to let the world knows about it. It can lead you to surprising roads.
Here is how I got my last two last jobs. I dropout college three years ago (I have a lot of respect for people who choose to take this path and especially in France, so if you are asking yourself any question about all of that, feel free to reach me). What I discovered that it is in the adversity, out of your comfort zone, that you end up to really find yourself as well as what you want to do with your life. It can make you move forward faster that you could ever dream of. But to go back to the story, I was in my room without any furnitures (long story), watching every episode I could find on GrowthHackerTV. My goal was to understand and screen all of these guys who were building incredible companies by starting from scratch. I ended up to summarize every interview and to share them on the website. After a few months (I think it was after the seventieth episode), Bronson Taylor sent me a quick email for a Skype call where he gave me a simple task: editing the calls he was giving to his guests. Then, I had to put them online so he can validate them. Sometimes (if not always), you have to show what you worth without asking for anything in return. As one smart guy once told me, pay it forward. 😉
With all this knowledge, I decided to open this blog for fun and to share my personal view about growth. One day, I shared an article on a Facebook group and Hugo Amsellem came to me to give a lecture at TheFamily. I tried my best (I think I rehearsed probably ten times) and got hired to my biggest surprise two days later. So here I am, a little guy of 20 years old who did not have a lot of experiences (I had monumentally failed two startups at the time), giving advices for more than 200 startups about what they should do to grow in addition to talk every morning at Koudetat Growth Hacking for people paying more than $3,000 to assist. Clearly, be transparent and share. I hope it is obvious for everyone now.
#4. Use an opener in real life.
Once in the real life, being connected 20 hours a day is not an excuse to lack of creativity when you are trying to initiate a conversation with someone. I am passionate about pickup artists and in my humble opinion, I think that every human being on this earth should at least take a look at what they do. Whether it is a man or a woman here are three openers I really like that work in many situations:
If the guy/lady is smoking : “Come on, you promised me you would quit ;)”.
: “Come on, you promised me you would quit ;)”. If the guy/lady is looking at a phone : “You cannot help yourself, you are always on your phone. I was sure you were popular on Tinder. ;)”.
: “You cannot help yourself, you are always on your phone. I was sure you were popular on Tinder. ;)”. If the guy/lady is drinking: “It is nice to meet an alcoholic who does not want to remain anonymous ;)”.
And then with a simple smile, you ask him if he/she is fine, if he/she is spending a good time at the party and follow up on a few stories. What is great with that mindset is that you can try to pitch your product later on inside the conversation. It definitely feels less invasive as you took the time to build proximity in advance. It is a more efficient strategy to catch the attention of someone and to get better results as your frame is strong.
#5. Guess someone’s email address to cold email.
The more popular and busy the target is, the harder it will be to get an answer from him. Our mailboxes are overcrowded and even if most people are looking at them every day, you better have a great title with a short and clear message to attract the attention. For people wondering, I personally have no opinion about the efficiency of emailing him rather on his business account than on his personal one. I think it depends of who you are trying to reach as a lot of decisions makers (like bosses and partners) usually have someone to manage their professional inbox. Nonetheless, here are a few tricks to guess any email.
– You could try to test a few combinations on Rapportive to see if some linkedin profile appears on the side. It is one of the best ways to make sure that you really found a valid email and that it belongs to the correct recipient.
– You could use Mailtester to ask the SMTP servers of his company (or gmail) that an email exists for this address.
– You could register to his newsletter if the guy has a blog and see from what email the confirmation is sent. It is a hack I usually use: two months ago, I needed to get answers about something on Quora. I just took the time to find angel investors who had a blog, I registered to their newsletter, got their email from the confirmation message, and told them that I was a huge fan about their writings (proximity) and that today I needed a little help.
– You could check the whois if the guy has a website. You may even come up with a phone number.
Of course, there is a few best practices to increase your chances to get an answer. One of the big mistake to do not follow up until you get a result (at least two times, let’s say after 3 days and after 10 days) to the first email you sent (so as to not create a second conversation where he will have to make a research to find the first message). Of course, if you still do not get any answer after the third tentative, don’t bother, he probably won’t answer. Leave him alone and use another of the tricks listed here. 🙂
#6. Use Messenger to increase your chances to get an answer.
Since the beginning of November, Facebook has rolled out Message Request with Messenger. Basically, this means that you become able to send a message to pretty much everyone and that he will get a notification that someone is trying to contact him. As a result of these changes, they removed the “Other Folder” that was only accessible from the web, and are enabling you to accept or ignore new requests without the requestor knowing you’ve read their message.
The rule is pretty simple: If you’re friends on Facebook, if you have each other’s contact info in your phone and have these synced, or if you have an existing open thread, the new messages from that sender will be routed to your inbox. Everything else will now be a message request, minus spam attempts that they will continue to ruthlessly combat.Photo credit: cinapse.co
A disturbing story that seems to be prevalent amongst filmmakers these days it seems a victim is now accusing the man behind the classic movie “Shoah”, Jewish director Claude Lanzmann of being guilty of sexual assault.
The filmmaker, most notably known amongst the French movie industry as a documentary legend is currently 91 years old, and is also an author.
According to the victim, NRC columnist Joyce Roodnat, she claims that she had an interview with Claude Lanzmann many years ago where he attempted to grope her and she feared his prowess and allowed it to happen.
She made the announcement during a television interview where the panelists were discussing the “#MeToo” hashtag surrounding sexual assault victims.
When asked about her experience with Claude Lanzmann, saying that she had gone to the interview about 32 years ago in 1985.
Here's the video, spoken in Dutch which I found on YouTube with just the excerpts of her mentioning the sexual assault. If you click the three button drop-down menu or the Closed Caption button on the video you can add English subtitles to interpret what she's saying.
<div style="width:100%;text-align:center;margin:0 auto;"><iframe width="360" height="202" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_FVZwMArIMo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
Since the spoken word is in Dutch, and the best translation possible of her side of the events is via the closed captioning on the YouTube video (these are the exact translations from the video mind you) which I've also posted below.
<blockquote>”The interview went very well. The movie [Shoah] was just made, it would be broadcast by the VPRO, and I was sent to Paris by the newspaper to interview him [Claude Lanzmann].”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”So there he is, it's a big and imposing man, who is also very famous. I'm being sent there, and I have to do this interview.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”And while he's talking about Auschwitz and Camp executioners, he starts to touch me.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”I'm next to him on the couch. And touching me,is that like this?”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”I called it groping in the article. I don't want to tell exactly what he did.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”It was very intimidating, but he was intimidating anyway.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”He was very famous, very big. You can see this in the picture.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”And he made a great movie. I still think it's a very good movie [despite the assault]. And I have to return with a piece [for the newspaper she was sent from to interview Lanzmann]. I have to return with an article.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”That also plays a role. And I'm completely embarrassed while this is happening. I can't walk away. I have to…”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”Of course I could have done it, but it didn't occur to me. That's also interesting, it didn't occur to me to walk away [implying she may have been in shock, a common theme from women who are taken off guard during such forceful acts].”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”Yes so, I initially didn't say anything about this because I was so embarrassed.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”You're thinking, “Was it my fault? Did I imagine it?””</blockquote>
<blockquote>”It's easy to start doubting, because the man is so powerful and famous, et cetera.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”After about a year, rumors start to appear. There is always gossip.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”Those (((men))) always think they can do this unnoticed. This is false, women talk to each other.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”I heard from others, then I also started to tell, but always as some sort of joke, although it was really scary.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”In the meantime, it has appeared, Lanzmann has been interviewed three times by female journalists from the NRC, and he did it all three times.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>”So two of my colleagues went through the same.”</blockquote>
Here's the full video (from the television show) if you're interested:
<div style="width:100%;text-align:center;margin:0 auto;"><iframe width="360" height="202" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EXeQo0FQNLc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
A bit more about Claude Lanzmann as per Wikipedia:
Lanzmann has received multiple awards in his career. On July 14, 2011, he received the French Legion of Honor. At the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2013, Lanzmann was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear. In 2010 he received the Welt-Literaturpreis.
Filmography of Lanzmann and his work include “Israel, Why (Pourquoi Israel) (1973)”, “Shoah (1985)”, “Tsahal (1994)”, “A Visitor from the Living (1999)”, “Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m (2001)”, “Lights and Shadows (2008)”, “The Karski Report (2010)”, “The Last of the Unjust (2013) about Benjamin Murmelstein, Elder of Theresienstadt” and “Napalm (2017)”.
He's also been the author of several books including “Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust: The Complete Text of the Film”, The Patagonian Hare: A Memoir”, and “La Tombe du Divin plongeur”.
Whilst it seems that Joyce Roodnat is not seeking any damages; she merely wanted to share that she is also a victim and tell her story about Claude Lanzmann.
Sources:
http://media.tpo.nl/2017/10/19/nrc-columniste-beschuldigt-franse-holocaust-documentairemaker-aanranding-metoo/
https://rodoh.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3092
—<i>[email protected]</i>
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There is nothing likes curling up with a good book. Except for a nice cup of hot chocolate with it. One of my kids favorite presents for Christmas one year, was a box with a new blanket, gift certificate to Barnes and Noble and a package of hot chocolate. It was a winner all around. This might make a great back to school gift too!
Maybe I’ll get them a Mermaid Blanket
Book Adventure
The Book Adventure website serves children in grades K-8 who choose books from provided lists, take quizzes, and earn points for prizes. They have cool prizes like books and my son’s personal favorite is a treat of Chocolate. It also has a place for parents/educators to test the children on the books.
Six Flags’ Read to Succeed
Six Flags’ Read to Succeed program offers free Six Flags tickets to students in grades K-6 who complete six hours of recreational reading. They also offer one ticket to a parent, who is acting like an educator. So, make sure that you put down that you help your child.
Note: As of June 2017, registration has not opened as yet. Put it on your calendar to come back.
Pizza Hut Book It!
Pizza Hut’s Book It! program runs from October through March for children in grades K-6. Parents can set individual goals for each child. Each student who meets their monthly reading goal is rewarded with a personal pan pizza. The parent fills out the form. It is a great Friday night treat if your child does his/her work.
Other Fun Ways To Encourage Reading
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TumblrI am now part of the problem. The advertising industry is wringing its hands and shaking its fist at the use and growth of ad-block technology, but I am not above temptation. I simply installed it. And much like the many million people who have done so already, I love it and probably won’t ever fully abandon it.
So instead of excoriating people for using them, it’s time we reflect on how we got here, what its inevitability means for our future and whether this might even be a trend worth embracing.
The most commonly cited statistic on ad blocking reports that roughly 200 million people worldwide installed ad blocking on their computers as of August 2015. That group is rapidly growing:
Mary Meeker’s 2016 Internet Trends Report shows an upward accelerating trend in ad-block adoption across desktop and mobile worldwide.
HubSpot’s Global Interruptive Ads Survey (Q4 2015 to Q1 2016) found 50 percent of respondents already had installed AdBlock, and more than 60 percent of adults 18-35 expect to by Q3 2016, with respondents 35+ not that far behind.
PageFair and Adobe report a growth of almost 50 percent in the usage of ad blockers in the U.S. from Q2 2014-Q2 2015.
The recent IAB report on ad blocking found 26 percent of desktop users block ads online.
Cumulatively, these reports indicate that the number of individuals using ad blockers will have doubled many more times over within the coming year or two. And their impact is real. Ovum and The Wall Street Journal report that in 2015 alone, publishers lost $24 billion dollars in ad revenue because of ad blockers.
Ad-block technology stops almost all ads a person might otherwise see. Search ads, banner ads, remarketing, pre-roll, YouTube ads, social posts and even some “native” ads are all covered. When loading a page, AdBlock looks at from where content is being called and uses that information to infer what is or is not an ad. On computers, AdBlock typically comes as a plugin to install in a browser. On mobile, it takes the form of browsers or browser settings that do the same. It’s easy and relatively tinker-proof. With one or two clicks, an ad-free internet is at the fingertips of anyone.
In response, some websites now have AdBlock walls. Upon arrival, AdBlock users are requested to enable ads by putting the site on a whitelist. Users are often amenable; the Times reported that more than 40 percent of users agreed to whitelist the site when provided with a message about the need to pay for high-quality content.
However, the bulk of internet publishers, along with the bulk of online ad inventory they represent, have not pursued similar measures: perhaps because they (rightly) assume that click-bait headlines and repurposed content aren’t reason enough to get users to turn off their ad blockers. Their objective is traffic, and lots of it. Meanwhile, premier content publishers are beginning to understand how much their core audience dislike their many ads and now even offer products that obviate the need for AdBlock in the first place. Publishers like the NYT and even YouTube now hawk ad-free supra-subscriptions for their most dedicated and ad-weary audience members.
Most users are blocking ads for specific reasons — reasons that can be addressed.
Fundamentally though, everyone understands that a world with no ads online is an untenable one. AdBlock Plus found that 75 percent of their users supported sites having ads, so long as they weren’t too many and weren’t aggressively disruptive. In response, AdBlock Plus developed the Acceptable Ads Manifesto, outlining a series of rules for ads on sites, most all of which follow common sense. If a site agrees to meet these standards, AdBlock Plus will not block their ads.
Moreover, much like the Times’ experiment, the latest IAB/YouGov study on ad blocking in the U.K. finds half of all users willing to disable blockers in exchange for content. The IAB U.S. survey found that most users are blocking ads for specific reasons — reasons that can be addressed. People understand the value of ads in supporting content; it’s just that now they are demanding better accountability from the system.
For publishers who sign on and are part of this advertising future, it means significantly fewer digital ads. It means higher premiums on banner ads, pre-roll ads and the like, and, quite possibly, an end to the cost savings previous models of digital advertising offered. It will mean that running a series of banner ads will not a campaign make. Challenged by the fact that the cheap replication of a print-style advertising model no longer is profitable, more publishers will have to look to more innovative ways to incorporate their commerce with their content.
This is a position that the entire advertising industry needs to move to embrace. The honest truth is that the prevailing model of digital advertising, of ubiquitous cheap ads, is a broken one. The incentives in this model have encouraged the worst behavior: publishers squeezing more and more ads into a cluttered space and marketers pointing to these masses of impressions and clicks as the sign of a job well done. Ads that aren’t viewable, bot-generated clicks, phantom ads across the internet, video ads that aren’t seen or heard or both: These are all symptoms of a business model that rewards quantity over quality.
When these are the rules, the winning strategy will be a simple numbers game.
Worse yet, the common model of digital attribution compounds the same tension. Standard practice attributes on-site success to the final ad clicked or final ad seen, rewarding mass amounts of bottom-of-the-funnel advertising. Whoever is responsible for that last ad takes full credit for that consumer’s decision to convert. Again, incentives in this model encourage the worst behavior: publishers flooding consumers with cheap ads to claim credit and marketers pointing to the cost-efficiencies of the same ads as the sign of a job well done.
Successful marketing is nothing if not pragmatic. So long as this is the nature of success, it’s unsurprising that all parties pursue the same end game. Admittedly, some of this is beyond the industry’s control; unlike |
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,
Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them,
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)
And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,
And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.Taking advantage of graphene’s special properties, physicists have experimentally observed a stream of record-breaking electrons that move with a conductance exceeding the limit theorists established decades ago. The researchers reported their findings recently in Nature Physics.
For more than half a century, physicists who study the flow of electrons have wondered how high conductance can go in a material. Conductance is the opposite of resistance; it describes how easily current passes through. Physicists study conductance to investigate fundamental properties of electrons. From a more practical standpoint, devices with high conductance make appealing components for future electronic devices.
The standard assumption, based on pioneering work from the 1960s, predicts a natural maximum for free electrons. Electrons lose momentum as they interact with the impurities, walls, and vibrations of the material, all sources of resistance. But even if they travel ballistically—unimpeded and without scattering—a quantum limit should apply. But new experiments have revealed streams of electrons flagrantly exceeding that upper bound as they flowed through tiny channels in a graphene device—not unlike water or gas streaming through a pinhole.
The work, led by physicist Andre Geim at the University of Manchester and with theoretical support from Marco Polini of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, in Genoa, reports the first experimental evidence of higher-than-expected conductance, with the electrons flowing like a fluid more viscous than honey. They describe the behavior as “superballistic” because it exceeds the limit for ballistic travel.
Finding such high conductance was “one of the big surprises in these experimental findings,” says physicist Kin Chung Fong at Harvard University, who was not involved in the study.
Theorists have long predicted that such electron fluids can form when interactions between the charged particles dominate over the interactions of the electrons with the material itself. That’s because when electrons encounter impurities or barriers, they lose momentum in the collisions. When they hit other electrons, momentum is conserved. Coaxing that liquid into existence experimentally has been a challenge, says Geim. Ordinary metals have too many impediments.
“In order to create a collective behavior, and viscosity is a collective behavior, you need to allow time and space for the molecules to interact,” says Geim. At low temperatures, in which electrons interact with each other each other over longer distances, normal metals have too many imperfections to allow the electron-electron behavior to dominate. If the temperature is raised, the electron interaction scale decreases—but vibrations can occur in the crystal structure of the material. These can act effectively like obstacles, leading to momentum losses in the electrons.
Graphene, though, changes the game. Made of a single layer of carbon atoms, graphene is stiff and strong, and demonstrates a spectrum of surprising electronic properties. Geim, together with Konstantin Novoselov, first isolated graphene in 2004, and they were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work.
Geim says graphene makes a good playground for super-ballistic electrons because it’s free of impurities. But he says “the real breakthrough” came with the realization that electron-phonon interactions are very weak in graphene. Phonons are quasiparticles associated with thermal vibrations in a material, but because “graphene is the stiffest material we know,” Geim notes, vibrations pose less of a problem.
In February 2016, Science published a trio of papers—including one led by Fong, and one led by Geim—reporting hydrodynamic behavior of electrons. They described structures associated with the flow of ordinary gases and liquids, such as turbulence, whirlpools and vortices, but in the electron fluids.
In March of this year, in PNAS, theorists led by Leonid S. Levitov at MIT predicted that super-ballistic behaviors should arise in materials like graphene. The new paper, says Fong, not only verifies those predictions but also shows that physicists have to consider a new limit associated with the viscous flow.
“Graphene provides a basic model to understand these physics because we have a well-controlled environment to study strongly-interacting electron gas now,” says Fong. “These are things that we couldn’t study a year ago.”A senior citizen who faces $100 in fines for having free books on his Toronto property is the result of "bureaucratic bullcrap," according to his daughter – and lots of angry people on Facebook agree.
Jennifer Sherwood Hicks took to the social network yesterday after her father, who lives near Yonge and Eglinton, received a letter from the City of Toronto.
The letter, according to Hicks, was sent to notify her dad that the little free library in his front lawn "contravenes city by-laws," and stated that he must remove the wooden box and its contents within 14 days – or be fined.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME, TORONTO??? IS THIS HOW YOU'RE SPENDING MY TAX DOLLARS...BY HARASSING SENIOR CITIZENS WHO ARE TRYING TO SPREAD A LITTLE LITERARY LOVE AROUND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD???" she wrote on Facebook Wednesday. "Excuse the caps, but I am absolutely steamed."
People from all over the city are similarly incensed over this particular situation, and by what they perceive as an attack on the Little Free Library movement – a literacy initiative that's resulted in the free exchange of millions of books between community members around the world each year.
"Pathetic," wrote one commenter on Hicks' Facebook post. "I've seen a few of these lovely community libraries popping up around the city. Personally, I love them. So sad." "It's a beautiful little library that brings curb appeal and community thoughtfulnes," wrote someone else. "What jerk is behind this madness to remove it?"
Hicks told me today that her father has contacted his city councillor in the hopes of keeping his library, which he received as a Christmas gift last year.
My favourite thing about Toronto are these cute little libraries. Find one near you at littlefreelibrary.org #littlefreelibrary #littlefreelibrarytoronto #books #library #bookstagram #bookworm A post shared by Brianna Benton (@briannafbenton) on Sep 26, 2017 at 1:19pm PDT
"My dad's a fan of mysteries, and you'll always find a few of those in the library," she says. "I keep it stocked with contemporary fiction. A few weeks ago when I posted on my Facebook page that I'd just dropped a few literary gems off, there was a bit of a bidding war over Beartown by Fredrik Backman."
Hicks says she posted about the situation on Facebook "simply to vent," but that she's happy with the response its been getting.
"I'm glad to see neighbours rallying around this cause, and promoting little libraries as community builders," she says. And rallying they are.
"I work in bylaw court often," wrote one local paralegal in the comments. "If they charge you I will take on your case for free and pay your fine if we lose."
Another person offered to pay the fine flat-out. "Where do I send $100," they asked, "to support his generosity?"
Update: The City of Toronto has had a change of heart and canceled the ticket. Little free libraries are here to stay.One of the great battle cries of the No campaign is the insistence that an independent Scotland couldn’t possibly be a “land of milk and honey” (even though nobody has ever actually said that it would). You simply can’t, we’re constantly told, run a country with Scandinavian levels of public services on US levels of taxation.
That, of course, is a matter of opinion, rather dependent on what you want that country to spend its money on – it’s a lot easier to afford pensions if you haven’t spunked all your cash on a load of nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.
But that’s by the by. To make a better, Nordic-style Scotland, we’re warned, we’d all have to pay much more tax, and if there’s one thing that terrifies British people beyond sanity it’s the threat of higher tax. But just for a moment, let’s assume that’s really the choice, and have a quick quiz.
Which of these scenarios would you prefer?
(a) A salary of £23,063 taxed at 21%?
(b) A salary of £41,025 taxed at 27%?
Take your time. Use a calculator if you like. There’s no rush.
We didn’t just pluck those numbers out of the air. They’re the World Bank’s current calculations of international GDP per capita for the UK and Norway respectively, adjusted for what’s called “Purchasing Power Parity”, or PPP. (We’ve also converted them from dollars to Sterling.)
What PPP means is that the figures already take account of the cost of living, so they’re genuinely comparable – it doesn’t matter that beer costs £10 a pint in Norway or whatever, because that’s been factored into the figures, which means you know you can still afford to buy 1.78 pints (41 divided by 23) in Oslo for every one pint you can get in Auchtermuchty before your wages run out.
The gap’s getting bigger, too. Those are 2012 figures – in 2009 Norwegians were only 1.59 times as well off than their British counterparts. And it’s actually worse still, because those are national averages but Norway is a much more equal country than the UK, so the average Brit doesn’t get as much of their fair share of national GDP wealth as the average Norwegian does. But let’s not complicate things.
The graph above is Norwegian taxation. Conveniently, the exchange rate between the Norwegian krone and the pound is almost exactly 10:1, so it’s easy to compare to UK wages. At an income of 410,000 krone a year (£41,000), a Norwegian worker is still paying only around 27% in income tax and the equivalent of National Insurance.
(In the UK that same income would put you just inside the 40% bracket, which currently starts at £41,000. Factoring in current personal allowances, your tax and NI would take roughly £11,200 out of that – an effective combined tax/NI rate of, er, 27.3%. So what we’ve learned is this: on a very healthy salary of £41,000 a Norwegian would actually still be paying slightly LESS tax than a UK worker on the same wages.)
But the average UK worker would actually be taking home roughly £18,000 a year less than that, and paying a lower total of around 21.4% in tax and NI after single-person’s allowance. So let’s finish the calculation:
Worker with average national purchasing power
UK: £23,000 minus tax/NI of £4935 = £18,065 disposable income
Norway: £41,000 minus tax/NI of £11,070 = £29,930 disposable income
That, readers, is the reality of the “Scandinavian tax levels” with which the No camp seeks to terrify Scottish voters. A country the same size as Scotland with similar levels of natural resources, but which chooses different spending priorities, is almost £12,000 better off per head per year DESPITE higher tax rates.
This is the great lie of neoliberalism, the political creed which now unites all three UK parties – that we need austerity because there just isn’t enough money to go round, but we have to cut taxes for “wealth creators” so that some of it will trickle down to the rest of us. But Norway shows that it’s simply a matter of which choices you make.
So that’s the reality. Vote Yes next year and you could find yourself paying 6% more tax, but in return for a 65% pay increase. Sound like a fair trade?The Himachal Pradesh high court on Friday ordered state chief information commissioner Bhim Sen and information commissioner KD Batish to seek an unconditional apology for disobeying its orders in the Priyanka Gandhi land deal case.
The commissioners withdrew an earlier affidavit in which, sources said, they had said they were sorry “if the court deemed them guilty”.
A division bench, comprising Justice Tarlok Singh Chauhan and Justice Sureshwar Thakur, listed November 27 for the next hearing.
The two officers have been asked to file a fresh affidavit of apology.
The high court had on August 7 served a notice on the two officers and asked them to explain why contempt proceedings shouldn’t be initiated as they had “deliberately disobeyed” the court’s order.
Priyanka’s counsel had told the high court that the state information commission had continued hearing the case about divulging of information about her land deals at Chharabra village near Shimla town to an applicant under the RTI Act, despite the court’s stay on it.
Even after the stay on the proceedings of the case, the information commission had pulled up its officers and asked them to explain the delay in proving information before the court ordered the restraint.
First Published: Oct 09, 2015 17:22 ISTThe Milwaukee Brewers acquired Luis Sardinas as part of the trade that sent Yovani Gallardo to Texas. And with Scooter Gennett being demoted to the minors, along with Hector Gomez and Elian Herrera doing very little positive things at the plate, Sardinas was called up maybe earlier than what people expected. In 32 games in Triple-A, Sardinas posted a.324 OBP and created 10% fewer runs than league average. In other words, he didn’t do much with the bat that warranted a promotion; however, his Triple-A numbers as a player in the Brewers’ organization were better than they were as a Triple-A player with Texas.
After a hot start with the big-league club, Sardinas has slowed down and has become the player most scouts have him pegged as. He’s good with the glove (although Defensive Runs Saved has yet to see that), but very below-average offensively. He has yet to walk this season, and is striking out at a 23.8% clip. Plus, his lack of power is unsettling.
Sardinas is a shortstop by trade, but unluckily for him, the Brewers already have one of those in Jean Segura. And no, the Brewers are not about to give up on Segura. Milwaukee also has a stud shortstop in Double-A right now in Orlando Arcia. Arcia, by the way, is currently taking the league by storm. ESPN’s scout guy Keith Law recently ranked him as baseball’s 20th-best prospect. He’s so talented that Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Todd Rosiak suggested the Brewers might move Segura to third base in order to make room for Arcia. They might not need to do that if Arcia can man second, but as of now, that’s not in the plans.
Sardinas is capable of handling second base, which makes him a bit more valuable, but do the Brewers really want three infielders — Segura, Arcia and Sardinas — who have absolutely no pop or power in their bats? I would be very surprised if the infield shaped up like that in the future. The Brewers have a hard enough time as it is scoring runs.
That’s why you shouldn’t be surprised if Sardinas is wearing a different uniform come August.
It basically comes down to this: who has the higher ceiling, Sardinas or Gennett? The Brewers will probably trade one of them, if not both, and I think Sardinas would offer the greatest return. He’s younger, is a better defender and can switch-hit, meaning there’s no need to platoon him like a team would and has done with Gennett. Milwaukee would, however, need to demand a power-hitting third baseman or a second baseman with at least gap power. When Aramis Ramirez retires after the season, the Brewers will be in desperate need of someone in the infield who is capable of producing runs.
Sardinas might be the ticket that grants that wish.What a busy past month! I bought a place, had it renovated, was sent to London last minute for work, and then moved.
I’ve been living off of sliced turkey and cheese, but am finally up and cooking in my new kitchen.
Long time readers will probably have noticed I don’t post many chicken recipes. I’m not a fan of chicken in general, but after seeing this delicious looking low carb chicken nuggets over at Fat Cat Keto, I had to give it a try.
Well, it was a learning experience using my new stove. Apparently there is an ‘ultra hot hot hot’ for ‘long pots’, and I burnt my oil and first batch of chicken. I tried both a fry and a bake version.
I also got a new food processor! WOOO!!! I splurged and got the a fly stainless steel 11 cup Cuisinart. I used it tonight for the first time and was VERY happy. I’ll post a review in another update. But it was perfect timing to make these Low Carb Chicken Nuggets.
Low Carb Chicken Nuggets Print Recipe A yummy Low Carb Chicken Nuggets recipe! Prep Time 20 minutes Cook Time 20 Prep Time 20 minutes Cook Time 20 Low Carb Chicken Nuggets Print Recipe A yummy Low Carb Chicken Nuggets recipe! Prep Time 20 minutes Cook Time 20 Prep Time 20 minutes Cook Time 20 Ingredients 2 pounds Chicken Breast
2 bags 3oz Pork Rinds i used mission picante pork rinds
1 cup Flaxseed Meal
4 Eggs
Salt
Coconut Oil Servings: Instructions In your food processor, empty one bag of the pork rinds and 1/2 cup of the flaxseed meal Place pork rind mixture into a large bowl Cut chicken up into small, consistently sized pieces (mine were about 1.5"x1.5") In a bowl, mix two eggs with salt, pepper and garlic powder Dip chicken in egg mixture, and then coat in the mixture Repeat this process with the second half of the ingredients to finish coating all the chicken Share this Recipe Powered by WP Ultimate Recipe
To bake: Set oven to 380 degrees, and bake for 20 minutes. 10 minutes in, give the chicken a shake
To fry: Heat up coconut oil over medium heat and cook for about 4 minutes per side, turning chicken, until cooked
Serve with celery and blue cheese dressing! Serves 4.
If you want the baked ones crispy, or if you go to re-heat, just heat up some coconut oil and throw them in to crisp them up!
Products used to make the Low Carb Chicken Nuggets:Soft and fluffy angel food cake roll with rich cream filling and fresh strawberries. Tastes good as it looks but don't get intimidated by its beauty. This delicious treat is not as complicated as it looks. You can whip up this masterpiece in under an hour. Here is an easy dessert recipe for Strawberries and Cream Roll.
Ingredients:
Angel Food Cake
9 egg whites in room temperature
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
¾ teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup + 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
¾ cup cake flour
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
Strawberries and Cream Filling
2 cups heavy whipping cream, chilled
6 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups diced strawberries
Powdered sugar for dusting and strawberry slices for garnish
Procedures:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 15x10-inch baking pan with waxed paper and grease lightly with cooking spray. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, Beat egg whites, vanilla and cream of tartar using an electric mixer on medium speed until soft peaks form. Add sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, on high until stiff glossy peaks form and sugar is dissolved. Gently fold in flour, ¼ cup at a time, taking care not to deflate the egg whites.
Spread batter in an even layer into prepared pan using a spatula. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Remove from oven and cool for while, around 5 minutes.
Lay a clean kitchen towel on a flat work surface and dust with 1 tablespoon powdered sugar. Turn the cake out onto the kitchen towel and gently peel off waxed paper. Roll up the warm cake in the towel jelly-roll style, starting with a short side. Cool completely on a wire rack.
While waiting for the roll to cool down, beat the cream on medium speed until it begins to thicken. Add powdered sugar and vanilla; increase the speed to medium-high and beat until soft peaks form. Gently fold in the strawberries. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to use.
Carefully unroll the angel food cake on a flat surface. Spread filling on top of the cake to within ½-inch of edges. Gently roll up again and place seam side down on a serving plate. Sprinkle top with powdered sugar and garnish with strawberry slices, if desired. Cover leftover with plastic wrap and keep in the refrigerator.
Get These Other Easy Dessert Recipes:
Comments
commentsMove over Watson. Microsoft has trained an artificial intelligence program that can pick through the thousands of submissions to the New Yorker’s cartoon caption contest to help find a winner. Bloomberg writes that Microsoft researchers worked with Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor at the New Yorker to train a computer to understand what makes a New Yorker cartoon funny. Mankoff, who goes through an assistant every two-years because they suffer burn out reading so many caption entries, is excited about the AI possibilities.
Dafna Shahaf, a researcher at Microsoft, used the database of cartoons to train the program to understand commonalities and differences in the millions of cartoons, which lets the AI run through the entries the New Yorker receives each week for its back-of-magazine cartoon caption contest. About 55.8% of the time the humans agree with the captions the AI selects, which is a pretty good percentage.
That means the New Yorker could use the system to eliminate at least 2,200 submissions a week without missing the gems. “On average, we saved about 50 percent of his workload,” says Shahaf. It could also save Mankoff the time it takes to hire new assistants. “I do think the future is human-machine companionship,” Mankoff says. “Computers can be a great aid.”
From a technical perspective, computers have not suddenly learned a sense of humor (not even the dry, New Yorker sense of humor). They have learned how to emulate a specific style of humor, although that in itself is pretty cool, because learning how to emulate something, as opposed to being told exactly how to do something is an important step. If you ran the same AI against Dilbert or Ziggy caption suggestions you’d get poorer results because the Microsoft AI is trained against the New Yorker’s specific archives. However, getting computers to “understand” humor is an important step in almost all aspects of interacting with humans and translation.
Thus, efforts to make the lives of Mankoff’s assistants easier has the added benefit of possibly making Microsoft’s Cortana or Skype’s translation features better as well. And maybe one day, instead of just helping weed out caption suggestions, researchers can build an AI that will write one on its own.Poll: Clinton, Trump in statistical dead heat in Nevada
CLOSE Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have said radically different things about immigration. A look at their quotes: Wochit
The contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in Nevada has become a statistical dead heat.
According to a Suffolk University poll released Thursday, Clinton edged Trump among Nevada voters by 44%-42%, which is essentially a tie when you consider that the margin of error is 4.4 percentage points. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson had 5% and Independent American Party candidate Darrell Castle had 1%. Rocky De La Fuente, who has no party affiliation, also had 1%.
Nevada is considered a swing state but Barack Obama won it in 2008 and 2012.
The majority of Nevada voters saw both candidates as neither honest nor trustworthy. For Clinton, 55% of people said she did not have those qualities, while just 38% said she did. Meanwhile, 52% of voters said Trump was not honest or trustworthy, while 38% said he was.
Just one-fourth of those surveyed said they felt excited about the presidential election. Meanwhile, 55% said they were “alarmed,” 24% were “excited,” 11% said they were “bored” and 9% were undecided on just how they felt.
Despite the fact that nearly half of those polled backed Trump, most people surveyed (73%) felt like America was already great. (Trump’s campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again.”)
The Senate race to replace retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is tied. Both Republican Rep. Joe Heck and Democratic candidate Catherine Cortez Masto had the support of 37% of Nevada voters. Undecided voters were at 14%.
The telephone poll of 500 registered Nevada voters was conducted Aug. 15-17.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2bEwr5AConsider the N.J. Alliance for Action's new "On the Road in NJ" website the transportation version of scared straight.
It's 1,000 photos of cracked concrete, protruding rusty metal pieces and patched and pockmarked pavement are designed to do just that -- make drivers think about the condition of the roads and bridges they're traveling over. If that isn't frightening enough, among the photos are one collapsed bridge and two relying on wooden support structures.
The On The Road in NJ website went live on Tuesday and was previewed at the Alliance's annual Transportation Conference. It allows visitors to Tweet and post photos on Facebook, Instagram and other social media and has links to photo bomb your legislator with an e-mailed copy of bad bridges, road craters and bumper to bumper congestion.
"People have to make the connection that this is in my town," said Philip Beachem, executive director of the Alliance for Action, which lobbies for transportation infrastructure projects. "This is an important issue to everyone who travels around the state."
Short of running tours, transportation officials and advocacy organizations have struggled with how to get the message about the deteriorating condition of roads, bridges and transit infrastructure to the public.
"We're building a social media army. This is how people communicate, short and simple," Beachem said. "Reports (about bridge and road conditions) mean nothing, if we can't show them in a few seconds (through) a photo."
RELATED: Days of highway expansion in N.J. are over until roads are fixed
While the website doesn't directly address that the state Transportation Trust Fund runs out of money in July, Beachem and other officials said it is designed to show why it needs to be reauthorized with new revenue sources.
"If it is reauthorized, some of that money in the bridge program will be for counties," said Peter Palmer, Somerset County freeholder, noting that many of the photos are of county bridges. "Now, they are the county's responsibility."Streetsblog’s CicLAvia VII Scavenger Hunt
Since we’re not doing a Streetfilm for this year’s CicLAvia, the Streetsblog team thought we would add to Sunday’s festivities by making the first ever Streetsblog photo scavenger hunt. The first person to tweet us a picture of each of the following items will win a Streetsblog t-shirt.
To be clear, each person that tweets to @lastreetsblog the first item on the list wins a shirt, as does the first person to tweet @lastreetsblog the second item on the list and on and on. We’ll announce winners on Monday. The pictures have to be taken on the CicLAvia route. Logos can appear on a shirt or somewhere else. You cannot draw the logo yourself and then take a picture of it.
While we love the inventive routes and attractions of CicLAvia, but for us the day is all about the people. So…without further adieu, the ten things to tweet @lastreetsblog are…
Remember, tweet your pictures to @lastreetsblog and we’ll announce winners, if there are any, on Monday.
But most of all, have fun and be safe.Giant mastodont skeleton discovered at Gray Fossil Site
JOHNSON CITY – (Dec. 1, 2015) The 2015 field season at the East Tennessee State University and General Shale Natural History Museum and Visitor Center at the Gray Fossil Site is wrapping up with a huge discovery. According to paleontologists at ETSU, this find is “huge” in terms of its scientific potential, as well as the overall size of the animal.
“We have known that an elephant-like animal existed at the Gray Fossil Site since the site was discovered in 2000 during a road construction project,” said Dr. Steven Wallace, excavation director and museum curator. “Earlier researchers suggested that ‘elephant’ remains from the site might belong to a group known as the shovel-tusk elephants, so called for their large, flat lower tusks that are reminiscent of large shovels. This identification was always uncertain because flattened lower tusks and diagnostic cheek teeth hadn’t been recovered.”
As excavations began this year at the Gray Fossil Site, various target areas were selected. One target was the location where Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) workers first hit and recovered tusk fragments in 2000.
“Although this tusk area was a primary target for the 2015 field season, our work there was postponed because a duck decided to nest in that area,” said Shawn Haugrud, lab and field manager at the Gray Fossil Site and the Natural History Museum. “Once the duck was finished, we moved in and began a number of excavation units. We immediately started finding tusk fragments under the duck area.”
Following this, Wallace contacted TDOT and asked if they would be willing to donate any remaining tusk fragments in their collection recovered in 2000.
“TDOT graciously donated the remains, and the pieces fit together with specimens (that were) recovered this season,” noted Haugrud, who was put in charge of overseeing the field crew for the first time this year.
Haugrud worked with site surveyor Brian Compton to map all the tusk fragments in the disturbed surface sediments. Using the resulting map, they were able to narrow in on the most promising tusk area, and the excitement really began to pick up in late August as the tip of an intact tusk appeared. The excavation team then moved in the opposite direction and soon hit more tusk – a continuation of the same tusk. By October, part of the skull was uncovered with visible teeth.
“As soon as teeth were discovered, I rushed to the site for a look,” noted Dr. Blaine Schubert, executive director of the Gray Fossil Site and Natural History Museum. “It was clear that we had something quite different from a shovel-tusker – we had an early mastodont!”
There is no doubt that ETSU paleontologists are ecstatic about the discovery of a mastodont (also spelled mastodon).
According to Dr. Jim Mead, chair of the Department of Geosciences and museum curator, “There are many types of extinct elephant-like animals that roamed North America over time, ranging from mammoths to mastodonts, and stegodons to shovel-tuskers. Mammoths weren’t around in North America at the time of the Gray Fossil Site, but we still had three or four possibilities to consider. Now that we know it is mastodont, this is incredibly exciting for us, the university, and the world of paleontology.”
“We have all had our fingers and toes crossed that we would hit more of this ‘elephant,’ and that was the area that had the greatest known potential,” said Wallace. “We now have a cranium, lower jaw, teeth, tusks, and neck vertebrae. This suggests that we have an entire skeleton out there, and we will be working on this for years.”
Schubert notes that the identification of mastodont from the site is extraordinary and unique. “While relatives of these giant animals were common during the Ice Age at sites like Saltville, Virginia, they are rare from older sites in North America,” he said. “Thus, paleontologists know very little about ancestral mastodonts on the continent, especially in eastern North America. Now that we have this remarkable Mio-Pliocene skeleton, we can see that it has extraordinary transitional features. This skeleton has the potential of filling significant gaps in our understanding of their evolutionary history.”
Visitors to the ETSU and General Shale Natural History Museum may see the mastodont project in action. This winter, Shawn Haugrud and his crew will work on the tusks, skull, teeth, and vertebrae in the Prep Lab. They will clean and put them back together in the laboratory upstairs at the museum. Excavation of the rest of the skeleton will start in 2016.
The Natural History Museum is located 1.8 miles off Exit 13 on Interstate 26. Regular museum hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
For more information, call 423-439-3659 or toll free 866-202-6223, or visit the museum at www.etsu.edu/naturalhistorymuseum. For disability accommodations, call the ETSU Office of Disability Services at 423-439-8346.http://dailyrelay.com
photo: Runnerspace
A year after missing out on making Team USA with a fourth-place finish in the 10,000m at the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Chris Derrick fought for third on a hot night in Des Moines to make the plane to Moscow.
That performance was just one of many accomplishments in Derrick’s first full year as a pro. He also finished first in the USA Cross Country Championships and then placed 10th in the subsequent World Cross Country Championships. After an injury limited his pre-Worlds training — he would finish 18th — Derrick completed the heart of his 2013 season by setting a personal best of 13:08 in the Brussels Diamond League meet in early September.
We sat down with the Stanford alum when he was in New York for the Dash to the Finish Line 5K in early November (he’d finish ninth in 14-flat). Derrick discussed making the World Championships team, that bizarre 5,000m race at USAs, the Stanford-Oregon rivalry and more |
because it obviates the need for more boots on the ground (Pentagon jargon), with antiseptic killing—down of course to leaving the victim a blood spat, disappeared, not one to worry about in terms of imprisonment—speaks volumes about the psychological authoritarianism callous to human suffering, not to say obliteration. The Oval Office has done its share in legitimating bestiality.
My Comment on The Times’s article follows:
Along with Savage, Shane and Mazzetti are among my favorite national-security reporters. Yet in this article I could not find the key word describing the armed drone strikes: ASSASSINATION. No wonder America’s ugly reputation in the world. Obama the assassination president, Obama enshrouding the program in secrecy (lest its illegality be exposed), Obama the killer of more children through so-called “collateral damage” than are killed through gun violence in America. Oh those Terror Tuesday sessions off the Situation Room, selecting targets as though in a shooting gallery at a county fair. POTUS the Mars of War (while God is busy ministering to the victims). Almost as shameful as Obama’s personal authorization for targeted killings–these include zapping the funerals of the victims and first responders seeking to help the victims–are the reasons given for slowing down the number of strikes. Everything about the drones speaks to cynicism, cold-bloodedness, amorality, together adding up to an indictment for WAR CRIMES.
Norman Pollack is the author of “The Populist Response to Industrial America” (Harvard) and “The Just Polity” (Illinois), Guggenheim Fellow, and professor of history emeritus, Michigan State University.AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 21, 2015, before a Senate Finance Committee hearing on fast-track trade authority. (Evan Vucci/AP)
The head of the nation's largest labor union is ramping up his rhetoric to fight President Obama's Pacific trade pact, calling a key part of the White House argument "horse waste."
AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka has been speaking out against Obama's bid to win approval for a 12-nation free trade deal in the Asia Pacific region for months. In an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors Thursday, Trumka warned that American workers would punish Democrats at the polls if Obama succeeds in getting the Trans Pacific Partnership through Congress.
"If the president wins this fight, Democrats will be in the minority for a decade or so" on Capitol Hill, Trumka said during a hour-long conversation at The Washington Post's offices. If Obama is seeking to build on his legacy with the TPP, Trumka added, "it will be the wrong legacy."
In sometimes colorful and pugilistic language, Trumka also took direct aim at one of the administration's key arguments on the trade bill. Democrats have called for tough provisions aimed at limiting other nations from manipulating their currency to artificially boost exports to the United States.
White House officials, Trumka said, have said such a provision is a non-starter in part because it could expose the United States to punitive actions if the U.S. Treasury enacts quantitative easing to stimulate the economy.
"That’s just pure, unadulterated horse waste," Trumka said.
Yet many independent economists say such manipulation is no longer prevalent and that the longtime poster child of currency manipulation — China — has gradually stopped doing it. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellin warned Congress not to include currency provisions in the trade deal during congressional testimony in February.
The AFL-CIO has opened a full-fledged assault on Obama's trade push, suspending political contributions to funnel money into an advertising campaign to stop the trade bill from advancing. The Obama administration's "fast-track" authority that would smooth the path to complete the TPP failed to clear a procedural hurdle in the Senate on Tuesday, but Senate leaders have struck a deal to try again over the coming days.
Organized labor has largely opposed liberalizing free trade, blaming past deals such at the North American Free Trade Agreement for killing jobs and lowering wages as U.S. companies sent factories abroad.
Obama has cast the TPP as a new model agreement with higher labor and environmental protections with better enforcement provisions, but he has failed to convince a broad progressive coalition that is fighting against him.
Trumka said that his organization will consider the votes on fast-track authority "a very, very major vote on the scorecard" as union members assess who to support in the 2016 election cycle. And he pledged that the AFL-CIO will be "hard-edged" in going after lawmakers who back the trade agenda.
He also said the AFL-CIO was disappointed with both parties in the midterms last November for failing to articulate a strategy to raise wages for workers.
"What we want to see is someone who has an agenda for working people and will fight for that agenda to make it a reality," he said. "Both parties are on probation after the election." In a meeting with Obama a few months ago, Trumka said, he told the president "that if the first thing that comes out of that is this fight [on trade], people aren’t going to hear anything after that."
Trumka suggested Obama would be better served trying again on comprehensive immigration reform, which died in the GOP-controlled House last summer, or to lobby Congress to increase budgets on infrastructure. However, it is unlikely the Republicans in control of both houses would adopt the president's agenda in either of those areas.
Of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who supported the TPP as Obama's secretary of state but has not taken a position since declaring herself a presidential candidate, Trumka said a day of reckoning is nearing for Clinton and the other 2016 candidates to take a definitive stance.
"I think it's coming now. People are asking her direct questions on the issues," he said. "You can’t run, you can’t hide."IRVING, Texas – Here are some observations from the second session of organized team activities that was open to the media Tuesday:
Kyle Wilber worked with the first team at right defensive end with DeMarcus Ware out. Tyrone Crawford handled that spot in the first week that was open to the media. Wilber had a productive day. He was active and was around the ball. Remember, he was going against Tyron Smith, too. Wilber did a nice job reading a reverse to WR Terrance Williams.
Dwayne Harris turned into a tremendous punt returner last year and he took the first-team work on Tuesday, but he was later joined by Cole Beasley, B.W. Webb and Anthony Amos.
Teams sometimes shy away from putting starters on special teams, so it was interesting to see Sean Lee and Bruce Carter on the punt coverage team. Lee served as the personal protector.
Morris Claiborne came up with a nice interception of a Kyle Orton throw on a slant-and-go to Miles Austin. Claiborne did not bite on the fake and was able to stay underneath the route to come up with the turnover.
Orton struggled in one-on-one throws, especially the deeper throws. Maybe it was the wind, but he was unable to get the ball to open Dez Bryant a few times. Bryant won every rep he had against Brandon Carr.
When the Cowboys ran their two-minute drill, Williams served as the No. 3 receiver over Harris and did not come off the field. He caught a nice corner route from Orton, tapping his feet just inside the sideline.
Jason Witten caught seven passes in team and seven-on-seven drills. He ended the first-team two-minute drill with a touchdown down the seam after beating Matt Johnson at the line. Witten was able to bend his route a little to the outside to throw Johnson off balance before coming back to the middle with added separation.
Speaking of tight ends, James Hanna had the play of the day with a one-handed grab down the seam as a defender closed quickly. Hanna continues to be the second tight end behind Witten when the Cowboys use their 12 personnel group over Gavin Escobar. It’s not that Escobar isn’t doing well, it’s that Hanna is doing better.
In the battle of No. 2 offense vs. defense, J.J. Wilcox ended the day with an interception of Nick Stephens on a pass across the middle. Stephens was looking for Beasley, who appeared to slow down on his route.The establishment media’s hasty misreporting and omission of facts relating to the alleged murder of a 17-year old Muslim girl by a 22-year old illegal alien suspect Sunday morning looks like an attempt to push a narrative and not the facts.
Before the details of the brutal murder were able to materialize, The Atlantic did not hesitate in trying to fit the killing into a neatly wrapped narrative, writing “Muslim Americans are mourning—and terrified.” The articles headline boasts “Muslims Feel Under Siege” and included the 17-year old’s murder as one of “two violent incidents” specifically targeting Muslims occurring over the weekend. The other incident was a man accused of ploughing his van into a group of worshippers outside a mosque in London, killing one person and injuring 11.
Far left magazine Affinity wasted no time Monday in proclaiming that “this [murder] is terrorism,” and “it comes with no surprise that bigots” cannot accept terrorism as anything other than “non-exclusive of Muslims.” Affinity doubles down on their extemporaneous reporting, lamenting the fact that hate crime allegations are “still” being investigated despite “evidence that proves” the girl was targeted for her faith.
At the time of Affinity’s and The Atlantic’s reporting, no facts about the killers motive were known. However, hours later police reported that there was “nothing” to indicate that the murder was a hate crime, but instead an act of “road rage.” Not only was there no evidence to support their sanctimonious claims, but the accused attacker is not even an American citizen.
Later that same evening, The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross reported that the suspect, Darwin A. Martinez Torres, is in the United States illegally from El Salvador. The media’s handling of these new facts was indicative of their intent to use this tragedy for their own ends. CNN‘s report revealing that the murder was an act of road rage was forceful in their reporting of the emotionally distraught father’s claims that it was a hate crime. Nowhere in the CNN report was it mentioned the suspect immigration status mentioned, so as not to sully the narrative.
The closest The Washington Post came to reporting that Torres is an illegal alien was quickly mentioning a “detainer” placed on him by “U.S. Immigration officials” for “possible” deportation proceedings. WaPo, reporting that he spoke through a translator to answer the judges questions, never once uses the term “illegal alien” or “illegal immigrant” to describe Torres.
The New York Times reported honestly on Torres’ legal status but waited until the next day and included quotes from the slain girls father saying that the public “should stop hating on people” because of religious differences. TheNYT also included that local Muslim leaders were confident that the police would review whether the victim was “targeted because she was Muslim.” Two paragraphs later, the Times acknowledges that the police “classified the case as a ‘road rage incident,'” before describing the reported series of events.
Two of the three Monday evening shows on the big three cable networks ignored the story entirely. ABC News mentioned it briefly in a video segment, with the teaser ahead of the story asking the question, “was it a hate crime?” ABC reported on Torres’ motive of “road rage” earlier that same day, as well as his legal status before the show aired, yet it was never mentioned on the show.
NBC finally reported on the story Wednesday night, describing Torres as a “construction worker” with no mention of his legal status and reporting that “prosecutors cannot rule out” pursuing charges for a hate crime. Their report came two days after the police reported there was no evidence the killing was a hate crime.
The establishment media’s crusade to highlight tragedies to perpetuate a narrative continues. Their effort to spin a alleged vicious murder committed by an illegal alien of a 17-year old girl because he was “angry” into the broader narrative that this was symptomatic of America’s Islamophobia, shows just how far they’re willing to go.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected] Wojciechowski profiles Jordan Spieth as he prepares to play in his first Masters. (3:48)
Editor's Picks Wojciechowski: Jordan Spieth takes his Masters shot After dreaming of playing in the Masters since he was a kid, 20-year-old Jordan Spieth will see his fantasy become reality this week at Augusta National, writes ESPN.com's Gene Wojciechowski.
Top 10 rounds in Masters history -- No. 1 Andy North caps his Top 10 rounds in Masters history with No. 1: Jack Nicklaus' memorable back-nine charge for his sixth green jacket. 1 Related
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Three players at the Masters have a chance to replace Tiger Woods as No. 1 in the world.
Defending champion Adam Scott, who squandered a great shot at being No. 1 when he lost a three-shot lead at Bay Hill, would need to finish in a two-way tie for third this week at Augusta National.
Henrik Stenson (No. 3) would need at least a two-way tie for second to become the first Swedish player at No. 1 in the world.
Jason Day (No. 4) would have to win to have any shot at being No. 1.
Woods is not playing in the Masters for the first time in his career because of back surgery that will keep him out of competitition until the summer.Welcome to the Game of Thrones diary, in which Rich plays as Ned Stark and tries to stay alive in the excellent Game of Thrones mod for Crusader Kings 2. The diary may contain spoilers for Game of Thrones book one and season one of the TV show. Missed the start? Here's part one.
Ned Stark has killed hundreds of people – including, last week, one of his best mates for a minor transgression. But Ned always stared in their faces as he lopped their heads off, never breaking eye contact as their heads bounced around on the floor like bony footballs. I'm about to make him take a life by nefarious, sneaky means, and I feel bad.
Ned is boss of Westeros's North, and looks after a vast swathe of land. But I wasn't happy with the size of his territory. I wanted more for Ned. Last week, I decided he would do whatever it took to increase his holdings – even if that meant taking a life to get at that land.
That land was to be the Twins, the fortified stronghold directly south of Ned's southernmost territory, and that life was to be Stevron Frey's. Stevron is Lord of the Twins, and the head of a gigantic family several hundred cousins deep. The downside: there are so many Freys milling about that killing one would just see another step into its place like a many-headed hydra. The upside: being forced to live in a castle alongside your 40-odd siblings puts stresses on familial bonds.
Crusader Kings II's plots need backers to work. After opening CKII's Intrigue menu and selecting a bid to kill Stevron, I waded through a list of 30 members of his own family that were not only keen to see him dead, they were also happy to help me kill him. I bet Christmas was great fun at the Frey household. I selected ten of them and fired off requests to formally join my plot. “Dear sir/madam: would you like to help me kill your dad? Please RSVP, yes/no/maybe to This Guy Up North as soon as possible.” I got ten positive replies within a few days. The plot was on – and, thanks to the plotters' power, it had a 107 per cent chance of succeeding! I was expecting old Stevvers to meet with an unfortunate accident later that afternoon, as his kids queued up to push him down the stairs.
But that afternoon turned to days, and days turned to in-game weeks. Still Stevron clung on in the face of multiple patricide attempts. I wondered if part of the problem was Ned himself: great at war, boss Stark isn't the sneakiest tool in the shed, and has an innately sucky Intrigue score. I considered calling off the plot, but without a claim on the Twins – a reasonable justification for war in CKII's robo-eyes – I had no way of hurting the Freys. And for many reasons, I really want to hurt the Freys. I'll just have to bide my time.
My attention is quickly snaffled by another family: the Tullys. Eighteen-year-old Edmure Tully, natural heir to Westeros's central Riverlands lordship, has declared war on King Robert and marched on King's Landing. Robert, in turn, has raised his allies in the south, west, and east to rebuff the invaders, and presumably do things to Edmure that involve disengaging his head from his neck and mounting it on something pointy. Robert has also asked for my assistance in bashing down the young upstart, but there's one problem: Edmure is my brother-in-law.
Ned's wife Catelyn is a Tully, and Edmure is her younger brother. So when Robert – Ned's best pal, commander of by far the largest fighting force in Westeros, and temperamental shit at the best of times – comes a-knocking to secure the support of the North's armies, I'm forced to stall for time. I open my hands, shuffle my feet around, and select the'maybe I'll wait a little bit before deciding' option in the prompt that pops up. Robert immediately loses ten 'fondness' for me, but at least I've not pissed off the bearer of (most) of my children. I hope Edmure sorts himself out before Robert's army crashes down around him, for both our sakes.
But Edmure doesn't. The war rages on, the land south of the Neck tumultuous with military movements. The Riverlands can call on many vassals, and have fielded a large army. Robert's is bigger, but has to stream over slowly from all corners of Westeros. Small scraps chip away at both sides' resolve, and Robert is forced to come back to the North, begging for an army. With a mouthed “sorry” to Catelyn, I decide to acquiesce: Robert's opinion of me is waning, and I'd rather be best friends with the continent's ruler than have to hang around with the in-laws.
Characters in Crusader Kings II don't get standing armies; instead they have levies, fighting men who can be raised come wartime, and sunk back into the general populace in times of peace. To join Robert's war, I need to raise all my levies from my many different vassals, and then join them into a collective force. I start to mass them in the Neck, just north of the Twins. I'm wondering if they can maybe sneak into Stevron Frey's bedroom and give him a good scare on the way down south, when I spy a little notifier in the top right of the screen: “Stevron Frey has died.”Pro-Trump Reddit Users Censored
Pro-Donald Trump Reddit users were censored by Reddit admins for discussing censorship on the site. Reddit admins instructed /r/The_Donald users to erase their posts that discuss censorship on /r/Politics— though it wouldn’t be the first time Reddit sought to control the content discussed on its site.
In an online conversation between The_Donald moderators and Reddit admins, a Reddit admin slammed The_Donald users for “interfering with their ability to moderate and use the site normally.” The_Donald’s comments on Reddit censorship lately led to a considerable number of temporary suspensions.
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“In the conversation, /u/Sodypop claims that certain moderators of /r/Politics were receiving threatening messages and spam following posts in /r/The_Donald detailing censorship by moderators of /r/Politics,” Breitbart reported.
One The_Donald poster argued that when the roles were reversed and liberal users sent him threats and even exposed his personal information, Reddit admins ignored his concerns.
“…The only possible reason I can find for my suspension was down voting three posts by a mod of r/politics,” the user posted, noting that one of the posts they down voted was titled “Anti-Trump protesters attack supporters at California rally.”
The_Donald is a subreddit frequently filled with heated exchanges between Trump supporters and Trump foes. Pro-Trump users voiced concern that the Trump subreddit was targeted in a way that other presidential subreddits, such as /r/SandersForPresident, were not.
Some people are calling for Reddit to address the issue by making a public statement.
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“A trusted source within the /r/Politics community has told Breitbart Tech that some are calling for a public statement on the issue by the Reddit admins and moderators of /r/Politics. It seems more events may be unfolding within the Reddit community in days to come,” Breitbart reported.
To read more about Trump supporters being censored in the media, click here.Taking a 30-minute walk a day is kind of like that proverbial apple: There's a good chance it'll keep the doctor away. From helping you lose weight and de-stress to lowering your blood pressure and reducing your risk of many chronic diseases—going for regular walks is one of the best and easiest things you can do for your health, says Melina B. Jampolis, MD, author of The Doctor on Demand Diet. "Walking is the number one exercise I recommend to most of my patients because it is very easy to do, requires nothing but a pair of tennis shoes, and has tremendous mental and physical benefits," she says. Here's what you can expect when you start walking for just 30 minutes every day, most days of the week.
Your mood will improve
You know how sometimes it takes a glass of wine or a square (or three) of dark chocolate to blunt the edge of a rough day? Well, going for a walk is a zero-calorie strategy with the same benefits, says Dr. Jampolis. "Research shows that regular walking actually modifies your nervous system so much that you'll experience a decrease in anger and hostility," she says. What's more, when you make your walks social—you stride with, say, your partner, a neighbor, or a good friend—that interaction helps you feel connected, says Dr. Jampolis, which boosts mood. Finally, walking outdoors exposes you to natural sunlight, which can help stave off Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)—making it a potential antidote for the winter blues, says Dr. Jampolis.
Your creative juices will start flowing
Whether you're feeling stuck at work or you've been searching for a solution to a tricky problem, research shows it's a good idea to get moving: According to a 2014 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory, and Cognition, going for a walk can spark creativity. "Researchers administered creative-thinking tests to subjects while seated and while walking and found that the walkers thought more creatively than the sitters," says Dr. Jampolis.
Your jeans will get a little looser
This one may seem obvious, but it's certainly a happy benefit for those who start walking regularly, says Dr. Jampolis. "As you continue to walk, you may notice your pants begin to fit more loosely around your midsection, even if the number on the scale isn't moving much," she says. "That's because regular walking can help improve your body's response to insulin, which can help reduce belly fat." Ariel Iasevoli, a personal trainer at Crunch gyms in New York City, adds that walking every day is one of the most effective low-impact ways to mobilize fat and positively alter body composition. "Daily walking increases metabolism by burning extra calories and by preventing muscle loss, which is particularly important as we get older," says Iasevoli. The best part? You don't have to slog it out on a treadmill at the gym to see these benefits. "One of my clients reduced her body fat by 2% in just one month by walking home from work each day, which was just under a mile," she says.
Do this ultimate leg stretch after your walk—you legs will thank you:
You'll slash your risk of chronic disease
The statistics are impressive: The American Diabetes Association says walking lowers your blood sugar levels and your overall risk for diabetes. Researchers at the University of Boulder Colorado and the University of Tennessee found that regular walking lowered blood pressure by as much as 11 points and may reduce the risk of stroke by 20% to 40%. One of the most cited studies on walking and health, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002, found that those who walked enough to meet physical activity guidelines (30 or more minutes of moderate activity on 5 or more days per week) had a 30% lower risk of cardiovascular disease, compared with those who did not walk regularly. "The physical benefits of walking are well documented," says Scott Danberg, director of fitness at Pritikin Longevity Center + Spa in Miami. With impressive results like these, there's a good chance you'll get a pat on the back from your doc at your next checkup.
You'll keep your legs looking great
As we age, our risk of unsightly varicose veins increases—it's just not fair. However, walking is a proven way to prevent those unsightly lines from developing, says Luis Navarro, MD, founder, and director of The Vein Treatment Center in New York City. "The venous system includes a circulatory section known as 'the second heart,' which is formed by muscles, veins, and valves located in our calf and foot," he explains. "This system works to push blood back up to the heart and lungs—and walking strengthens this secondary circulatory system by strengthening and preserving leg muscle, which boosts healthy blood flow." If you already suffer from varicose veins, daily walking can help ease related swelling and restlessness in your legs, says Dr. Navarro. "Also, if you are genetically predisposed to have varicose and/or spider veins, walking daily can help delay the onset."
Your digestion will improve
If you currently praise coffee for keeping your digestive system going strong, get ready to start thanking your morning walk instead. That's because a regular walking routine can greatly improve gastric mobility, says Tara Alaichamy, DPT, a physical therapist at Cancer Treatment Centers of America. "One of the very first things an abdominal surgery patient is required to do is to walk because it utilizes core and abdominal muscles, encouraging movement in our GI system," she says. (Check out these 7 things your poop says about your health.)
Your other goals will start to seem more reachable
When you become a regular walker, you will have established a regular routine—and when you have a routine, you are more likely to continue with the activity and take on new healthy behaviors. "I firmly believe that walking regularly can help you to accomplish other goals you set your mind to," says Kim Evans, a personal trainer, and daily walker.Currently there are factory images available for the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 7 2012 (Wifi and 3G), Nexus 7 2013 (Wifi and LTE), Nexus 10 and even Nexus Player — but we're still waiting on the Nexus 9, sadly.
As we reported earlier, Android 5.1 brings support for multiple SIMs and cross-platform HD Voice, along with Device Protection which ties your Android device to your Google account and prevents unwanted access to your device even if it goes through a factory reset. Additionally, there are some tweaks to quick settings for easier control over Bluetooth and WiFi network switching.
If you happen to own one of the aforementioned devices, feel free to hit up the links below to grab the factory images and start flashing away. Speaking of flashing, check out our comprehensive guide on the process for a step-by-step guide to flashing your Nexus device with the latest firmware.
Nexus 4 Android 5.1 factory image link
Nexus 5 Android 5.1 factory image link
Nexus 6 Android 5.1 factory image link
Nexus 7 (2012) Android 5.1 factory image links
Nexus 7 (2013) Android 5.1 factory image links
Nexus 9 Android 5.1.1 factory image link
Nexus 10 Android 5.1 factory image links
Nexus Player Android 5.1 factory image link
Source: GoogleJuly 16, 2014 10:24 IST
'Three security challenges could emerge shortly. The possibility (almost bordering on certainty) is as certain as the fact that night follows day:
A terrorist attack by a Pakistan-based group.
Chinese intrusion on the border.
Communal tension/riots.'
Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) explains what the Modi Sarkar needs to be prepared for.
No, I don't wish to add to the plethora of views in the Indian media offering the new government advice how to solve the nation's problems. Nevertheless, I am alarmed due to two reasons: One, a total absence of any public discussion on a looming security threat and second, the absence of a full time defence minister in the new government.
The second issue is no reflection on Arun Jaitley's competence, but surely even he will admit that being defence minister is a full time job requiring undivided attention. It is feared that the government's attention and agenda may have been hijacked by a shrill media focussing exclusively on economic issues. It is this that has prompted this article.
The new government has no choice but to be ready to face these challenges with an appropriate response, well thought out and prepared for in advance and not in the form of a knee jerk reaction.
Three security challenges could emerge shortly. The possibility (almost bordering on certainty) is as certain as the fact that night follows day. These are:
A terrorist attack by a Pakistan-based group, either a Mumbai-style dramatic one or the usual bomb blasts.
Chinese intrusion on the border (this time most likely in the Arunachal area) to test the new government's response.
Communal tension/riots by home-grown extremist groups of all stripes.
India has always been a nation of self absorbed citizens, a disease that has been aggravated by the electronic media that finds it easy (and cheap) to concentrate on low hanging fruit to fill in its 24-hour hunger for news and TRPs. The menace of 24-hour news channels has tended to distort national priorities and distract the government.
It is best to ignore the 'flavour of the season' collective rant on Delhi's electricity/water/onions/women abuse as these are not issues for a nation of 1.25 billion people. Mumbai has been paying the same electricity rates for several decades (and enjoying uninterrupted electricity), women are not as unsafe as Delhi in most of the country, these are just random examples why the government should ignore the Delhi-centric media.
All this needs constant reiteration in the Indian context because we are navel gazers when it comes to happenings outside our country. No matter how many times one reads Indian history, one is amazed at the utter neglect by our ancestors of looming threats from outside the subcontinent. Be it the rising Islamic tide or the European advent in sea power.
The country has paid a terrible price in the past for this folly. Today this is further reinforced by the self absorption and Delhi-centric concerns shaping and influencing national policies.
Our attention to the Middle East is largely confined to rescuing Indian citizens trapped there, but even more tellingly our media and public at large has chosen to ignore the events in neighbouring Pakistan. The Pakistan army's offensive in the North Waziristan tribal area has been covered very sketchily.
It seems the situation is closer to a civil war than counter-insurgency. Pakistan has been using jet fighters to bomb and strafe its own territory. Tanks, helicopters and artillery, normally shunned in a counter-insurgency (we have never used these in 30 years of the Kashmir conflict) are being liberally used. That these 'blunt' instruments of war cause immense collateral damage and civil casualties are a given.
As the Taliban find themselves boxed in by the Pakistan army offensive, there will be great incentive to carry out a spectacular attack in India. This will then focus the Pakistan public attention on India since it is very likely that the new government will react militarily to these provocations. This will also give the Pakistan army an excuse to call off its anti-Taliban offensive.
India will have to calibrate its response in such a manner that it does not look like an attack/threat to Pakistan, but deals with the terror element there. All this will require a great amount of operational fine tuning as well as a very proactive diplomatic and media offensive.
It is time to give up the knee jerk response to blame the Inter Services Intelligence or the Pakistan army for every terror attack. There is some truth in the Pakistani assertion that Pakistan has suffered more at the hands of home-grown terrorists than even India.
What lends a ring of truth to the Pakistani assertion is the fact that be it the December 13, 2001 attack on Parliament, the Mumbai train bombings of July 11, 2006 or the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks, there is no evidence of any kind of Pakistani military alert or movement etc.
If there was to be a Pakistani direct role, as a professional armed force (that the Pakistan army is), it would have taken some defensive measures to deal with a likely Indian reaction. That there has been no such report (at least in public domain and to the best of my knowledge) goes on to prove that these acts were not directed by Pakistan government agencies.
The terrorists who carried out these actions were nurtured by Pakistan is true, but that they are no longer under their control may also be true.
The truth is that the terror attacks in India were carried out by Pakistani non-State actors in collaboration with radicalised local elements. The recent assertion by a captured terrorist of Indian origin that he feels proud of having carried out the July 11 train blasts should put these doubts to rest.
For too long Indians held to the myth that there were no terrorists of Indian origin. Today radicalised Indians are being spotted in many theatres of war, like Syria or Iraq. There was an unspoken political consensus in India to blame all terror incidents on Pakistan alone. The ostensible reason for this was to spare the Indian minorities from any backlash.
This make-believe has run its course. It is now necessary to fashion military, diplomatic, police and legal instruments to effectively deal with the terrorists who are part Pakistani and part Indian. Domestically, the new government will have to build a consensus in the minority community to deal with the radicalised elements. The time for denial is over.
Pakistan is today, teetering on the edge of an abyss and may well be willing to cooperate with India on this issue, if not openly, then covertly. This is another major challenge before the new government.
The second issue that the new government confronts, though potentially less difficult, is the Chinese incursions into India. So far these have mostly occurred in the Ladakh area. But sometime in the 1970s, the Chinese, emboldened by their quasi alliance with the US, has been laying claims to Arunachal Pradesh.
As a historian one recalls that the initial Sino-Indian border dispute was centred on Aksai Chin and China questioning the border in Arunachal Pradesh was just a bargaining counter.
This is a reasonable assumption since at that very time, China accepted the same McMohan Line as the boundary between China and Myanmar.
Unlike the Pakistani army, the Chinese army is under firm political control and intrusions on the border are possibly approved at the highest political level. The border intrusion by China may well be a method to signal Chinese disapproval of Indian attempts to get closer to Japan, ASEAN and the US.
The challenge before the new government is to calibrate its response to the provocations and coordinate it with its foreign policy. The challenge is more of coordination and trying to match China on the border in terms of logistics, technology and numbers.
The third and most difficult security challenge is in areas of internal peace. On one hand some extreme elements feel it is 'their' government in power and they can indulge in targeting minorities or political opponents with violence. On the other hand, the minorities, fearful and resentful of the new government that they did not vote for, may well increase their support and help to radical elements within.
The way out of the third challenge is to fulfil the promise of good governance. Governance that is fair and just to all and is seen to be so is necessary. While India suffered from minority appeasement all these years, the remedy for that is not majoritarianism.
The work for the new government is cut out and the earliest it appoints a full time defence minister, the better it is. A word of advice, do not confine your search for the defence minister to your party alone, but cast the net wide. One may recall in this connection that then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee roped in K C Pant as deputy chairman, Planning Commission and a key player in defence planning.
Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) is coordinator of the Pune-based think-tank Indian Initiative for Peace, Arms-control & Disarmament.Statehood is not the only way to get D.C. voting rights. (Christian K. Lee/The Washington Post)
In a recent opinion piece here, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) argued that District voters should not “get sidetracked by bewilderment and disappointment in the national election” in seeking full budget authority and voting rights. Yet, Norton argued these are achievable exclusively through D.C. becoming the 51st state. This sentiment is politically understandable in the District, but it remains wanting for a realistic solution, and therefore is misguided.
We at Douglass County, Maryland are here to help. We are a recently formed 501(c)(4) that strives to propose and get adopted innovative legislation that helps with an actual solution, not political talking points. We are named after and draw inspiration from Frederick Douglass, and our name, not coincidentally, would permit D.C. to remain “D.C.”
We argue that the problem of D.C. voting rights has been and should be purely non-partisan and based on the Constitution |
sector, which is awash with big name chains such as Topshop and Topman thrown into receivership.
The hit seems not just driven by slower spending on traditional retail goods, but because it's happening at a time when competition from abroad is crunching margins.
Structural changes in retail - such as the "Aldification" of supermarket competition, a disinflationary force - only adds to the complexity confronting Reserve Bank policymakers as they field renewed talk of more rate cuts.
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Morgan Stanley economists led by Tim Nicol on Friday pointed to the raft of negative forces hitting consumers, and raised the idea that Australia's economy is "desynchronizing" from the current rebound in global growth.
"The reality is that the consumer has found a resistance point," they say.
"Bank repricing of interest rates and an expectation from consumers for more, now links up with higher essentials inflation, a bigger taxing budget and slowing conditions in the two key employment sectors of housing and retail.
"Wage growth remains absent, and underemployment high."
And all of this is well before anyone really panics, which is the Reserve Bank's worst scenario.
Households have been able to maintain living standards in the face of collapsing wages growth by dipping into savings built up after the financial crisis.
That has in no small part worked to keep the economy out of the recession many feared it would succumb to after the China-driven resources investment boom crested in 2012.
But burning through savings can't last forever.
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Overlay that with the psychological factor. Surging asset prices have delivered a huge sense of wellbeing among those holding the stocks, bonds and properties that have climbed in value.
That "wealth effect" has been a powerful supercharger of consumption on the way up.
It's folly to imagine it will only ever go up.
It's double-folly to imagine than when it swings into reverse the effects it won't be just as powerful on the way down.Some AT&T customers who woke up in the wee hours Friday morning to pre-order an iPhone X got a rude awakening later that day when the carrier advised them their orders had been canceled.
AT&T's community discussion forums contain several threads in which people complain of calling customer support for more information, only to encounter call center representatives who weren't aware of the issue.
Some of the commenters say they spent hours on the phone with AT&T, sometimes getting disconnected while on hold. Other say they were told to cancel their orders and re-do them, delaying their iPhone X shipments well into December.
"I stayed up to pre-order an iPhone X, created a new account with AT&T, and was confirmed to receive the phone Nov 3," wrote a commenter on Friday who used the handle atandtwhy. "Today around noon, I received an email telling me the order was cancelled. I called into AT&T and first was told the sale department can't help, so I need to call the e-commerce department, then the e-commerce department told me I had to go to a store, then the store manager told me it's because they 'couldn't contact me for a few days', which is not possible as I did this last night, and he told me to call customer service."
Get ready: For the return of the overnight Apple Store campout
Another would-be iPhone X buyer, who used the name therunaround123, said everything appeared fine with an order after placing it. But later, after checking again online, it had been canceled:
"This morning, I checked myATT status order just to make sure that no mishaps has happened. Lo and behold, I see my order status as CANCELED. I did not receive any email regarding the cancellation and the order status provided little to no reasoning as to why my order was canceled. I called customer service to get the matter straightened out. First customer service agent spent 20 minutes trying to figure out why my order was canceled. I was placed on hold multiple times, going back and forth, ensuring that it is being looked at by a manager. After being on hold for 20 minutes, my call was ended. I waited 10-15 minutes for the customer representative to call me back, but no call back."
Julia Fleming, a former Houston resident who now lives just south of Dallas, said she ordered her iPhone X online at AT&T's website about 10 a.m. Friday morning. She confirmed with her credit card company that the sale was approved.
She thought everything was fine until she received a cancellation notice Sunday morning. It read:
Hi JULIA,
We couldn't confirm your identity with the information you gave us, so we had to cancel your order. Don't worry. If there was a hold on your card, we'll release the funds soon.
Still want to order? Visit us at an AT&T store. Be sure to bring your identification.
Thanks for choosing us,
AT&T
Fleming said she called AT&T and could not get a clear answer as to what happened.
"Nobody at AT&T knows anything about anything," Fleming said in a phone interview. "They tell me over and over again, they can't see my order, it doesn't exist.
"I want this phone, and I want it now," she said.
"If a customer has concerns or questions about their order we urge them to contact customer care so we can try to help them resolve it," the company said in an emailed statement.
Want an iPhone X? Hurry up and wait
Apple and wireless phone carriers began taking pre-orders at 2:01 a.m. on Friday for the device, which is a completely redesigned, 10th anniversary iPhone. The iPhone X will be available in stores on Nov. 3, and will ship on that date directly to those who were lucky enough to score one in the opening minutes of pre-ordering.
Analysts and sources in Apple's supply chain have said issues with components related to its Face ID feature - which uses facial recognition to unlock the phone and make digital payments - have resulted in lower yields at the factories that make the device. As a result, the phone's initial supplies were sold out, and pre-0rders made now won't be fulfilled for 5-6 weeks.
Apple had its own problems with iPhone X pre-order glitches. Customers who are enrolled in the Apple Upgrade Program had issues completing their orders in the company's Apple Store app. Apple is reportedly working with those customers to rectify the situation.
This is not the first time AT&T has canceled iPhone orders placed during the pre-order period. Customers complained of the practice during initial sales of both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 6.
[Updated at 7:26 p.m. to include AT&T's statement.]HARD Recruits Mija For First Artist In HARD Summer Mixtape Series
When most people think of Summer, they think of bathing suits, the beach, and BBQs. Well, for me its HARD Summer and the incredible music that always visits Southern California for a glorious weekend of good vibes, amazing talent, and memories that last a life time.
In preparation of the festivities, HARD Summer always reveals a couple artists to partake in their mixtape series and this year HARD has kicked off the installment with the one and only Mija. This past year has been insane for the talented DJ, from playing surprise sunrise sets with Skrillex to touring to compiling numerous mixes for the likes of Diplo & Friends, THUMP, Dancing Astronaut and more. For me, I’d have to say this mix is one of her best mixes by far and the solution to appease your appetite for HARD Summer.
Be sure to grab your tickets here as you won’t want to miss out on this lovely lady and other artists for HARD Summer 2015 at the Pomona Fairplex August 1& 2nd.
HSMF15 Mixtape Series #1-Mija | Stream Only |
T R A C K L I S T
Mr. Oizo – Positif (Masayoshi Iimori Bootleg)
KRNE – Dollar Sines
Saint x Uniiqu3 – Yo (I’m Lit)
Marshmello – Pr0
San Holo – Victory (VIP)
Chase & Status – Eastern Jam
Babel – Slide
Alison Wonderland – I Want U
Rustie – Attack (Feat. Danny Brown)
Jackal – ID
Flux Pavilion – Mountains and Molehills (Kill the Noise and Bro Safari Remix)
Major Lazer & DJ Snake – Lean on (CRNKN Remix)
Jackal – Chinchilla (Jesse Slayter Remix)
Flechette & Beauty Brain – Al Andalus
Ape Drums – Overload (Feat. Gappy Ranks)
Smookie Ilson x Keno – Nice Flow
Keith Ape – It G Ma (Madeaux Remix)
Eric Prydz – Call On Me (Dani Deahl x Aylen Bootleg)
Marshmello – FinD mE
Party Thieves x ATLiens – Chief (Elephunk x Brakebill Remix)
Ghastly x Mija – Crank It Ft. Lil Jon (Dr. Fresch Edit)
Koreless – TT
“Follow” Mija: | Facebook | Twitter | Soundcloud |
“Follow” HARD: | Facebook | Twitter | Soundcloud |
TOP TRENDING MUSIC
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commentsClick this link for the latest NBC renewal / cancellation information: [rssinpage rssfeed=’http://feeds.feedburner.com/TvbythenumbersCancel/renewNbcShows’ rssitems=’1′ rssformat=’Y’]
Our Renew / Cancel Index predicts potential renewal or cancellation for scripted broadcast primetime shows by the end of the 2013-14 season in May, 2014. (includes results from December 30, 2013 – March 30, 2014):
Program Status Renew/ Cancel Index Welcome To The Family* canceled 0.52 The Michael J. Fox Show* canceled 0.56 Ironside* canceled 0.61 Sean Saves The World* canceled 0.61 Hannibal (F) 😐 😐 😐 0.63 Dracula* (F) 😐 😐 😐 0.66 Community 😐 😐 😐 0.76 Parks & Recreation renewed 0.84 Parenthood 😐 😐 😐 0.84 Believe 😥 😥 0.85 Crisis 😥 😥 0.90 Revolution 😐 😐 😐 0.90 Grimm (F) renewed 0.99 Chicago PD renewed 1.14 Law & Order: SVU 1.18 Growing Up Fisher 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 1.22 Chicago Fire renewed 1.26 About A Boy 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 1.47 The Blacklist renewed 1.79
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4/6 Update: While show renewals are almost never revealed like this, it seems like upgrading Dracula to “toss up” is warranted.
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NBC’s late season Sunday drama rookies Believe and Crisis have both quickly fallen to levels that signal to the cancellation bear that they will be canceled. Believe was in the headline last week. This week it’s Crisis‘ turn.
Indecision. The bear’s still got four NBC shows in the “toss up” range. There’s only one other “toss up” left among the other four networks combined (Nashville). In general, the longer the bear takes the more positive his final predictions are likely to break. Either way, the bear promises to go thumbs up or down no later than May 6.
From now through the end of the broadcast season in May, the Renew/Cancel Index values will only be calculated using new episodes airing during 2014.
Better to Follow The Bear, Than Be Chased By Him. You can follow the Cancellation Bear on Twitter via @TheCancelBear. If you want to interact with the bear, Twitter, not these post’s comments, is now the best place to do that. It’s more fun for the bear and reaches far more people. While this post will likely be viewed over 40,000 times, the comments audience is a tiny fraction of that (a few hundred comments is typical). 24,000 follow the bear on Twitter.
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*shows no longer on the air have their Renew/Cancel Index “frozen” at the point they left the schedule.
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Notes:
😳 certain to be cancelled by May, 2014 😥 😥 more likely to be cancelled than renewed by May, 2014 😐 😐 😐 toss up between renewal or cancellation by May, 2014 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 more likely to be renewed than cancelled by May, 2014 certain to be renewed by May, 2014
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The Renew/Cancel Index is the ratio of a scripted show’s new episode adults 18-49 ratings relative to the new episode ratings of the other scripted shows on its own network. It’s calculated by dividing a show’s new episode Live+Same Day adults 18-49 average rating by the Live+Same Day new episode average of all the new scripted show episodes on the show’s own network. The network’s average ratings in the calculation are not time weighted (ex. hour long shows are not weighted twice what 30 minute shows are).
(F) -Fridays: Shows airing on Fridays were renewed with significantly lower than average Indexes.
How have the Renew / Cancel Index Predictions Worked Out In Past Seasons? See all the Renew / Cancel Index predicted renewals and cancellations from recent past television seasons.A tiny cylindrical space camera detached itself from Japan's new solar sail and snapped some photos of the mission bound for Venus and beyond in June 2010. Full Story
A tiny space camera has snapped amazing photos of theworld's first solar sail spacecraft to voyage into deep space on aninterplanetary mission for Japan.
The solarsail vehicle, named Ikaros, took the opportunity for a self-portrait bydeploying a free-floating cylindrical camera just 2.4 inches (6 cm) in bothwidth and height. In the photos, the Ikaros sail shines like a gleaming silvership in a sea of black space.
The spring-launched camera snapped the new photos of thesolar sail as the missiondeparts for Venus and beyond.
Ikaros, short for Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated byRadiation Of the Sun, launched in late May and deployed its solar sail in earlyJune to become the first space mission ever propelledonly by sunlight. The mission was designed and built by the Japan AerospaceExploration Agency (JAXA).
JAXA engineers will monitor the power generated by thin filmsolar cells embedded within the kite-like sail, in hopes that future missionscould combine solar sailing with electricity to power ion propulsion engines.
Like the tale of Icarus, which tells the story of a boy whoflew too close to the sun, the Ikaros solar sail is also expected to exploreour nearest star. It is headed to the other side of the sun after a detour toVenus, JAXA officials said.
"Through these activities, we will ultimately aim atacquiring navigation technology through the solar sail," JAXA officialssaid in a statement last Friday.
The solar sail mission piggybacked aboard the main launch ofJapan's Venusclimate orbiter, called Akatsuki ("Dawn" in Japanese).
Both spacecraft launched alongside four small satellites onMay 20 (early morning local Japan time on May 21) from the Tanegashima SpaceCenter on Tanegashima island in Japan.*pic credits at end of post
I’ll be honest: I don’t think about curtains that often. That holds true in RL as well as SL. BUT – I do absolutely acknowledge that they can really finish a room, and therefore I support them. I’ve seen some really great mesh curtains come out recently, and I definitely support those. So does Maxwell Graf of Rustica. BAM – that’s a blog intro.
Max sent me his latest release, which just happens to be a full set of very lovely, detailed, and customizable mesh curtains. What’s that? Customizable? Hells yes. Max has provided a full set that includes swag and side panels and gathered drapes and sheer panels and lace panels…and I think that’s it. What’s awesome is that you can use all those pieces together, or just the ones you want. Like if you just want a simple window treatment, no problem, just grab those side panels. Or you can go all fancy like I did in the pic above. What’s more awesome is that the curtains are just textured with the baked shadows — so you can just go into edit mode and select a color and BAM – lovely depth and shadows on curtains that are the exact color you want. Even more awesome than that awesome is that Max has included those shadow textures separately, so you can get even fancier and use them in Photoshop to apply over your own texture. That + that + this + that = endless options.
Max has also included a bunch of lovely mesh curtain rods with great finials – so one more thing to really dress up those windows.
Join the curtain revolution (I just made that up) at Rustica! [SLurl]
Oh, and see that cute little vase of branches with the dangly heart, up in the first pic? That’s available (and so is the rug) right now from Rayvn Hynes and MudHoney, at her location on The Nest. It’s available as part of the Valentine’s Day Gift Event where a bunch of Nest merchants have awesome transferrable gifts available for Valentine’s Day! Be sure to wander around the sim to check it out!
MudHoney at The Nest [SLurl]
*credits for first pics
curtains, sheers, rods: Rustica (Maxwell Graf)
loose paper: floorplan. (Tegan Serin)
Valentine branches: MudHoney (Rayvn Hynes)
Rug: MudHoney (Rayvn Hynes)
Skybox: Trompe Loeil (Cory Edo)
AdvertisementsThree of five devils recovered from the tumour disease after live cancer cell injection.
Scientists reveal they have for the first time successfully treated Tasmanian devils suffering from the deadly devil facial tumour disease.
The breakthrough is hoped to speed-up development of an effective vaccine, which can be administered to devils in the wild.
The successful treatments have been made on captive animals, with scientists injecting live cancer cells into the infected devils to make their immune system recognise the disease and fight it off.
The international research, led by the University of Tasmania (UTAS), has been published in the scientific journal Scientific Report, and details the effective use of immunotherapy on the species.
Five devils with the disease were treated using the technique over six years, and three survived.
UTAS professor of immunology Professor Greg Woods likened it to "fighting cancer with cancer".
"We used the cancer cells, cultured them in a laboratory, and made them express genes that made them become visible to the devils' immune systems," he said.
"The first devil we had, we tried a few things, the tumour got bigger and then we got desperate, which is why we added the live [cancer] cells.
"And when we saw the tumour get smaller, it was so exciting."
The devils have since died from natural causes, and for the past year scientists have collated the findings.
Since it was discovered more than 20 years ago, the disease has wreaked havoc in the wild, forcing the creation of an insurance population.
The breakthrough has been celebrated by those who work closely with Australia's largest carnivorous marsupial.
Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary director Greg Irons said the largest carnivorous marsupial needed help to avoid extinction.
"To die of starvation from the tumours growing all over their faces is really quite a hideous thing to occur for them, and to see a number drop of somewhere between 85 and 95 per cent in the last 20 years is mammoth," he said.
Researchers aim for vaccine
Professor Woods hopes the research will help develop a more effective vaccine.
"The current immunisation process uses dead (tumour) cells, where as this one used live cells, so if we somehow get a combination of the two then we might have a better vaccine," he said.
Save the Tasmanian Devils program manager David Pemberton is overseeing a vaccine trial in the wild.
"Greg and his team have shown this immunisation technique can cause tumour regression," Dr Pemberton said.
"It's those sort of trials we need now to establish when to vaccinate, when to boost and how effective that will be in the wild."
A small number of devils have shown some resistance to the disease.
Mr Irons said the current breakthroughs should be viewed as a safety-net rather than a silver bullet.
"The ideal solution for devils is to fight the disease off themselves in the wild and recover on their own, but for that they may need assistance," he said.
"What is needed is an army of options in the background if they're required."The 15.04 release frenzy over, but the next big event in the Ubuntu calendar is just around the corner. In about a week, from the 5th to 7th of May, the next edition of the Ubuntu Online Summit is taking off. Three days of sessions for developers, designers, advocates, users and all members of our diverse community.
Along the developer-oriented discussions you'll find presentations, workshops, lightning talks and much more. It's a great opportunity for existing and new members to get together and contribute to the talks, watch a workshop to learn something new, or ask your questions to many of the rockstars who make Ubuntu.
While the schedule is being finalized, here's an overview (and preview) of the content that you should expect in each one of the tracks:
App & scope development : the SDK and developer platform roadmaps, phone core apps planning, developer workshops
: the SDK and developer platform roadmaps, phone core apps planning, developer workshops Cloud : Ubuntu Core on clouds, Juju, Cloud DevOps discussions, charm tutorials, the Charm, OpenStack
: Ubuntu Core on clouds, Juju, Cloud DevOps discussions, charm tutorials, the Charm, OpenStack Community : governance discussions, community event planning, Q+As, how to get involved in Ubuntu
: governance discussions, community event planning, Q+As, how to get involved in Ubuntu Convergence : the road to convergence, the Ubuntu desktop roadmap, requirements and use cases to bring the desktop and phone together
: the road to convergence, the Ubuntu desktop roadmap, requirements and use cases to bring the desktop and phone together Core : snappy Ubuntu Core, snappy post-vivid plans, snappy demos and Q+As
: snappy Ubuntu Core, snappy post-vivid plans, snappy demos and Q+As Show & Tell: presentations, demos, lightning talks (read: things that break and explode) on a varied range of topics
Joining the summit is easy, you'll just need to follow the instructions and register for free to the Ubuntu Online Summit >
UOS highlights: back to the desktop, snappy and the road to convergence
This is going to be perhaps one of the most important summits in recent times. After a successful launch of the phone, followed by the exciting announcement and delivery of snappy Ubuntu Core, Ubuntu is entering a new era. An era of lean, secure, minimal and modular systems that can run on the cloud, on Internet-enabled devices, on the desktop and virtually anywhere.
While the focus on development in the last few cycles has been on shaping up and implementing the phone, this doesn't mean other key parts of the project have been left out. The phone has helped create the platform and tools that will ultimately bring all these projects together, into a converged code base and user experience. From desktop to phone, to the cloud, to things, and back to the desktop.
The Ubuntu 15.10 cycle begins, and so does this exciting new era. The Ubuntu Online Summit will be a unique opportunity to pave the road to convergence and discuss how the next generation of the Ubuntu desktop is built. So the desktop is back on the spotlight, and snappy will be taking the lead role in bringing Ubuntu for devices and desktop together. Expect a week of interesting discussions and of thinking out of the box to get there!
Participating in the Ubuntu Online Summit
Does this whet your appetite? Come and join us at the Summit, learn more and contribute to shaping the future of Ubuntu! There are different ways of taking part in the online event via video hangouts:
Participate or watch sessions - everyone is welcome to participate and join a discussion to provide input or offer contribution. If you prefer to take a rear seat, that's fine too. You can either subscribe to sessions, watch them on your browser or directly join a live hangout. Just remember to register first and learn how to join a session.
- everyone is welcome to participate and join a discussion to provide input or offer contribution. If you prefer to take a rear seat, that's fine too. You can either subscribe to sessions, watch them on your browser or directly join a live hangout. Just remember to register first and learn how to join a session. Propose a session - do you want to take a more active role in contributing to Ubuntu? Do you have a topic you'd like to discuss, or an idea you'd like to implement? Then you'll probably want to propose a session to make it happen. There is still a week for accepting proposals, so why don't you go ahead and propose a session?
Looking forward to seeing you all at the Summit!They're now being tested for HIV and
Dozens of co-workers are being screened for HIV and hepatitis after a nurse was found reusing a syringe to administer flu shots.
Employees at Otsuka Pharmaceutical, who received the vaccination at their offices in Princeton, New Jersey on September 30, have been warned they may have been exposed to 'infected blood.'
Almost 70 patients have now been called in for testing but face a long, anxious wait as it can be months before serious infections such as HIV show up in blood work.
Healthcare provider TotalWellness confirmed that the nurse contracted to carry out the flu shots had 'failed to follow proper medical procedures and safeguards.'
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Dozens of co-workers are being screened for HIV and hepatitis after a nurse was found reusing a syringe to administer flu shots
Employees at Otsuka Pharmaceutical (pictured) in Princeton, New Jersey, who received the vaccination on September 30 have all been warned they may have been exposed to 'infected blood'
Officials have not yet revealed whether disciplinary action will be taken against the nurse.
The New Jersey Department of Health sent out letters to the 67 pharmaceutical co-workers two days after the vaccinations to warn them that the syringe 'was reused multiple times', NBC 10 reported.
While the letter said the risk of contamination was low, it urged those affected to seek testing for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.
'Syringe reuse may have exposed you to infected blood,' the letter stated. 'At this time NJDOH is not aware of any disease transmission, but you may be at risk for developing an infection as a result of this improper practice.'
Courtesy NBC10
TotalWellness, who contracted the nurse to carry out the flu vaccinations, confirmed that the nurse had 'failed to follow proper medical procedures and safeguards'
The company, which states that it runs onsite flu shot clinics which mean less doctor visits and sick days for staff, are now offering free blood tests
The Department of Health said that the nurse had changed the needle between each injection, but re-used the same syringe each time.
Both the needle and syringe should be only ever be used once and disposed of, added Jill Swanson, West Windsor Health Officer.
Free blood tests are now taking place for the employees at the West Windsor Township Senior Center, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in partnership with the Health Department and TotalWellness.
Patients must then be re-tested in four to six months before they can be given a clean bill of health.
One Otsuka Pharmaceutical employee told NBC News that having to wait so long for the results was giving her 'incredible anxiety.'
Officials investigating the incident also found that the nurse also gave less than the recommended dose of flu shot at the Mercer County clinic.
The Department of Health warned that anyone wanting to be protected against flu this winter would need to have another vaccination.
Dozens of co-workers are being screened for HIV and hepatitis after nurse was found re-using a syringe to administer flu shots. Jill Swanson, West Windsor Health Officer, (pictured) warned both the needle and the syringe should only ever be used once and disposed of during vaccinations
Free blood tests are now taking place for the employees at the West Windsor Township Senior Center, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in partnership with the Health Department and TotalWellness
A spokesperson for TotalWellness said the company was 'dedicated to ensuring all participants receive any and all appropriate screenings, care and counseling until this matter is resolved.'
Otsuka Pharmaceutical were unavailable for comment.
It is not the first time a medical blunder has potentially put lives at risk.
In 2014, more than 4,000 patients were warned they could have been exposed to HIV and hepatitis at a New York hospital after insulin pens used to treat diabetes were reused on more than one person.
South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside on Long Island, near New York City, said 4,200 patients may have received insulin from the pens - not a single-use disposable needle - that could have been used on more than one patient from as far back as 2011.
'The risk of infection from this is extremely low,' the hospital said in a statement, adding it was recommending patients 'be tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.'
When asked if anyone was confirmed to have been infected a hospital spokeswoman said 'not to my knowledge.'Obama’s speech Tuesday night peaked at 28,003 tweets per minute. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Twitter: Michelle speech tops Mitt's
First Lady Michelle Obama garnered nearly double the tweets-per-minute during her speech than GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Obama’s speech Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte peaked at 28,003 tweets per minute while Romney’s peaked at 14,289 TPM, according to Twitter.
Story Continued Below
( Also on POLITICO: Full DNC speeches)
San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro averaged 11,503 TPM during his keynote speech, bestingNew Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s GOP keynote speech average of 6,079 TPM last week in Tampa.
Michelle’s Twindex, a measure of favorability on Twitter, rose from 71 before her speech to 84 after. Romney’s wife Ann’s Twindex increased more dramatically after her own speech in Tampa, from 45 to 83.
( PHOTOS: The first lady of hugs)
During the first night of the RNC last week, tweets per minute peaked at 6,195 — the moment Mitt Romney joined his wife onstage after her speech.
The first lady didn’t just beat Romney; she beat her husband’s 2012 State of the Union address, which peaked at 14,131 TPM.I’ve asked those same questions myself, so, in preparation for my new course on SVG workflows in Sketch, I’ve done a ton of research and made this cheat sheet for designers and developers.
If you’ve ever opened up an SVG file to look at the code, you’ve probably thought to yourself: “What’s all that stuff at the top? DOCTYPE, version, xmlns, xmlns:xlink … what’s their purpose, and can I get rid of them?” Unlike the majority of SVG code—which is readable and understandable to an English-speaker—these bits at the top can seem completely foreign.
⚠️ Note: This article only applies to SVG graphics used on modern websites—which is by far their most common use case. Some of the guidelines in this article might not hold up with less-common use cases, like re-importing an SVG back into a design tool, converting it into a different type of file, or using it on an older website that isn’t HTML5.
🌿 This is a living document. If you are extremely knowledgeable about this topic, or have encountered situations where the points from this article don’t hold up, please let me know. Together, let’s keep this accurate and up-to-date!
I do declare!
The majority of these “things” at the top of an SVG are called declarations.
When you give a web browser (or any other software) your SVG file or SVG code to display, the browser needs to know which language you’re speaking. That’s what most of these declarations are for.
But when you’re using your SVG on a modern webpage, as most of us are, some of these aren’t necessary; others are effectively obsolete; and some are only useful some of the time. That’s why I’ve created this list of guidelines, based on the two most common scenarios for using SVG.
✴️ Practical Guidelines
All of the ways to present an SVG on a website effectively fall into two categories: 1. the SVG is linked as an independent file, or 2. the SVG’s code is incorporated into the webpage itself. The latter is typically achieved by nothing more than pasting the SVG code into an HTML5 page, right alongside other elements on the website—a method known as “inline SVG.” Based on these two categories, here’s what you need and what you don’t:
1. Using an SVG as an independent graphic
Remove the DOCTYPE declaration ( <!DOCTYPE svg … )
(Sketch and Illustrator don’t include this in SVGs anymore)
) (Sketch and Illustrator don’t include this in SVGs anymore) Keep the XML declaration ( <?xml … ) just in case. In my tests it wasn’t necessary, but the consensus from my research is that it is advisable.
) just in case. In my tests it wasn’t necessary, but the consensus from my research is that it is advisable. Remove the version attribute (it’s never needed)
attribute (it’s never needed) Keep the xmlns namespace declaration
namespace declaration Keep the xmlns:xlink XLink declaration if some part of your SVG uses “ xlink ” (most likely a <use>, <a>, or <image> element’s xlink:href attribute). If you aren’t sure, keep it.
2. Using an SVG “inline” with HTML code on a webpage
Remove the DOCTYPE declaration ( <!DOCTYPE svg … )
(Sketch and Illustrator don’t include this in SVGs anymore)
) (Sketch and Illustrator don’t include this in SVGs anymore) Remove the XML declaration ( <?xml … )
) Remove the version attribute (it’s never needed)
attribute (it’s never needed) The xmlns namespace declaration isn’t necessary on most modern webpages, but it doesn’t hurt to keep it just in case.
namespace declaration isn’t necessary on most modern webpages, but it doesn’t hurt to keep it just in case. Keep the xmlns:xlink XLink declaration if some part of your SVG uses “ xlink ” (most likely a <use>, <a>, or <image> element’s xlink:href attribute). Like the xmlns declaration, xmlns:xlink isn’t necessary on most modern webpages, but it doesn’t hurt to keep it.
Other things at the top of your SVG:
You may also notice attributes like viewBox, width, height, and preserveAspectRatio at the top of your SVG. Unlike the declarations and attributes mentioned above, these do affect the visual result of your graphic. They are worth keeping unless you know exactly what you’re doing.
You’ll also notice that many design tools include a comment about the software used to export the SVG. For example:
<!-- Generator: Sketch 44.1 (41455) - http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch -->
OR,
<!-- Generator: Adobe Illustrator 19.2.1, SVG Export Plug-In. SVG Version: 6.00 Build 0) -->
These comments are harmless, and are always safe to delete.
A Note on Optimization
The popular optimization engine SVGO—which powers Sketch’s SVGO Compressor plugin and the web app SVGOMG—has options to remove the unwanted declarations and attributes for you. It’s even smart enough to check for the presence of elements using xlink, to keep that declaration on the <svg> element when necessary. That’s super convenient and generally reliable. But ultimately you’re the only one who knows how your SVG will be used, so I hope the guidelines in this article will help you decide when to use those optimizations and when to turn them off.
What do these acronyms mean?
Don’t let these terms intimidate you; they’re all based on simple ideas.
XML stands for “Extensible Markup Language,” which is simply a versatile way to structure information—like an outline with some extra punctuation.
XMLNS stands for “XML namespace.” A namespace is a set of element and attribute names. For example, SVG’s <title> and <rect> elements are part of its namespace. A different format based on XML might have its own <title> or <rect> elements; it’s important to declare which namespace your graphic is using, so browsers know how to interpret the code.
XLink stands for “XML Linking Language.” It’s just a set of common ways to link between things within a file (ex: connecting a gradient to the shape that uses it) or to things outside of the file (ex: creating a clickable link to another webpage).
Sources and Further Learning
The information in this article draws from extensive research through online resources, conversations with engineers who work on browsers and design tools, and my own empirical tests across browsers.
If you’d like to learn more about Namespaces and why their declarations are important, read this fantastic short article on the Mozilla Developer Network.
Some of the most helpful online sources I found were Stack Overflow conversations, like this one about XML declarations, this one about XMLNS and version, and this one which touches on XLink too. The SVGO plugin to remove DOCTYPE cites this article. This MDN piece reiterates that DOCTYPE should be excluded.
My Own Tests
My tests reinforced the other research. I tested SVGs with combinations of these declarations included and excluded—then implemented them on an HTML5 webpage as inline SVG, HTML <img> tags, CSS background-image, and background-image on CSS :after content. I tested across recent versions of Safari, iOS Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Edge (15), and Internet Explorer (9, 10, and 11).
I was surprised to find consistent results across browsers with inline SVG. When it comes to this “stuff at the top,” inline SVG appears to be hands down the most reliable and forgiving way of implementing SVG on the web.
The most notable issue I encountered overall was that independent graphics (non-inline) didn’t render without proper namespaces. Even the omission of an xmlns:xlink attribute, when it was necessary, caused this issue in all browsers. So keep those namespace declarations!
This article is part of my new course, SVG Workflows in Sketch. I wish I had resources like this when I was learning SVG, so I’m determined to provide some of those missing pieces for other designers. The course aims to bridge the gap between what you know in Sketch, and the amazing things you’ll create in SVG.
You can also sign up for my newsletter to be the first to know |
bling creature rounds a corner on wobbly knees and its yawning rictus comes into focus, you can only succumb to its onslaught or flee in terror, hoping the shadows will provide safe haven. It plays more like a first-person adventure game than anything else, and borrows many of the environmental manipulation mechanics of Frictional's previous Penumbra series. It's a fairly short game, but one that's near impossible to forget.
If you've ever read an H.P. Lovecraft story before you'll find a lot that's familiar here. Much of the horror and structure of the plot is inspired by the 20th century author, as sanity is eroded the closer you draw to the sinister heart of the tale. You play as Daniel, who awakens clueless on the floor of the huge and hauntingly empty Castle Brennenburg. Soon after coming to, you discover a note written by your past self, instructing you to find and kill Alexander, the master of house. Unraveling the history of the place is part of what lures you forward, discovering how exactly you got to this point, what Alexander did to deserve an early death, and who is responsible for the grisly acts committed in the castle's depths.
Exit Theatre Mode
What follows is a tale told mostly in flashback as you' re beset by ghostly visions and uncover journal entries on dimly lit desks that tell of scientific expeditions that lead to the discovery of ancient terrors. By itself the story is strong enough, and told effectively assuming you take the time to explore and pick up a majority of the notes. Yet what really adds a quality of unsettling authenticity to the tale is the unshakeable feeling of pursuit and inevitability of some kind of horrific climax.
The sensation is created by a combination of implied and observable events. On the soundtrack, scratches, clicking and footsteps from unseen spaces imply an expanse of unknown rippling just beyond the limits of your perception. Visual cues are also crucial to reinforcing the sense of terror, as Daniel's vision is affected by ghastly sights and revelations of gruesome acts to which his previous life was connected. Sanity degrades while in the dark, causing the scene to shift like the webs of light across sands under shallow water as sounds intensify, controls are muddied, and eventually insects crawl across your field of vision. It contributes to an feeling of isolation and helplessness that adds to the sense of terror.
Staying in the light is the preferred course for those who prefer to maintain mental focus. A lantern is always available to light up corridors, provided you've enough fuel to keep it lit. Tinderboxes are also scattered around amidst ancient books and in dusty cabinets and used to spark torches to illuminate passageways and candles within kitchens and torture chambers to make it less psychologically taxing as you explore. You can still see in the darkness if you've run out of both oil and tinderboxes since Daniel's eyes will eventually adjust to the deep-blue murk of darkness, but there's a moment of adjustment, mimicking the dilation of his pupils to altered intensity of light. Sometimes the transition is harmless, but during the momentary blindness that besets Daniel as he stumbles into blackness it's entirely possible a shambling monster could round a corner and slash him down. It's not something that happens often, but the lingering threat is enough to make you tread carefully even if the way forward seems clear. It also sets up a gameplay dynamic between dark and light -- do you stay in the shadows to hide from enemies but risk your sanity, or light up everything you can to keep your wits?
Exit Theatre Mode
Puzzle solving is the heart of the gameplay, and like in Frictional's Penumbra games, manipulation of objects is handled in a way that gives you a greater sense of connection to the character. To open a door, you must click and hold the object with the left mouse button, then draw the mouse back or push it forward depending on which way the door swings. To open a drawer it's the same mechanic, requiring you to pull back on the mouse once the handle is grabbed to open it. Occasionally you'll need to toss items around rooms to break down fragile walls and shatter chains, but for the most part this kind of manipulation is used to keep you more firmly rooted within the game world and add a touch of realism, strengthening the horror aspect.
Actually solving the puzzles shouldn't be too difficult for anyone who's played adventure games before. Despite the bizarre and often disturbing states of the sewers, morgues, and downright revolting torture chambers later on, the solutions often require you to collect a few objects and combine and apply them in simple ways. The game makes this easily manageable by confining solutions to set areas, meaning you don't need to worry about backtracking all the way to the start of the game if near the end you worry that a particular puzzle might require an overlooked item. Frictional's done a good job of pacing the game as well, gradually expanding the area and complexity of the puzzles and mixing in jaw-clenching pursuit sequences as you plunge deeper into the mystery. All the while you watch as bare stone walls are overtaken with pulsating masses of organic material and as hints of malevolence are made manifest and stumble after you through the dark and mists, establishing an inescapable mood that sticks with you long after the adventure is complete.Why Did Congress Abdicate Its Power To Make Copyright Policy?
from the this-is-broken dept
The WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty require countries that have acceded to the Treaties to “provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures.”1 Enacted in 1998 as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Section 1201 (a)(1) of Title 17 implements these treaty obligations in the U.S. by prohibiting circumvention of a technological protection measure (TPM) that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work subject to one key exception. Every three years, the Register of Copyrights is directed by statute to conduct a rulemaking in which advocates for specific exemptions may petition for exemptions to the anticircumvention provisions for noninfringing uses subject to five factors.
Since the enactment of this provision into U.S. law, the U.S. has entered into several Free Trade Agreements that require signatories (the U.S. and the particular country or region) to enact anti-circumvention provisions and set requirements on how exceptions to them can be created. Most such FTAs limit the duration of such exemptions to a three or four year period and require that they be administratively or legislatively created based upon a record of evidence.
Earlier today, we wrote about today's Congressional hearings about legalizing the unlocking of mobile phones. That post fretted about the unwillingness of Congress to take on the actual issue. The only reason that mobile phone unlocking is illegal today is because of a brokenlaw, specifically section 1201 of the DMCA, which isn't aboutper se, but rather a bizarre, indirect way that entertainment industry lawyersprotects copyright by making technology illegal, and effectively gives those legacy industries veto power over technologies they don't like. So when Congress realizes how this is abused for reasons that haveto do with protecting copyrights, theyrespond by fixing section 1201. But that's not what they're doing.What I hadn't seen when I wrote the earlier post is the way in which the IP subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee framed the hearing today. However, the official memo from the committee outlining the hearing is actually anstatement, in which the committee basically claims (falsely!) that Congress does not have the power to fix section 1201! How could that be? They claim that our "international obligations" forbid this. Specifically, they point to the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty as binding their hands in fixing 1201.If you're even remotely aware of the history of the DMCA and the WIPO Copyright Treaty, you would know that this is first, an incredible rewriting of history, and second, a ridiculous and false direct claim from Congress that it has abdicated its sole authority in establishing copyright policy to the administration.First, a bit of history: In the early/mid 90s, the entertainment industry, fearing new internet technology, sought to pass the DMCA, with a specific focus on anti-circumvention rules, in the mistaken belief that strong DRM would protect their increasingly obsolete business models. However,. So what did they do? They went to Geneva, and used the "international trade" venue to create a treaty that would then require the US to pass the DMCA if it wanted to sign onto the treaty. The key architect of the DMCA and this entire plan, Bruce Lehman, has admitted outright that he went to Geneva as a direct "end run around Congress" because they wouldn't pass the law the entertainment industry interests wanted. Just a few months ago, at a 15-year anniversary conference for the DMCA, Lehman had no problem directly admitting that he absolutely went to Geneva to deal with Congress' failure to pass the law.Now, we've pointed out that really fixing phone unlocking would likely violate international agreements. But, the point should really be that Congress should re-assess itsover copyright policy. The Constitution gives Congress the power to set copyright policy,the administration, which negotiates treaties. So it's not even clear if the USTR (a part of the administration) has the power to negotiate international copyright policy. But it'sto then think that this stops Congress from fixing a broken system.To have Congress itself say that it can't fix a clearly broken system, because of trade agreements thatis an incredible admission. It's fundamentally incorrect. Congress alone has the power to set copyright policy, and if that "violates" international agreements, that's a problem for the administration, not Congress.However, the fact that Congress is now claiming that it has given up its power, and clearly admits that it feels its hands are tied in actually fixing a very real problem that so many people are concerned about, because a few representatives of the Clinton administration, who have admitted directly that they were creating policy by routing around Congress to support their friends in the entertainment industry, should give everyone -- especially in Congress -- serious pause about supporting things like "intellectual property chapters" in new international agreements like the TPP and TAFTA.Both of those agreements will be setting significant aspects of copyright (and patent and trademark) policy -- withoutinput from the public, because they're being negotiated entirely in secret. However, the entertainment industry has full access to the documents. And here we have Congress saying -- incorrectly -- that whatever comes out of that process will bind their hands.That's crazy.Whether or not you think Congress should be taking on mobile phone unlocking or copyright reform or anything along those lines, I would hope that most people can agree that there's something wrong about a process in which corporate interests get to drive US policy in international agreements without any transparency or feedback from the public, and then Congress claims it can't fix the problems that those agreements create.
Filed Under: congress, copyright, dmca, judiciary committee, mobile phones, tpp, unlocking, ustr, wipoIf you don't have one eye on bitcoins already, you will soon. For weeks, the digital currency has been skyrocketing in dollar value and in cultural cache. Owners are watching the trendlines, wondering whether to buy or sell. Economists, tech nerds and opinionated citizens are debating whether the bubble will burst. Some people are still wondering what the heck they are (if you're one of those, never fear — an intro is below!). For companies, though, the conversation isn't speculative — figuring out whether or not to accept bitcoins as payment is an important business decision. Our office is currently embroiled in a debate over this very issue, and we decided to lay out the arguments for and against.
Bitcoin Basics
Bitcoins are the world's most widely used experimental digital currency — currently, there are about 11 million in circulation, with a combined U.S. dollar value of over a billion dollars (though this changes often — the bitcoin value trend lines look like the EKG of someone watching the bitcoin value trend lines). They've been around since January 2009, when developer Satoshi Nakamoto became frustrated with the need for "trusted third parties" to get involved every time people want to buy or sell anything online, and published a paper explaining his idea for a better system.
The bitcoin economy is unique in that it's completely decentralized — it's not controlled by the government or any other entity, and it isn't processed through banks or clearing houses. Instead, computer networks "mine" bitcoins like gold, using a software model that anyone can download. The model is designed to keep the creation of bitcoins at a steady rate — right now, a new "block" of 25 is found every 10 minutes or so, and creation is set to peter out in 2140. The computer networks also collectively keep track of all transactions, which keeps the system honest. It's a new idea — a real-world economic experiment — and bitcoin popularity has spiked along with its value.
Bitcoin Business
The Pros
Consumers Cutting Out Middlemen
Bitcoin is an entirely digital currency. For this reason, tech sites like GigaOm, Tech Crunch and others seem fairly excited about this new form of exchange. We’re an online company, and we designed our security systems from scratch, so the digital and technical aspects of bitcoin appeal to us, too. We’re big fans of anything that helps consumers find more flexibility, especially when the solution involves the internet: those are two keys to our success. Bitcoin was also designed to cut out middlemen: banks and the governments that control them. Instead, it’s a distributed network, and the transactions are verified by a dispersed group of “miners.” We too sell online, cutting out middlemen like salesmen and alarm installers. Our customers love having freedom from annual contracts and feeling like they have the flexibility to leave us whenever they want. They also love the transparency afforded by a no annual contract system that does exactly what it says on the tin, without messy fine print. Bitcoin aims for transparency, too — its software is open-source, which means anyone can see how it works at any time. On a more practical level, bitcoin transaction fees are very low — BitPay, the most popular payment processor, takes less of a cut than credit cards or Paypal — which means it actually costs less for us to accept them.
Anonymity
Since bitcoins are sent between unique, secure websites, there's no need for people to exchange private information in order to swap money — you can even make a separate bitcoin wallet for every transaction. As security experts, we understand the value of this kind of privacy. The Bitcoin website explains that, since no one is watching your wallet but you, it's important to take precautions to secure it, just as you would with your physical wallet. They recommend encryption, backup, and redundancy — the same steps anyone should take to protect their physical belongings.
Opportunity to gain new customers
As a business, we obviously are interested in how accepting bitcoins could enable us to reach new customers. We are a home security company, but we’re also the designers of our wireless security systems. Tech lovers have been a huge part of our customer base, and perhaps bitcoins at checkout would encourage more of those visitors to try us out. The question we ask ourselves is “Will the TechCrunch reader be more likely to buy when they see the bitcoin option at checkout?” We wonder if accepting bitcoins is a way to send out a beacon to a particular segment and say to them “Your Business is Valued Here!!”
Early Adoption
If Bitcoins or something like it represent the wave of the future — as the fine folks here, here and here think — then getting comfortable with accepting this currency sooner rather than later has it’s advantages. We’d likely be the first home security company to do it (and we like the idea of that!), but also we’d be able to work out the kinks of accepting this type of payment earlier and not find ourselves behind the curve. (Although if we did wait, we could see how others like Wordpress work out the kinks and then follow their lead.)
The Cons
Novelty
Since bitcoins are a young exchange, it's hard to predict their ultimate fate. Although the US Government's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN, recently released a report confirming that bitcoins are currently legal, it's possible they (or other major world governments) could have a change of heart. It's also possible that another digital currency could rise up and overtake bitcoin. The work required to make our purchasing system bitcoin-friendly might not be worth it if the bitcoin is obsolete or illegal in a few years. Also, since it's not only a new currency but also a new technology, there could be bugs or problems that haven't even cropped up yet. One that some experts fear could be looming on the horizon is the possibility that hackers or monopolizers could acquire more than 50% of the computing power of the bitcoin network, and without the checks and balances that the diverse network now offers, they could use that power for evil. Others fear simpler hacks based on information falling into the wrong hands, which could empty wallets, as happened recently with Instawallet.
Unpredictability
Bitcoin's youth also makes its value incredibly volatile — you can watch the exchange rates spike and dive all day, like a dolphin show. As a merchant, we would need to convert all bitcoins we received as payment into a more stable currency immediately. Luckily, this is possible with many service providers — although they do charge a fee (BitPay, the most popular, currently charges 0.99 percent, which is less than Paypal and most credit cards). But it takes 10 minutes to verify a transaction in bitcoin, and even in that small amount of time the value of the currency can swing like crazy. Plus, most of these providers pay out at the end of the day, so there's waiting time involved. If something were to happen to our provider, we could lose a whole day's worth of bitcoin transactions. That's a big risk!
Returns
The very irreversibility and anonymity that draws some people to bitcoins makes it impossible to refund them. Because of this, and to insulate ourselves from currency risk, we’d only accept bitcoins using a service like BitPay or Coinbase, meaning our customers would pay bitcoins, but we’d only ever see USD. (Technically, we could keep a bitcoin reserve to pay customers back with, but that would mean some of our assets would take the hit if the value of bitcoins crashed — a risk we're not willing to take). So what happens when a customer wants to return? We could only pay them back the USD value of their product — which means that if the value of the bitcoins they used to pay was worth more by the time they wanted to return, they'd lose money on the transaction. Our bitcoin customers would be like second-class citizens, which is a pretty crappy thing to have to explain to an angry customer who feels he should get back exactly as many bitcoins as he paid, not the dollar amount he traded them for.
Developing a coherent return policy that was fair to everyone would be impossible. And that really gives us pause about hopping on the Bitcoin Express. One of the things we care about deeply is making sure that anyone who tries SimpliSafe and isn’t happy with it gets a full refund. We offer the industry’s ONLY 60-day Money-back Guarantee, and we even pay for return shipping. So this is where stuff gets tricky— the words "money-back” mean something different when you're juggling bitcoins and USD.
The bummer about that is that we don’t want anyone to feel bad after trying SimpliSafe. We have that return policy specifically so that our customers can feel comfortable giving us a try, without losing a penny if they don't end up happy with our product. The exchange involved with using bitcoins would prevent us from providing bitcoin-paying customers with that same comfort.
Reputation
Although bitcoins have been getting a lot of press lately, and are accepted in more and more locations, they're still a fringe currency with a bit of of a fringe reputation. Some people think they're the way of the future, and some people think they're only for kooks and speculators (and criminals). Aligning ourselves with them might appeal to some customers and alienate others, even though we would still keep all of our existing payment options. As much as we want to attract forward-thinking, tech-savvy people, we don't want to freak out others in our customer base.
The Decision
Accepting bitcoins is a risk, but there is potential for reward. We went through this pro/con exercise in order to see if it was worth a shot. At the end of it, we're leaning towards developing the ability to accept bitcoins and testing it out for a month. Then, depending on what happens, we'd either keep it as a payment option or kick it to the curb.
What do you think? Merchants accepting bitcoins a plus in your book or a big no-no? Tell us in the comments!
NOTE: This article was edited on 4/10/13 to reflect recent changes to the BitPay model. Thanks to Vitalik Buterin at Bitcoin Magazine for the updated information!China’s newest Chengdu J-20 heavy stealth fighter taking part in military drills in Tibet.
The new J-20 fifth-generation fighter was spotted on the runway of the airfield in Tibet. That was reported by
The Chengdu J-20 is a stealth, twinjet, fifth-generation fighter aircraft developed by China’s Chengdu Aerospace Corporation.
The Chengdu Aircraft Corporation is expected to have manufactured 12 J-20s for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) by 2017. These fighters will then be shaken down before becoming operational by 2018.
It is a fifth-generation aircraft being built for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). Its Nato reporting name is Black Eagle.
China’s J-20 platform has the potential to be a capable, long-range strike system in the Asia-Pacific region.
Cet article est aussi disponible en françaisVLADIMIR PUTIN seemed a fit and relaxed 60-year-old as he spoke to this year’s meeting of the Valdai club of mostly foreign analysts and commentators over dinner at the Novo-Ogaryovo presidential villa outside Moscow on October 25th. He had the air of a man with few concerns either about his own position as president of Russia or about his country’s future. Yet he has plenty of reasons to worry.
The president’s most heated comments came in response to questions about the Pussy Riot verdicts that imposed two-year prison sentences on two young women who had allegedly desecrated an Orthodox cathedral altar in the spring. He was unapologetic. In typical earthy language he denounced the women for practising group sex, public sex with a woman who was nine months pregnant and for undermining social morals. In another familiar trope he accused the West of double standards, noting that the maker of a controversial anti-Muslim film was in jail in California (though Mr Putin did not explain that this was because he had broken the terms of his parole).
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Mr Putin was reflecting the views of most Russian officials who spoke at this year’s Valdai conference in St Petersburg and Moscow. They dismissed the opposition as elitist, unrepresentative and easy to deal with. One newly demonstrated method for doing this was the brazen kidnapping of an opposition figure, Leonid Razvozzhayev, in Kiev. Mr Putin also argued that Russia was merely applying its own laws, just as other countries do. His officials even claimed that the Russian police were softer than those dealing with protesters in the streets of Athens.
As for the economy, the overwhelming message from Mr Putin was that everything was going well: “I am doing fine,” he said, at one point. His response to suggestions that Russia needed substantial reforms was striking for its smugness (one of his advisers asked rhetorically “why do we need to change?”). Changes to courts, the judicial system and the bureaucracy were all on the way, Mr Putin claimed. He hailed a modest recent Russian advance in the World Bank’s “Doing Business” rankings, from 120th to 112th place. And he insisted that lots was being done to attract foreign investors in such areas as high-tech and pharmaceuticals.
Economic indicators suggest that Mr Putin cannot boost social and military spending while sticking to the fiscal discipline that has served Russia well throughout his rule. Moreover, the Russian state continues to be a drag on the economy. Interestingly, Mr Putin expressed mixed feelings about the deal through which Rosneft, a state-controlled oil giant chaired by one of his former senior advisers, Igor Sechin, is taking over the TNK-BP joint oil venture. He regretted the fact that it seemed like a move in the direction of greater state control. Yet under his government the role of the state in the Russian economy has been increasing. And, although his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, insists that Russia is going ahead with its ambitious privatisation plans, they are unlikely to diminish the state’s influence much.
That is bad news for the future of Russia. As oil and gas revenues, which still account for up to half of state income, are falling away in importance, the economy needs to be rebalanced towards new firms, small enterprises, services and manufacturing. But the deadweight of corruption, ill-protected property rights, taxation, bureaucratic obstructiveness and the absence of the rule of law make it all but impossible for such businesses to start up and grow. Those like Mr Putin who insist that all is well are ignoring the likelihood that, faced with such problems, potential investors will move to places with more hospitable and predictable business climates.
And that includes Russians as well as foreigners. The figures show a continuing trend of capital flight and emigration of skilled youths. Taxed on this, Mr Putin insisted that other countries were similarly affected and that this was just another by-product of globalisation.
Mr Putin yet again talked up Russia’s improving demography, with higher birth rates and lower death rates. But one poll before the Valdai club showed that 68% of Russians on above-average incomes want their children to study abroad and 37% want their children to leave Russia for good. These numbers are a harsh comment by Russia’s middle classes on their country’s future.
Mr Putin and his people seem to believe that stability and order are everything. They do not recognise how it can easily turn into the sort of stagnation that destroys enterprise. Despite much-publicised investments, small and medium-sized business accounts for only 20% of jobs in Russia. Too often small companies in Russia find their profits disappearing in taxes and corrupt payments. No wonder few people are willing to invest in Russia.
It does not help that, after almost 13 years at the top, Mr Putin lives in a bubble. Previous ministers such as Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister, or German Gref, a former economics minister, who might have pressed the case for reform, are gone from the government. There are still reformers around Mr Medvedev, whose four-year presidency from 2008 to 2012 looks with hindsight increasingly like a stopgap in which Mr Putin retained all significant power. But there is already speculation about how long a weakened Mr Medvedev will stay. Right now, Mr Putin is certainly running the government—and there is no sign that he has any appetite for change.Pandagon is daily opinion blog covering feminism, politics, and pop culture. Come for the politics, stay for the complete lack of patience for the B.S. and bad faith coming from conservative leaders and pundits.
As Scott Lemieux notes, this ludicrous narrative has emerged that Romney was merely pandering to his rich benefactors in the 47% video and wasn’t expressing his sincere beliefs. It’s a more clever dodge than the MISSING TWO MINUTES!!!111!!11!1eleventy!!!!111! one. For one thing, the MISSING TWO MINUTES!!!111!!11!1eleventy!!!!111! claim has been debunked and the missing footage is available for viewing, and was only missing because there was an uploading error that has been corrected. But the “what’s in his mouth isn’t what’s in his heart” thing is more disturbing because it allows people to believe that Romney isn’t what he seems. It’s also somewhat plausible, because Romney is such an empty set of a candidate. Most politicians are adept at telling people what they want to hear, but by both Democratic and Republican estimation, Romney is a special case who appears to have no convictions at all.
Well, I think the reason these videos are so compelling is that this is the first time we’ve gotten a full earful of what Romney sounds like when he’s being sincere. What’s amazing about these videos is that he expresses conviction that we almost never hear from him. His anger at people who feel “entitled to food” was so much more sincere than, say, his nostalgia at remembering his father giving roses to his mother. It’s so startling that Jonathan Chait, who was, by his own measure, eager to give Romney the benefit of the doubt, is now reeling at what a hateful bastard the man turned out to be.
Instead the video exposes an authentic Romney as a far more sinister character than I had imagined. Here is the sneering plutocrat, fully in thrall to a series of pernicious myths that are at the heart of the mania that has seized his party. He believes that market incomes in the United States are a perfect reflection of merit. Far from seeing his own privileged upbringing as the private-school educated son of an auto executive-turned-governor as an obvious refutation of that belief, Romney cites his own life, preposterously, as a confirmation of it. (“I have inherited nothing. Everything I earned I earned the old fashioned way.”)
And:
First, in general, a candidate’s statements behind closed doors to people who already support him are more likely to reflect his true beliefs than public statements designed to appeal to those who don’t share his beliefs. Second, Romney does pander a lot, but the thing is that he’s absolutely terrible at it. His lies are obvious, which makes the moments when he says something he seems to genuinely take to heart strikingly different. His comments about the 47 percent were notable for their apparent genuineness.
It’s always entertaining when a centrist white male Democrat gets exposed to the real asshole lurking underneath the genial exteriors of the handful of Republicans who have managed to get centrist white male Democrats to think they’re not so bad. Alas, for the queers, the ladies, and the people of color, imagining that there’s a Republican politician left standing who means well but is just a tad conservative is a luxury we cannot afford. “He isn’t so bad” isn’t something that makes sense when contemplating someone who would veto your right to marry, force you to have a baby against your will, and enact spending cuts that are only popular with Republicans because they disproportionately hurt people that look like you. From our vantage point, it’s easy to see that if you’re a white dude who means well but is a little conservative, you should just be a Democrat. Much to our dismay, there’s plenty of room for you in the party.
Not that I think the lesson will stick or anything. We went through this process with John McCain, who was applauded as a reasonable conservative, and then exposed to be a seething mass of anger and resentment against ordinary Americans just trying to get by. And we’ll probably go through it again in 2016. But I just want to be clear: Beyond learning this about Romney (or McCain or whoever), we need to realize this attitude of obsessive sneering at the lower classes is what being a Republican is about. And it’s a problem that actually echoes through the classes. Wealthy Republicans sneer at everyone. Upper middle class Republicans (and sadly, some Democrats) sneer at the lower middle classes, and see them as crass and wonder why they don’t just get a little better. Middle class Republicans generally obsess over why service sector employees aren’t more docile and cheery. White working class Republicans obsess over what the poor are doing, especially if they’re poor people of color. There aren’t really poor Republicans, so I think I can finish up with that. If there’s any doubt that this is their favorited form of discourse, I invite you to go to Facebook and look at what the Republicans you know are talking about.
I mean, his name is “Mitt”. If you were writing a comedy that had a sneering upper crust frat boy as a character, you’d pick that as his name, and then reconsider on the grounds that it’s too easy.opinion
One has to say, this is the best time ever to be an Indian. Not counting, of course, how good it was 7,000,000 years ago, mainly because I can’t remember those days quite so well
One has to say, this is the best time ever to be an Indian. Not counting, of course, how good it was 7,000,000 years ago, mainly because I can’t remember those days quite so well. It’s not just a question of my abysmal memory and my inability to trawl through so many generations of rebirths. It’s also because of everything that I have been force-fed by Marxists and the children of T B Macaulay for the past 50 years or so. I don’t literally mean the children of T B Macaulay, since I actually don’t know how many children he had and I can’t be bothered to go to Wikipedia to find out. I mean those who followed his teachings or pronouncements or orders or ideas on education. Something on those lines: Macaulay equals Bad; Ancient Indian equals Perfect. At any rate, Marx and Macaulay are to blame for the misinformation I have ever been fed.
“I can’t quite afford to rush to New York’s Madison Square Garden and stand outside it singing “I Love My India” yet, but am sure my time will come. That will be the pinnacle of my patriotism.” File pic/PTI
Now I know better. I know that ancient Indians invented stem cell surgery and rocket science and aeroplanes. Or maybe I mean helicopters. Flying objects I think is the correct term. It is also true that ancient Indians and humanoids could also fly — on their own, I mean, minus a mechanical flying object.
I have now, only recently, learnt that we also invented plastic surgery. In fact, we even knew how to do entire head transplants in those ancient times but have since forgotten or lost the knack, obviously, because of the combined efforts of Messrs. Marx and Macaulay. The Lord Ganesha’s elephant head proves all this. We also knew about genetic science and in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) in the days of the Mahabharata and now I understand why test tube babies are so popular in India, in spite of us having such healthy population figures from more natural and less scientific means. All Indians who opt for IVF are actually super-patriots doing nothing more than encouraging ancient Indian scientific methods.
I am still quite ashamed about my total lack of knowledge about India’s greatness, especially in the past. I know the present stuff, like the Mars Mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation. But I did not know that all this had also been done thousands of years in the past by Indians. But soon, I am sure, I will get to learn more and more and I cannot wait.
I don’t want to go by the blanket belief that “everything” was invented in India. I want to savour each announcement and pour over the scientific proof provided — like a speech by a prime minister or a line in an ancient epic poem.
I know that scientists and Marxists and intellectuals will counter all these facts. Luckily, the internet (is that made in India yet?) provides me with enough blogs that prove all this. Like I discovered that taking care of cows can cure infertility — human, that is. I am not still 100 per cent sure whether looking after cows in order to become fertile is correctly patriotic compared to those who are trying IVF to promote Indian scientific village industries, but I am sure I will soon find an “Ancient Indian Science Defence League” Twitter handle to set my confusions right.
But I must not delve so far into the future; I didn’t even have the privilege of studying in a university which offered Vedic Astrology as an Honours degree. Who knows how far I would have gone if I was not so old and so blighted by the damning presence of Messrs M and the other M?
In the meantime, I’m brushing up on my patriotism skills. All those leftover little national flags bought at traffic signals on Independence Day? I’ve pinned them to the curtains — not like you people who quietly throw them away. I can’t quite afford to rush to New York’s Madison Square Garden and stand outside it singing “I Love My India” yet, but am sure my time will come. That will be the pinnacle of my patriotism.
In other news, I turned the laptop on which I’ve written this upside down and round and round to check but it seems to be made in China. Blast.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist. You can follow her on twitter @ranjonaA NEURAL circuit has been identified that allows people to predict whether someone is going to lie to them. The finding could help to explain why some people become paranoid.
Humans have “theory of mind” – the ability to imagine what others are thinking and learn from their social habits. “We’re trying to find a specific circuit that performs social learning,” says Matthew Rushworth at the University of Oxford, who presented his work at a Cell Press LabLinks conference in London on 3 December.
Rushworth’s team scanned volunteers’ brains while they chose one of two boxes to win points. They were sent advice on which box to choose from a second player who was sometimes dishonest. When the volunteers suspected they were being lied to, activity levels rose in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DPFC), an area near the front of the brain. If the volunteer thought the player was telling the truth the activity remained low. If their suspicions were proved wrong, the activity changed “suggesting the volunteers needed to rethink their opinion of the second player”, says Rushworth. In effect, the activity was predicting how trustworthy the advice would be, then reacting to the results of that prediction (Nature, vol 456, p 245).
In effect, the brain activity predicted how trustworthy the incoming advice was going to be
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Failures of this system could explain why those with schizophrenia are often paranoid, says Chris Frith of University College London, who was not involved in the study. “People with schizophrenia show false prediction errors: they keep thinking their predictions are wrong,” he says. This leads to distrust and paranoia.
Rushworth is now mapping the circuit using diffusion-weighted MRI, which tracks the movement of water through the brain, to find out which areas the DPFC is linked to. This might ultimately allow the design of targeted treatments for paranoia.The coverage of the Sunday night’s Texas terror attack on liberal website DailyKos demonstrates how modern progressives |
is this: candidates are asking the public to grant them the enormous discretionary powers of the presidency. (Yes, presidents get frustrated by what they can’t do. What they can do is still vast.) In exchange, the public asks to know as much as it can about the person assuming this role.
So major-party nominees in modern times have released some version of their medical records, and their federal tax returns. You can see the returns for presidents going back to FDR here. (FDR’s records, which were released after his death, start in 1913 — which was when the Sixteenth Amendment first authorized the income tax!). Nominees began routinely releasing records before the elections in the 1970s. You can see the history of modern-era Republican returns here.
Donald Trump has flat-out refused to accept this obligation. “Flat-out” in the sense of telling George Stephanopoulos in May that the returns were “none of your business,” your meaning the press’s and public’s; and less directly in saying that the ongoing-audit status of the returns means he can’t disclose them. (No actual tax expert agrees.)
Is there something embarrassing or explosive in Trump’s tax returns? Who knows. Geoff Colvin, of Fortune, suggests that there might be. Many people have speculated that the real embarrassment might be evidence that Trump is nowhere near as rich as he has claimed. Another hypothesis is that returns would show that he has given very little to charities, or has managed to pay no taxes at all. The real point is that all of these remain hypotheses, as long as Trump shirks an obligation that modern-era candidates have recognized. As Colvin says:
Until he releases his returns or offers a plausible reason not to, voters must speculate on why he’s withholding them. None of the potential reasons will be good. Hillary Clinton is in a strong position to pound him on the issue, since she and her husband have routinely released their returns for years (though she may not want to remind voters of her speaking fees from Goldman
Now that he is officially the nominee, the press, his opponents, and for that matter his supporters as well should ramp up insistence that he do what nominees over the past half century have done.
***A group of gamers from around the world created a 100,000+ keystroke script for speedrunning The Legend of Zelda, which was used by a blind gamer in Ontario complete the game. Jordan Verner, who is blind, posted a video of himself playing Zelda and asking for help to complete the game. This inspired other gamers to spend two years composing a script that Verner could follow, and at last he did:
So Williams and thee other diehard gamers each took different parts and copied down every single move.
"Every time we make a move, we roll, jump, do anything, we type down on the computer exactly what we're doing," said Williams.
Verner would then take the script and have his computer read it to him as he played.
An average gamer will take about a week to play through the entire thing, but this project took almost 2 years and more than 100,000 keystrokes. Finally, Jordan beat the entire thing.
"I felt great," said Jordan. "I felt strong. I felt like the sky's the limit."
"I'm glad everyone can see and learn from this that just because a person has a disability doesn't mean they can't do a normal thing, like play a video game," said Williams.In the news today as is reported by The Mirror, we review the concept of charging to use toilet facilities across the world, as in the United Kingdom it was announced that Network Rail stations had amassed 12.8 million pounds in commuters money, over only the past three years from paid public bathrooms. Although, the company claimed not to profit from the tax, it is clear that number 1’s and hopefully not number 2’s, are big business in many places and they do truly bring in that waste dollar. Taxed or not. Surely, there are similar facilities to pay to relieve oneself, now in the U.S., as well.
In London, it saw some good news, that in at least two stations they had decided to get rid of this charge of 50p, in both Victoria and Charing Cross stations, because apparently they felt bad and I guess they might have come across the phenomenon of needing a piss, with no coins to speak of, whilst rushing for an impending train. This no doubt came into play under the Labour Party’s reign of Tony Blair, back when he was Prime Minister, which was an interesting time, indeed. Many people might have thought that they were just “taking the piss”, when they first introduced the pay to use the toilet services, across the country.
But, the question on everyone’s lips is, “who came up with the concept of paying to piss first, who was it?”
Research is still being done here at our office, but we believe it to be socialist Sweden in the late 1980s. Yes, we believe they set the trend and the groundwork for this to later be unleashed in the United Kingdom and also in the United States. They had those pay to use toilets, way before anyone else ever did. Fact.
Perhaps, the thinking was that we’d rather charge them money, rather than having them publicly relieve themselves right out in front of everybody. Of course, those toilets needed to be paid for and also why would a human need to pee in the first place? For that, we shall rake it in! (Troll Greedy Finger Shuffle).
Yes, it is clear that the only thing we still can access although not entirely for free, is some tap water. However, some scary satanic looking person over at Nestle, has been saying that water is not a human right for some time now. We bet you he could be a full-blown champagne socialist deep down inside. Unfortunately, in some cities like in Flint, Michigan, this isn’t happening, with their terrible and inexcusable water crisis. Whilst, in Sweden they say the tap water is brilliant and it does in fact, taste quite nice. In London, bottled water is encouraged, whilst in South East Asia, the tap and running water is not for drinking, but not anything as bad as Flint’s running water by any means, but it does indeed need a personal filtration system in some areas and for your drinking water, these are all thoroughly provided in gallon dispensers for your house, as you’d see displayed in your standard office for remarkably cheap, when compared to buying bottled water in the West, which tends to stack up the expenses bottle by bottle. In India, as well, you shouldn’t drink from the tap unless you wanted to die in most places.
So, what about our right to pee or use toilet services in public places, without needing a coin or the correct change, in order to do so?
We sense that as more of a conservative outlook over the world spreads, we will see public bathrooms become free again. After all, you don’t want people pissing all over the place, do you? Even, if you can be a stingy troll and then charge people for it!
London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, a known socialist is reportedly willing to spend 827 million pounds on making London even more green again. Yes, dubious green services and money being spent yet again. His full plan hasn’t yet been laid out, but he also wanted to charge more traffic congestion zone charges in London, based on the types of vehicles that were being used, as well. So, in socialism you find many hidden charges and mysterious causes of money being spent in various places, where literally once the task is completed, you wonder where all the damn money went?
We suspect they went into the pockets of very many corporations and special interest groups, that lobby and talk, spend a lot of money and usually it is for nothing, entirely.
We are already seeing Sadiq Khan, “making it rain” with so far quite useless ideas in probably charging the taxpayer more funds, like Obama has done too, all be it, this money didn’t go into the right places. After bad deals with Iran, plus 4billion dollars cash money on an airport runway. Obama has been known to lean severely to the left, even heaping praise upon the recent passing of Fidel Castro, a communist-Marxist revolutionary, who was loaded with cash compared to the rest of his people. Are you seeing a pattern here?
Just pissing money away, in all the wrong places! Where does it all go, you might ask? At least, some toilets are seemingly becoming free again.
Let’s hope this rolls out across the world. Free our toilets!
<Story by The Narrator>ST. LOUIS — After weeks of threatening to go there, Donald Trump at Sunday’s presidential debate defended his incendiary comments about women by suggesting that former President Bill Clinton has done “far worse.“
Repeatedly dismissing the lewd comments he made in a video disclosed last Friday as “locker room talk,” Trump insisted he was only guilty of disgraceful talk, which he again offered apologies for. He quickly pivoted to Clinton.
“If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse, mine are words, his was action. This is what he has done to women. Never been anybody in history of politics in this nation that’s been so abusive to women, so you can say any way you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women,” Trump declared. “Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously.”
The GOP nominee then pointed out he had invited three of Bill Clinton’s accusers as his debate guests, as well as another woman who was involved in a rape case as a child in which Hillary Clinton had represented the accused attacker.
Slideshow: Body language: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face off for their second fiery debate >>>
“Don’t tell me about words. And absolutely, I apologize for those words. But it is things that people say,” he said. “But what President Clinton did, he was impeached, lost his license to practice law. He had to pay an $850,000 fine. To one of the women: Paula Jones, who’s also here tonight.”
He then slammed Clinton for bringing up his “words.” “It’s disgraceful, and I think she should be ashamed of herself.”
In response, Clinton dismissed Trump’s comments, saying “so much of what he said was not right.” But, she added, he gets to run his campaign “any way he chooses”
“Instead of answering people’s questions, talking about our agenda, laying out the plans that we have that we think can make a better life and a better country. That’s his choice,” she said. “When I hear something like that, I am reminded of what my friend Michelle Obama advised us all. When they go low, you go high.”AdWords Call Extensions: CPP Details Begin to Emerge
Last week we found ourselves on the phone with Google’s help desk asking for more information on Cost Per Phone call (CPP) bidding, a relatively new service for call extensions. The information we could find online on CPP (call extension info and CPP bidding info) left us with a lot of questions, so we rung them up. The representative we talked with didn’t know the answers to a lot of our questions, so said he’d get back to us with an email later in the day. True to his word, we got an email with a lot of details about the new AdWords bidding system. Here is what we learned.
Let’s start at the beginning:
Free vs. Paid AdWords Call Extensions
Call extensions officially changed recently and now come in two flavors:
Free – In a free call extension you use your actual phone number, but it only appears in ads appearing on, what Google calls, “high end mobile phones” which can be translated into “smart phones.” If your number appears in the ad on the smart phone (it is an extension, so there’s no guarantee it will) is clicked on by the smart phone user, you will be charged for the click just as if they had clicked on the ad. If you want your phone number to appear for free in ads on desktops and laptops, you will have to put the number in the ad copy.
– In a free call extension you use your actual phone number, but it only appears in ads appearing on, what Google calls, “high end mobile phones” which can be translated into “smart phones.” If your number appears in the ad on the smart phone (it is an extension, so there’s no guarantee it will) is clicked on by the smart phone user, you will be charged for the click just as if they had clicked on the ad. If you want your phone number to appear for free in ads on desktops and laptops, you will have to put the number in the ad copy. Paid – If you want your phone number to appear in ads for desktop and laptop users, you have to agree to pay a minimum of $1.00 per call. Then Google will provide a random phone number that will forward to the phone number you choose. This allows Google to count the phone calls and give you details on how many calls you’ve received from your AdWords account.
What is CPP?
As I said above, if you want a phone number to appear in ads for desktop and laptop users, you have to pay a minimum of $1.00 per call. The word “minimum” indicates that the price can be higher; that’s because Google now allows you to bid on how much you’re willing to pay to receive a call on a phone number that appears in your ads. They now allow you to set your maximum cost per phone call (CPP).
But that basically is where the information we found on Google’s site ran out, leaving us with a lot of questions. Questions the Google rep couldn’t answer until he had done some research. Here is what we learned: (Information copied directly from the email is in quotes.:
Q: Are the forwarding phone numbers applied at the account, campaign, ad group, or keyword level?
A: The rep wasn’t sure, but later verified in his email that they are applied at the campaign level. So, if you’re hoping to get call data at the ad group or keyword level, you won’t be able to from Google. They will let you know how many phone calls came to each campaign, but that’s it.
Are the forwarding phone numbers applied at the account, campaign, ad group, or keyword level? The rep wasn’t sure, but later verified in his email that they are applied at the campaign level. So, if you’re hoping to get call data at the ad group or keyword level, you won’t be able to from Google. They will let you know how many phone calls came to each campaign, but that’s it. Q: Are your campaigns assigned a number that you can then use in other marketing?
A: No, the phone numbers displayed in your ads are random and can change at any time.
Are your campaigns assigned a number that you can then use in other marketing? No, the phone numbers displayed in your ads are random and can change at any time. Q: What are the rules for bidding more than $1.00 a call?
A: The rules are rather convoluted: “In order to bid per phone call, an ad group has to reach a specific call metrics threshold in the last 30 days (about 25 calls). Until this threshold is reached, the Max. CPP column will display ‘Fee: $1.00’ and the regular $1 fee will apply to call metrics calls. Only $1 paid calls count towards this threshold. The call must be of a reasonable length, not duplicates, and not on the mobile call metrics number.” Once you can bid on phone calls, the Max CPP column can be in one of three states: “Ineligible: The ad group is not meeting the minimum click threshold needed to use call metrics (about 25 calls in the last 30 days).” “Fee: $1.00: This means call metrics is enabled for the ad group, but not meeting the call threshold to use the CPP bid, and is instead charging the normal $1 fee per call as usual.” “Bid: $x.xx: This means call metrics is enabled and using the Max CPP bid of $x.xx that you set.”
What are the rules for bidding more than $1.00 a call? The rules are rather convoluted: Q: How do CPC and CPP interact?
A: It may be a good idea to increase your CPP bid to over $1.00 because it, “could both get you more calls and have your ads appear higher in rank.” No more details were available on how much the CPP influences ad position, but he made it clear that a higher CPP will increase your that ad position.
These answers open up more questions, which we’ll be trying to get answers to. Let us know what questions it leaves you with and we’ll try to get them answered.
Thank you to Sean Dreilinger for kindly sharing the phone call photo via the Creative Common’s license.A Columbia man was sentenced to five years in prison for the 2016 crime where he set his girlfriend's dog on fire in a church parking lot. Hykeem Dontavious Jabar Golson is just the second person in South Carolina to be sentenced to the maximum for felony animal cruelty. He was also sentenced to pay a $5,000 fine. The prosecutor for the case called the crime a "vengeful act".During the investigation, Golson admitted to the crime and authorities said he told a Richland County Sheriff's Department investigator, when asked if he was sorry, said: “Definitely, I feel sorry the dog did not light the first time.”The crime happened in November 2016 when Golson set the pit bull puppy on fire in the Grace United Methodist Church parking lot.A witness said he was walking his dogs in the neighborhood when he heard yelping noises and saw something on fire. He said he knew immediately it was an animal. He said the man burning the puppy began walking toward him so he rushed to get his animals to safety and called 911. Shortly after the witness called authorities, deputies said the man ran off. The 10-week-old puppy did not survive his injuries. Animal advocacy groups in the Midlands are championing this ruling. “It is a great day in South Carolina for our companion pets,” says Denise Wilkinson, CEO of Pawmetto Lifeline. “While an innocent life was lost in the most horrific manner, justice was delivered. We must continue to fight the fight and hold people accountable for these crimes.”Copyright 2017 WIS. All rights reserved.
A Columbia man was sentenced to five years in prison for the 2016 crime where he set his girlfriend's dog on fire in a church parking lot.
Hykeem Dontavious Jabar Golson is just the second person in South Carolina to be sentenced to the maximum for felony animal cruelty. He was also sentenced to pay a $5,000 fine.
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The prosecutor for the case called the crime a "vengeful act".
During the investigation, Golson admitted to the crime and authorities said he told a Richland County Sheriff's Department investigator, when asked if he was sorry, said: “Definitely, I feel sorry the dog did not light the first time.”
The crime happened in November 2016 when Golson set the pit bull puppy on fire in the Grace United Methodist Church parking lot.
A witness said he was walking his dogs in the neighborhood when he heard yelping noises and saw something on fire. He said he knew immediately it was an animal. He said the man burning the puppy began walking toward him so he rushed to get his animals to safety and called 911.
Shortly after the witness called authorities, deputies said the man ran off.
The 10-week-old puppy did not survive his injuries.
Animal advocacy groups in the Midlands are championing this ruling.
“It is a great day in South Carolina for our companion pets,” says Denise Wilkinson, CEO of Pawmetto Lifeline. “While an innocent life was lost in the most horrific manner, justice was delivered. We must continue to fight the fight and hold people accountable for these crimes.”
Copyright 2017 WIS. All rights reserved.
AlertMeHello friends! Happy New Year!
It took me long to write this post. I was away from blogging for so long that, honestly, I didn’t know where to begin. Sorry for being silent without any notice.
Life happened in 2018, including many good things, such as my unique food and culture tours to the Caucasus, my birthplace. A crazy idea born in October of 2017 turned into a solid vision shortly afterwards, and came to fruition in July 2018, when I led my very first Food and Culture Tour to Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Needless to say, I was as ecstatic as I was a bit nervous – it was my first tour after all! It took me months to prepare and coordinate all the details of the trip – I needed to fully concentrate, hence my absence from here.
READ MORE →Porn star Duke student Belle Knox [CNN]
The top U.S. college where a student has revealed she works as a porn actress to pay her fees said Friday she has broken no rules, and stressed that financial aid is available.
First-year student “Belle Knox” of Duke University, who has received threats, outed herself this week to explain she was doing porn because she needs the money for her education.
But the student insisted she was not ashamed, and on the contrary enjoys doing it — while admitting that she would not have chosen that path if it weren’t for her $60,000 a year in tuition fees.
“We are in a society where we are so repressed, every single day. We’re told that sex is bad. We’re told not to have sex. We’re told not to show our bodies, and that’s really true for women,” she told CNN.
“To be in porn and to be able to be naked and to be able to be free and have that sexual autonomy, it is so incredibly freeing.”
North Carolina-based Duke University, one of America’s leading colleges, said federal law prohibited it from commenting on individual cases — but stressed that the student had not broken any of its rules.
“There is no restriction in the Duke Community Standard regarding off-campus employment,” university spokesman Keith Lawrence told AFP.
He also stressed that financial help was available to any student who genuinely needs it, saying that more than half of all Duke students receive some kind of funding assistance.
“Duke has one of the most comprehensive financial aid and scholarship programs in the US and is based on a careful review of each student’s family circumstances,” he said.
Knox — her porn industry name, not her real one — warned critics against harassing her online.
“If you want to bully, harass, defame or threaten me from behind a computer screen, remember that NOTHING you do online is truly anonymous,” she wrote on her Twitter feed, which includes explicit photos.
“And if there are criminal or civil remedies to enforce and use against you, they will be/are being pursued.”
Watch Knox discuss her revealing her work identity in an interview aired on CNN on Thursday below.Stevens alumnus Pete Yurkowski has a chance to win $1 million, and you can watch him do it. The Class of 2011 graduate is a contestant on the 25th season of Survivor, the hit reality television game show from CBS. The upcoming season, Survivor: Philippines, premieres on Wednesday, Sept. 19.
An Engineering Management major from Holmdel, N.J., Yurkowski spent his post-Stevens year taking acting, art and imaging classes and developing a modeling portfolio. When his mother insisted it was time to find a steady job, Yurkowski answered a Survivor casting call he saw online.
“It definitely wasn’t what my mom had in mind, but I wasn’t ready to sit behind a desk just yet,” Yurkowski said.
Although Yurkowski doesn’t have any tangible survival skills or experience, he was briefly a Boy Scout, and he knows how to hunt and work with fire, thanks to spending part of his childhood in upstate New York.
“I’m definitely not a stranger to nature,” he said.
To prepare for the show, Yurkowski said he, “ate everything I could find and went to the gym for three hours every day.” He gained 20 pounds of muscle and fat before filming started, knowing he’d probably lose it all if he lasted in the game for long enough.
“I wasn’t going there to look pretty; I was going there to win,” he said.
In Yurkowski’s cast interview video on the Survivor web site, he said people often don’t believe him when he tells them he is an engineer, but his education and intelligence would take him far in the game.
In particular, he said some of his Engineering Management courses at Stevens taught him how to successfully pitch an idea, even if the idea wasn’t always the best.
“Persuasive communication is a big thing I learned at Stevens that is critical on Survivor,” he said.
Yurkowski’s plan for winning Survivor was to adapt at every second of the game, knowing the downfall of many contestants is locking into one strategy too early.
He intended to be a “social chameleon,” using the many diverse aspects of his personality to his advantage. He characterized himself as equal parts: hardcore gamer (he'd love a career in the video gaming industry); jock (he enjoys snowboarding, skydiving and anything “fast and dangerous where you could probably kill yourself”); and frat boy (at Stevens, he was a brother of Beta Theta Pi).
“My smile, my personality, and the fact that I can get people to do what I tell them to do is what is going to win me the $1 million,” he said in the cast interview video.
On the show, Yurkowski is a member of the Tandang tribe. The cast of 18 includes Lisa Whelchel, a former teen star from "The Facts of Life," Jeff Kent, a retired Major League Baseball player, and three returning Survivor castaways who were removed from their previous seasons due to illness or injury.
Watch Yurkowski compete to be the last man standing on Survivor: Philippines, airing each Wednesday this fall starting Sept. 19 at 8 p.m. EST on CBS.
-- photo courtesy of ©2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc.Going into Sunday’s NFC championship, the Atlanta Falcons — and, by extension, their MVP front-runner QB Matt Ryan — were losing the battle for media attention to Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers.
But on Sunday, Ryan forced the football world to take notice; the Falcons walloped the Packers 44-21 and punched a ticket to Houston for Super Bowl LI. It was just the latest piece of evidence that Ryan’s astonishing regular-season statistics weren’t empty numbers that would evaporate in the playoffs. Instead, Ryan is performing less like, say, Joe Flacco or Eli Manning — QBs who punctuated otherwise average careers with stellar postseason bursts — and more like one of the game’s best starters (which, incidentally, Ryan has been over the NFL’s past decade or so.)
Against Green Bay, Ryan painted a QB masterpiece. He conducted the Falcons’ offense with ruthless efficiency, scoring six touchdowns and a field goal on nine drives. He also completed 27 of his 38 passes (71 percent) for 392 yards, four touchdowns and zero interceptions, tallying the 15th-best completion percentage, fourth-most yards and sixth-best passer rating (139.4) in a conference championship game. Not even Tom Brady, who notched a 127.5 passer rating against Pittsburgh later Sunday, could match Ryan.
PLAYER YEAR TM OPP WON? CMP ATT CMP% YDS TD INT RATE 1 Jim Plunkett 1980 OAK SD ✓ 14 18 77.8 261 2 0 155.8 2 Mark Rypien 1991 WAS DET ✓ 12 17 70.6 228 2 0 152.2 3 Billy Kilmer 1972 WAS DAL ✓ 14 18 77.8 194 2 0 148.6 4 Kurt Warner 2008 ARI PHI ✓ 21 28 75.0 279 4 0 145.7 5 Troy Aikman 1993 DAL SF ✓ 14 18 77.8 177 2 0 144.7 6 Matt Ryan 2016 ATL GB ✓ 27 38 71.1 392 4 0 139.4 7 Joe Montana 1988 SF CHI ✓ 17 27 63.0 288 3 0 136.0 8 Dan Marino 1984 MIA PIT ✓ 21 32 65.6 421 4 1 135.4 9 Tom Brady 2004 NE PIT ✓ 14 21 66.7 207 2 0 130.5 10 C. Kaepernick 2012 SF ATL ✓ 16 21 76.2 233 1 0 127.7 11 Tom Brady 2016 NE PIT ✓ 32 42 76.2 384 3 0 127.5 Best conference championship games by passer rating, 1970-2016 Minimum 14 passing attempts. “Year” represents the season for which the championship was played. Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com, ESPN
In the 2016 postseason thus far, Ryan has a passer rating of 132.6, the third-highest that any conference-champion QB has carried into the Super Bowl, trailing only Joe Montana in 1989 (142.5) and Tony Eason in 1985 (135.6). It’s not unusual for unheralded quarterbacks to go on hot streaks — Flacco had a 117.2 passer rating in the 2012 playoffs — but Ryan’s previous regular-season résumé is stronger, particularly after he produced one of the NFL’s all-time great passing seasons in 2016.
In Ryan’s last NFC championship game (itself a stellar, 396-yard performance against San Francisco in 2013), he had already shown some of the progress he’d made under center. Early-career Ryan had a tendency to make too many throws that were safe but ultimately harmless, resulting in high completion percentages but low yards-per-attempt averages and anemic third-down conversion numbers. By the time he faced San Francisco, Ryan was more confident throwing the ball deep, leading to more air yards per throw and more big plays.
PER ATTEMPT PER COMPLETION YEAR ROUND OPP WON? YDS AIR YD TD INT 1STD YDS YAC 2008 WC ARI 5.0 8.1 5.0% 5.0% 35.0% 7.7 3.1 2010 DIV GB 6.4 9.0 3.4 6.9 31.0 9.3 2.5 2011 WC NYG 4.9 8.2 0.0 0.0 22.0 8.3 2.0 2012 DIV SEA ✓ 7.1 12.1 8.6 5.7 45.7 10.4 2.7 2012 LC SF 9.4 11.5 7.1 2.4 50.0 13.2 2.1 2016 DIV SEA ✓ 9.1 8.1 8.1 0.0 51.4 13.0 6.7 2016 LC GB ✓ 10.3 8.8 10.5 0.0 57.9 14.5 7.4 How Matt Ryan’s playoff passing evolved “Year” represents the season for which the championship was played. Source: ESPN Stats & Information Group
But this year, Ryan has been showcasing the full mastery of his arsenal, and an extremely talented group of skill-position teammates has also helped. Ryan’s average pass has traveled fewer yards through the air than in 2012, but he’s making up for it (and then some) by completing a higher percentage of his passes, and getting more than twice as many yards per completion from receivers sprinting with the ball after catching it. As a group, Ryan’s receivers ran for 199 yards after the catch on Sunday, the sixth most any team had in a playoff game since 2006. And while Julio Jones had 180 receiving yards by himself, tied for fourth most in conference championship history, he was also just one of eight different targets among whom Ryan distributed the ball.
When Ryan’s improvement as a passer combined with a better supporting cast around him, the result was one of the deadliest regular-season offenses in NFL history — a trend that’s only becoming clearer with each successive Falcons playoff victory.
Ryan isn’t going to get more attention than Brady before the Super Bowl, but his brilliant season (and postseason) has finally earned him the attention of even casual football fans. Moreover, he’s earned that recognition as one of the game’s best for an extended stretch of time — not merely as a flash in the pan.One of the biggest advantages the Nintendo Switch has over its competitors is that it can be played at home or on the road. However, according to a new report, it appears that the system will take a substantial hit power-wise when it is undocked.
According to multiple sources that have spoken with Digital Foundry, the Nintendo Switch will run 40% slower when it is not hooked into its base station. The system’s available CPU and memory controller speeds won’t be affected when it is undocked, but there will be a noticeable drop in GPU speed.
The report also talks about the system’s full potential or lack thereof. The Switch runs on a variant of the Nvidia Tegra X1 chip. The chip can run at speeds upwards of 1 GHz, but the Switch reported only reach speeds of 768MHz at best. For those keeping tabs, that is less powerful than the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. Sources also say that developers will attempt to make games run equally in both docked and undocked configurations. This could also put a hamper on the system’s potential, performance-wise.
As has been the case with many reports surrounding the Switch, none of this is confirmed at the moment. Though there might be a huge power discrepancy between when the Switch is docked and undocked, it is more than likely developers will choose to make games run equally in either mode. This will mean the system won’t be running any graphically intensive games. But then again, this isn’t something Nintendo fans will be too upset about considering how the company’s systems are usually underpowered compared to the competition.
Make sure to read Digital Foundry’s full report as it goes into a lot more technical detail about the Switch’s running speed and more. Nintendo will hold a special Switch-centric Nintendo Direct on January 12 that will hopefully shed more light on the system’s power.So, the Russians are at it again, snooping around the undersea communications cables that connect the continents. These fiber optic cables carry 99 percent of all transoceanic digital communication—phone calls, emails, web pages, you name it. They’re the reason you can Skype your colleague in Sydney or text with your friend in Mumbai. They’re essential infrastructure for the global economy. It’s no wonder, as The New York Times reported this week, that US military officials are not at all comfortable with Russian subs and spy ships “aggressively operating” in their vicinity.
Despite the importance of this undersea network, most people never give it a thought until something goes wrong, or seems likely to. Nicole Starosielski wants to change that. Starosielski, a media scholar at New York University, spent six years traveling the globe to study the history of the cable network and the cultural, political, and environmental forces that have shaped it. Her work also highlights the vulnerability of this system.
“We usually think of the internet as distributed,” Starosielski says. Because of the built-in redundancies, an attack at a given point in the terrestrial network is unlikely to bring the whole thing down. Not so under the sea. “I think people would be surprised to know that there are a little over 200 systems that carry all of the internet traffic across the ocean, and these are by and large concentrated in very few areas. The cables end up getting funneled through these narrow pressure points all around the globe.”
Starosielski’s book The Undersea Network, published earlier this year, examines some of the reasons for this. They range from politics to undersea topography to seismic risks. A companion website lets you explore the Pacific cable network with interactive maps, histories of the various cables, and photos of the sometimes spooky, sometimes mundane places where they come ashore.
The first transoceanic cable, a copper telegraph wire, was laid across the Atlantic in 1866. The cables put down in the following decades followed colonial era shipping routes, and many modern cables follow these same old routes. In the 1950s, coaxial cable, capable of carrying telephone conversations became the standard. Then, in the 1990s, these analog cables were edged into obsolescence by fiber optic cables able to carry huge amounts of digital data in the form of light. (If you’re even remotely curious about how these cables work and how they get laid on the ocean floor, check out Neal Stephenson’s epic 1996 WIRED article about one global networks.)
A.B.C. Telegraphic Code, 5th Edition | Atlantic Cable
The undersea cables have been the subject of international intrigue before. Back in 1959 the Times reported that the US Navy boarded and searched a Russian fishing trawler off Newfoundland on suspicions that it had tampered with cables. (The boarding party found no incriminating evidence).
Not that the Russians were the only ones interested in the cables. In the 1970s, the US Navy deployed divers from submarines to tap secret Soviet military communications cables, an effort known as Operation Ivy Bells.
But it doesn't take a navy to mess with the cables, which these days are roughly the diameter of a garden hose. “They have to wind these things up and throw them in the back of boats, so they have to be as light as possible,” Starosielski explains. A 2006 earthquake severed cables and disrupted internet access in Taiwan. In 2007, scrap metal salvagers pulled up parts of two fiber optic cables off Vietnam, disrupting internet service there for several months. Sharks, apparently, are also a threat.
By far the most common problems, however—accounting for about 60 percent of cut cable incidents—are dropped anchors and fishing nets, Starosielski says. For that reason, the cables are clearly marked by pink squiggly lines on navigational charts, and, on the water, signs warning boaters not to drop anchor. The flip side of all these warnings is a potential tip off to would-be saboteurs.
Cable sabotage was common during both World Wars, but Starosielski says she knows of no recent incidents. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, though. It would be relatively easy to cut a cable near shore, but such damage |
$807-million deficit during the same period a year earlier. Finance Canada confirmed last week that the federal government ran a surplus in 2014-15 after six consecutive years of deficits.
Speaking at a campaign event in Rivière-du-Loup, Que., Mr. Harper highlighted Friday's report and said it helps contrast his low tax plan with opposition proposals to raise taxes and run deficits.
"We are well on track for the second balanced budget in a row at the federal level," he said.
Independent observers, however, have questioned whether Ottawa is in fact on pace for a surplus this year. About $2.1-billion of the $5.2-billion surplus to date is due to a one-time revenue gain from the government's April sale of its remaining shares in General Motors.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Jean-Denis Fréchette reported in July that because the economy is growing at a slower pace than Ottawa expected at the time of the April budget, the final numbers for the 2015-16 fiscal year are on track to show a small deficit.
Internal Finance Canada documents showed Finance Minister Joe Oliver's office made a last-minute request to release the fiscal monitor for April and May a week and a half early, which meant it came out on July 22, the same day the PBO was reporting that Ottawa was facing a deficit for 2015-16.
The early release – which showed a two-month surplus of $3.9-billion thanks in large part to the sale of GM shares – allowed the Conservatives to res-pond to the PBO report by arguing that Ottawa was in surplus.
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Mark Pender, the department's director of public affairs, sent an e-mail to deputy minister Paul Rochon at 6:02 that morning.
"Good morning Paul, We received a request from mino [minister's office] last night to bring forward the release of the fiscal monitor this morning at 9am. My team has been working to deliver the request. I wanted to make sure you were aware," he wrote.
"Thanks for the good work Mark. I am aware of the request," Mr. Rochon replied.
The fiscal monitor is normally released on the last Friday of each month. The e-mails were released under the Access to Information Act and were first reported by the Ottawa Citizen this week.
The e-mails show that political staff from Mr. Oliver's office, including director of communications Melissa Lantsman and David Van Hemmen, the director of budget planning, asked public servants the evening before the PBO's planned release whether there was any precedent for the department to release the fiscal monitor ahead of schedule.
The issue of Ottawa's bottom line is a central point of division between the federal parties in the election campaign. Mr. Harper and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair are promising to balance the books every year if either of them forms a government. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says he will run three years of deficits – to fund an ambitious infrastructure spending program – before balancing the books in the fourth year of a Liberal government.Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke Ryan Keith ZinkeInterior looking to rely on staffers with less training for park law enforcement: report DOJ investigation into former Interior chief goes to grand jury Overnight Energy: Zinke joins Trump-tied lobbying firm | Senators highlight threat from invasive species | Top Republican calls for Green New Deal vote in House MORE in an interview early Monday argued that monuments in the U.S. are not aligned with any political party.
Zinke told Fox News that monuments are part of the nation's history.
"I'm one that believes that we should learn from history, and I think our monuments are part of our country's history," he said on "Fox & Friends."
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"I think reflecting on our history, both good and bad, is a powerful statement and part of our DNA."
He also said it's important to learn from the country's monuments and understand the period in which they were made.
"But also, we live in a great country," he said.
"And monuments are not Republican, Democrat, independent. The monuments are a tribute to all of us."
His comments come after the debate over what to do with Confederate statues was reignited last month when violence erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.
The rally began as a protest against the Charlottesville City Council’s decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Other cities have also moved to take down Confederate statues.
Earlier this month, congressional Democrats filed legislation to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol.Denise Bergert
Das soziale Netzwerk Facebook will mit Virtual Reality und haptischem Feedback eine Art Teleporter bauen.
Vergrößern Oculus Rift erscheint im nächsten Jahr. © Oculus VR
Facebook will die virtuelle Realität realistischer machen. Im Rahmen des Dublin Web Summit kündigte Mike Schroepfer, Chief Technical Officer bei Facebook, die Arbeiten aneinem Teleporter an. Dabei handelt es sich jedoch nicht um ein Gerät, das den Nutzer in Sekundenbruchteilen physisch von einem Ort an einen anderen bringt. Vielmehr soll durch Virtual Reality nur der Eindruck entstehen, man sei an einem anderen Ort.
Möglich wird das durch haptisches Feedback, über das die virtuelle Welt noch echter erscheinen soll. Den Grundstein für die Technologie legt unter anderem Oculus VR. Der Entwickler wurde von Facebook gekauft und veröffentlicht im nächsten Jahr seine VR-Brille Oculus Rift. Neben dem Headset arbeitet das Unternehmen auch an der Erweiterung Oculus Touch – einem Controller, der die Hände des Nutzers in die virtuelle Welt einbindet. Der Release ist für Mitte 2016 geplant.
Kurz erklärt:Augmented und Virtual Reality
Im Mai hat sich Oculus zudem mit Surreal Vision zusammengetan. Das Unternehmen will die echte Umgebung in die virtuelle Realität streamen. Oculus Touch und die Kooperation mit Surreal Vision bilden das Grundgerüst für den Facebook-Teleporter. Wann es die junge Technik zur Marktreife schaffen wird, steht allerdings noch in den Sternen.Only once before this week has President Obama invited foreign leaders to talks at Camp David.
That was in May of 2012, when he hosted an overnight gathering of leaders from the world's industrialized countries (known as G8) at the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland. That summit also included a working lunch with the leaders of Benin, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Ghana.
Thursday, the president is bringing leaders or representatives of the six Gulf states to Camp David: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. It's the perfect setting for Mr. Obama's unexpressed goal - allaying their concerns about the Iran nuclear deal being negotiated.
By comparison, Mr. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, travelled to Camp David far more than Mr. Obama has so far, and used the venue considerably more often than his successor has for talks with foreign leaders.
Our CBS News tally shows that on 19 occasions during his 150 visits to Camp David, President Bush played host to a foreign leader.
U.S. President George W. Bush walks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Bush's dog Spot at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, February 23, 2001. LUKE FRAZZA/AFP/Getty Images
Mr. Bush seemed to like having leaders join him at the retreat. British Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted an invitation to come to Camp David three times. Other foreign leaders President Bush hosted include Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Russia's President Vladimir Putin.
And the former president liked other leaders enough to invite him to his Texas ranch, too - 19 times, and nine times for overnight stays while he was in office.
But it's never been President Obama's way of conducting foreign policy and making friends with his international counterparts. This is his 37th visit to Camp David - and only the second time he's hosted foreign leaders. Further, he has never invited any to join him on his vacations in Hawaii and Martha's Vineyard, although on two occasions, he played golf with the prime ministers of New Zealand and Malaysia who just happened to be in Hawaii while he happened to be there, too.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill fishing at Shangri-La in 1943. FDR Presidential Library & Museum
Camp David, situated 62 miles north of Washington, was founded as a presidential retreat and first used by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942. Initially named Shangri-La, it has been the scene of some historic diplomatic proceedings.
During World War II, President Roosevelt conferred there with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Seeking a thaw in the Cold War, President Eisenhower held a Camp David summit with Soviet Leader Nikita Krushchev.
In 1978, President Carter hosted marathon talks with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. After 13 days at the 143-acre compound in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains, the leaders emerged with a framework for a peace treaty.
Twenty-two years later, President Clinton used Camp David to try again nail down a peace agreement
between Israelis and Palestinians. Sometimes the tranquility of the place could work its own kind of magic, but not this time. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat left without a deal.
And one of the most famous moments in Carter's presidency also involved Camp David and a different sort of summit. In 1979, in the throes of the energy crisis, Carter disappeared from the public eye for ten days. He had gone to Camp David to hold secret meetings with community leaders, members of Congress, journalists and other Americans, and, according to his own memoir, he sat on the floor and took notes on what they told him about what was wrong with his presidency. He then emerged to deliver what came to be known as "the malaise speech," in which he talked about his ideas for emerging from the crisis, quoted the people he'd interviewed and told Americans that the problem was that the country was suffering a crisis of confidence, that too many Americans had become too obsessed with consumption and ownership.
This week at the famous retreat, President Obama's goals are decidedly more modest. He isn't looking for any breakthroughs in his talks with leaders or representatives from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but at the very least, the White House expects commitments to expanded cooperation on regional security issues.Eugen Fischer (5 July 1874 – 9 July 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics, and a member of the Nazi Party. He served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, and also served as rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin.
Fischer's ideas informed the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 which served to justify the Nazi Party's belief in German racial superiority.[1] Adolf Hitler read Fischer's work while he was imprisoned in 1923 and he used Fischer's eugenical notions to support the ideal of a pure Aryan society in his manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).[1]
Biography [ edit ]
Fischer was born in Karlsruhe, Grand Duchy of Baden, in 1874. He studied medicine, folkloristics, history, anatomy, and anthropology in Berlin, Freiburg and Munich.[2] In 1918, he joined the Anatomical Institute in Freiburg in 1918,[3] part of the University of Freiburg.[4]
In 1927, Fischer became the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (KWI-A), a role for which he'd been recommended the prior year by Erwin Baur.[5]
In 1933 Fischer signed the Loyalty Oath of German Professors to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist State.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler appointed him rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin, now Humboldt University.[6] Fischer retired from the university in 1942. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was a student of Fischer.[7][8]
After the war, he completed his memoirs, it is believed that in them he whitened his role in the genocidal program of the Third Reich. He died in 1967.
Early work [ edit ]
In 1906, Fischer conducted field research in German South West Africa (now Namibia). He studied the Basters, offspring of German or Boer men who had fathered children by the native women (Hottentots) in that area. His study concluded with a call to prevent a "mixed race" by the prohibition of "mixed marriage" such as those he had studied. It included unethical medical practices on the Herero and Namaqua people.[9] He argued that while the existing Mischling descendants of the mixed marriages might be useful for Germany, he recommended that they should not continue to reproduce. His recommendations were followed and by 1912 interracial marriage was prohibited throughout the German colonies.[10][11] As a precursor to his experiments on Jews in Nazi Germany, he collected bones and skulls for his studies, in part from medical experimentation on African prisoners of war in Namibia during the Herero and Namaqua Genocide.[12][13]
His ideas expressed in this work, related to maintaining the purity of races, influenced future German legislation on race, including the Nuremberg laws.[11]
In 1927, Fischer was a speaker at the 1927 World Population conference held in Geneva, Switzerland. The Conference was organized by the League of Nations and Margaret Sanger, the founder of The American Birth Control League which was later rechristened as Planned Parenthood.[14]
Nazi Germany [ edit ]
Eugen Fischer during a ceremony at the University of Berlin 1934
In the years of 1937–1938 Fischer and his colleagues analysed 600 children in Nazi Germany descending from French-African soldiers who occupied western areas of Germany after First World War; the children were subsequently subjected to sterilization afterwards.[15]
Fischer did not officially join the Nazi Party until 1940.[16] However, he was influential with National Socialists early on. Adolf Hitler read his two-volume work, Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene (first published in 1921 and co-written by Erwin Baur and Fritz Lenz) while incarcerated in 1923 and used its ideas in Mein Kampf.[17] He also authored The Rehoboth Bastards and the Problem of Miscegenation among Humans (1913) (German: Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen), a field study which provided context for later racial debates, influenced German colonial legislation and provided scientific support for the Nuremberg laws.[18]
Under the Nazi regime, Fischer developed the physiological specifications used to determine racial origins and developed the so-called Fischer–Saller scale. He and his team experimented on Gypsies and African-Germans, taking blood and measuring skulls to find scientific validation for his theories.
Efforts to return the Namibian skulls taken by Fischer were started with an investigation by the University of Freiburg in 2011 and completed with the return of the skulls in March 2014.[19][20][21]
In 1944 Fischer intervened in an attempt to get his friend Martin Heidegger released from service in the Volkssturm militia. However, Heidegger had already been released from service when Fischer's letter arrived.[22]:332-3
Works [ edit ]
To 1909 [ edit ]
Fischer, Eugen. 1899. "Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Nasenhöhle und des Thränennasenganges der Amphisbaeniden", Archiv für Mikroskopische Anatomie. 55:1, pp. 441–478.
. 55:1, pp. 441–478. Fischer, Eugen. 1901. "Zur Kenntniss der Fontanella metopica und ihrer Bildungen". Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie.4:1. pp. 17–30.
.4:1. pp. 17–30. Fischer, Eugen, Professor an der Universität Freiburg i. Br. 1906. "Die Variationen an Radius und Ulna des Menschen". Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie. Vol. 9. No. 2.
. Vol. 9. No. 2. Fischer, Eugen. 1908. Der Patriziat Heinrichs III und Heinrichs IV. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Fischer's PhD thesis.
1910 to 1919 [ edit ]
Maass, Alfred. Durch Zentral-Sumatra. Berlin: Behr. 1910. Additional contributing authors: J.P. Kleiweg de Zwaan and E. Fischer.
. Berlin: Behr. 1910. Additional contributing authors: J.P. Kleiweg de Zwaan and E. Fischer. Fischer, Eugen. 1913. Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen: anthropologische und ethnographiesche Studien am Rehobother Bastardvolk in Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, ausgeführt mit Unterstützung der Kgl. preuss, Akademie der Wissenschaften. Jena: G. Fischer.
, ausgeführt mit Unterstützung der Kgl. preuss, Akademie der Wissenschaften. Jena: G. Fischer. Gaupp, Ernst Wilhelm Theodor. Eugen Fischer (ed.) 1917. August Weismann: sein Leben und sein Werk. Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer.
1920 to 1929 [ edit ]
Schwalbe, G. and Eugen Fischer (eds.). Anthropologie. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1923.
. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1923. Fischer, E. and H.F.K. Günther. Deutsche Köpfe nordischer Rasse: 50 Abbildungen mit Geleitwarten. Munich: J.F. Lehmann. 1927.
1940 to 1949 [ edit ]
Fischer, Eugen and Gerhard Kittel. Das antike Weltjudentum : Tatsachen, Texte, Bilder. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1943.[23]
1950 to 1959 [ edit ]
Sarkar, Sasanka Sekher; Eugen Fischer and Keith Arthur, The Aboriginal Races of India, Calcutta: Bookland. 1954.
, Calcutta: Bookland. 1954. Fischer, Eugen. Begegnungen mit Toten: aus den Erinnerungen eines Anatomen. Freiburg: H.F. Schulz. 1959.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Plaintiff Reavy Washington stands in front of the U.S. District Courthouse. Behind him stands FAS staffer Chris Potter, who manages encampment evictions, while counsel for the city Matt Segal walks out from the spinning doors. Photo by Casey Jaywork
Thursday around noon, federal judge Ricardo Martinez heard arguments in a lawsuit against the City of Seattle and the state Department of Transportation (WSDOT) by homeless campers whose property has been seized and destroyed during evictions. Six months ago, Martinez declined to grant a temporary restraining order, telling the plaintiffs to come back with more evidence.
So they did. According to the plaintiff’s written argument for this hearing, they’ve obtained city documents, deposition, and other evidence (including a citation from the Weekly) showing that more than a thousand evictions have occurred since Mayor Ed Murray declared a State of Emergency almost two years ago.
In addition, they found that:
About 60 percent of evictions since January 2016 have been conducted without the 72-hour notice that city rules theoretically require;
Property has been salvaged, rather than just trashed, from evicted sites only 15 percent of the time since January 2016;
Only nine evictees have successfully reclaimed seized property since January 2, 2016;
Outreach was not offered in nearly 45 percent of sweeps in 2017.
The plaintiffs, represented by the state ACLU, argued that trespassing does not obviate a person’s Fourth Amendment protections from illegal search and seizure by the government. The defendants countered that authorities are doing their best protect poor people’s constitutional rights while still preserving public health and safety.
Martinez said that due to a busy schedule, he expects to rule on this “fascinating” and “very important case” by late next week. But he left the courtroom with a hint of where he’s leaning when he concluded the hearing by saying, “It’s not a secret that I’m sympathetic to the plaintiffs.”
Plaintiff’s attorney Todd Williams argued that despite assurances to the contrary, city evictions are “inconsistent and unpredictable.” Referring to the city rules that ostensibly govern encampment evictions, Williams said, “The city is using their vagueness to drive a truck through the loopholes.”
The plaintiffs are four homeless Seattleites—Lisa Hooper, Brandie Osborne, Kayla Willis and Reavy Washington—who hope the judge will treat them as representatives of the larger class of people who are dispossessed by sweeps, as well as Real Change, Trinity Parish of Seattle and the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia. “Real Change has seen a decline in the circulation of its paper, in part due to the stress and trauma imposed by the sweeps on its vendors,” reads their written argument. “The Episcopal Diocese has seen a dramatic increase in the use of its services and forgone rental income for space it instead devotes to serving the unhoused.”
According to their written argument, the individual plaintiffs and other evicted homeless people said that in evictions they’d lost medicines, mementos, identification, and a birth certificate. Some carry everything they own on their backs now, so it won’t be stolen again. One woman got scabies after losing her toiletries and not showering. A Real Change vendor was so afraid of being swept she skipped work and avoided going to the toilet. “An individual at St. Luke’s fell into a diabetic coma after Defendants destroyed his insulin and another individual on St. Luke’s property who had been on a methadone treatment plan subsequently relapsed after he lost his methadone and ID in a sweep,” according to the complaint.
Williams said his clients are not denying the city’s authority to evict people out of dangerous or inappropriate locations, but are “challenging the process” of property seizure and destruction that typically occurs at those evictions.
“Just because plaintiffs don’t have a right to be on [public] property,” Williams said in court on Thursday, “they don’t lose their Fourth Amendment rights” protecting against unwarranted search and seizure.
“We would disagree that the city is doing anything remotely resembling summarily destroying property,” responded Matt Segal, attorney for the City of Seattle. Rather than believing the “pervasive amounts of hearsay” in the unreliable testimony of the plaintiffs and other homeless people, he said, Martinez should listen to “testimony from the folks out there every day” performing the evictions. Segal added that the plaintiffs have not shown that the sweeps (and pursuent seizure and destruction of campers’ property) causes legally actionable “harm.”
Segal pointed to the notorious Field encampment as an example of why city “cleanup” crews need discretion rather than oversight when dealing with “environmental conditions” like the presence of human feces in the dirt. “This is not the way that people are supposed to live for a long time without infrastructure,” he said.
As we have previously reported, the Field was created and sponsored by city authorities during the lead-up to the eviction of the Jungle in fall 2015. Hundreds of campers who had lived beneath the I-5 freeway were directed by authorities to move into a small field at the intersection of Airport Way and Royal Brougham. The lucky ones found spots beneath the freeway onramp wherefore that parcel of land exists.
Once the Jungle was empty and the Field was full, city authorities pivoted, suddenly expressing shock and dismay at Field’s conditions, despite attempts by Washington (one of the plaintiffs) and other Field campers to organize trash disposal, fire extinguishers, and other essentials. As we appraised at the time, “Campers get blamed for problems they lack the resources to solve.” On Tuesday, March 7, police and city bureaucrats evicted the Field. Reporters and volunteers were not allowed inside its perimeter.
Segal also showed several pictures of used hypodermic needles on the ground, arguing that because of their ubiquity, eviction crews that put themselves at risk of getting pricked when they try to differentiate between property and trash. The needles are “on the ground, in the tents, in the bedding—they’re everywhere.
“It’s not so simple as…we’ll store everything that’s quote ‘property,’” he said. The city is making a “good faith effort” to obey the constitution, Segal said. Assistant Attorney General Matt Huot added that what counts as property versus trash is highly subjective. “Different people will view ‘abandoned’ in different ways,” he said. “Judgement calls will have to be made.”
Huot asked the judge to dismiss the class action part of the lawsuit because each eviction is unique. “Cleanups are done not as part of some overarching scheme,” he said. “There’s a wide variety [of eviction circumstances] here that doesn’t lend itself to an overarching scheme.”
This contradicts statements by Mayor Murray and other officials, who have said that in addition to evacuating encampments in unsafe areas, the evictions serve the purpose of incentivizing homeless campers to accept shelter and services. This fits into the plan proposed by consultant Barbara Poppe to end Seattle homelessness within a few years by radically improving the efficiency of transitional shelter services.
After the hearing, Washington responded to the technical argument made by city attorneys that this lawsuit does not meet the qualifications for a class action. “The attorneys are talking about there’s no class,” he said. “Well, there is a class there. It’s the class of homelessness. We all represent each other, one way or the other, we’re homeless and looking at keeping our things.”
[email protected] 2012, the abortion pill — also known as medication abortion or medical abortion — made up nearly 21 percent of all abortion procedures in the US, and that number is only growing since the FDA relaxed guidelines on the procedure in 2016. The procedure is non-invasive, doesn’t require anesthesia, and can almost always be carried out from the comfort of your home. To shed some light on this safe and effective procedure, here are all the basics on medication abortions.
What it is
A medication abortion is not just one “abortion pill,” but a combination of two medications prescribed by a physician that work together to terminate a pregnancy and shed the uterine lining. The two medicines used are mifepristone and misoprostol. Mifepristone, which is taken first, works by blocking progesterone — a hormone necessary to sustain pregnancy — and causing the embryo to detach from the uterine wall. Misoprostol is taken within a day or two after taking the first pill, usually at home, and works by causing cramping that empties the uterus, kind of like a period.
According to stats from Planned Parenthood, a medication abortion is 98 percent effective up to eight weeks into a pregnancy. From 8-9 weeks, it’s about 96 percent effective, and then 93 percent effective from 9-10 weeks.
Who can use it
Medication abortion is a safe (and common) procedure for terminating first-trimester pregnancies. In 2016, the FDA extended the window of approval for medication abortions from seven weeks to 10 weeks, or about two months after the first day of your last period. After 10 weeks (or on day 71 after the first day of your last period), you can opt to have an in-clinic abortion. People under 18 are able to have medication abortions, though most states require some sort of parental consent (in some cases, you need consent from two parents).
How to get it
This part gets tricky because states keep changing their regulations surrounding medication abortion. For the most part, medication abortion is available nationwide at clinics like Planned Parenthood (you can search their site to see if your local clinic provides the procedure). Locally, your regular OB/GYN or local county health clinic may also be able to provide a medication abortion. To find a provider nearby, you can call the National Abortion Federation or check online at the Safe Place Project. Both of those resources allow you to search anonymously if you have privacy concerns.
Different states have different laws regulating when and how someone can actually get a medication abortion. A slight majority of states have mandatory waiting periods ranging anywhere from 24-72 hours between receiving abortion counseling and beginning any type of abortion procedure. In Texas — a state with some of the most restrictive laws surrounding abortion care — the law requires a mandatory, in-person consultation appointment with a physician at least 24 hours before taking the first pill. But that requirement doesn’t exist in states like Florida, Connecticut, and Delaware, all of which have fewer restrictions. Several states also require you to be in the physical presence of the doctor who prescribed the medication.
What to expect
Your physician will give you a pregnancy test and, in some states, perform a mandatory ultrasound to determine how far along you are. You’ll get written instructions from your physician on how to take the pills. Most people don’t experience any side effects after taking the first pill, mifepristone, but it’s not unusual to feel nauseous or start bleeding. Because its job is to cause the uterine lining to shed, misoprostol should cause a lot of bleeding and cramping within one to four hours of taking the first dose. Some people say this cramping feels “like normal period cramps” and don’t experience intense bleeding, but you may feel nauseous and experience intense cramping and heavy bleeding (think, soaking through a maxi pad).
It’s not abnormal to see large clumps of tissue or blood clots after taking the misoprostol (Planned Parenthood says these can be up to the size of a lemon). The bleeding should start to subside after a few hours, usually around four to five, but can take longer. Cramping will continue for a day or two and decrease in intensity with time. If you’re feeling pain or nausea, your doctor can prescribe an anti-nausea medication and you can take ibuprofen — just don’t take aspirin, which is a blood thinner and can cause more bleeding.
Bleeding and spotting might continue for two to three weeks after the abortion. Your doctor will have you come back in for a follow up, where you’ll get a blood test and possibly another ultrasound to make sure the abortion was complete and you’re healthy.
What the side effects are
Most people compare medication abortion to the feeling of an early miscarriage — so the primary physical effects are bleeding and cramping. But other side effects include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, fatigue, and a mild fever up to about 100 degrees. If you have a fever higher than that, or the day after you take the misoprostol, you should call your doctor immediately. The risk of infection with a medication abortion is very low but not totally impossible. You doctor can prescribe antibiotics if you have an infection.
How safe it is
An oft-cited Princeton study from 2012 found that less than 1 percent of people who got medication abortions at Planned Parenthood from 2009-2010 had a serious side effect or incomplete abortion. The most common adverse outcome is that the abortion is incomplete, and patients can then decide between taking more medication or having an in-clinic abortion.
Follow Hannah on TwitterWhat exactly is an Octree? If you're completely unfamiliar with them, I recommend reading the Wikipedia article (read time: ~5 minutes). This is a sufficient description of what it is but is barely enough to give any ideas on what it's used for and how to actually implement one. In this article, I will do my best to take you through the steps necessary to create an octree data structure through conceptual explanations, pictures, and code, and show you the considerations to be made at each step along the way. I don't expect this article to be the authoritative way to do octrees, but it should give you a really good start and act as a good reference.
Assumptions
Before we dive in, I'm going to be making a few assumptions about you as a reader:
You are very comfortable with programming in a C-syntax-style language (I will be using C# with XNA). You have programmed some sort of tree-like data structure in the past, such as a binary search tree and are familiar with recursion and its strengths and pitfalls. You know how to do collision detection with bounding rectangles, bounding spheres, and bounding frustums. You have a good grasp of common data structures (arrays, lists, etc) and understand Big-O notation (you can also learn about Big-O in this GDnet article). You have a development environment project which contains spatial objects which need collision tests.
Setting the stage
Let's suppose that we are building a very large game world which can contain thousands of physical objects of various types, shapes and sizes, some of which must collide with each other. Each frame we need to find out which objects are intersecting with each other and have some way to handle that intersection. How do we do it without killing performance?
Brute force collision detection
The simplest method is to just compare each object against every other object in the world. Typically, you can do this with two for loops. The code would look something like this:
foreach ( gameObject myObject in ObjList ) { foreach ( gameObject otherObject in ObjList ) { if ( myObject == otherObject ) continue ; //avoid self collision check if ( myObject. CollidesWith ( otherObject )) { //code to handle the collision } } }
Conceptually, this is what we're doing in our picture:
Each red line is an expensive CPU test for intersection. Naturally, you should feel horrified by this code because it is going to run in O(N^2) time. If you have 10,000 objects, then you're going to be doing 100,000,000 collision checks (hundred million). I don't care how fast your CPU is or how well you've tuned your math code, this code would reduce your computer to a sluggish crawl. If you're running your game at 60 frames per second, you're looking at 60 * 100 million calculations per second! It's nuts. It's insane. It's crazy. Let's not do this if we can avoid it, at least not with a large set of objects. This would only be acceptable if we're only checking, say, 10 items against each other (100 checks is palatable). If you know in advance that your game is only going to have a very small number of objects (i.e., Asteroids), you can probably get away with using this brute force method for collision detection and ignore octrees altogether. If/when you start noticing performance problems due to too many collision checks per frame, consider some simple targeted optimizations:
How much computation does your current collision routine take? Do you have a square root hidden away in there (ie, a distance check)? Are you doing a granular collision check (pixel vs pixel, triangle vs triangle, etc)? One common technique is to perform a rough, coarse check for collision before testing for a granular collision check. You can give your objects an enclosing bounding rectangle or bounding sphere and test for intersection with these before testing against a granular check which may involve a lot more math and computation time. Quote Use a "distance squared" check for comparing distance between objects to avoid using the square root method. Square root calculation typically uses the newtonian method of approximation and can be computationally expensive. Can you get away with calculating fewer collision checks? If your game runs at 60 frames per second, could you skip a few frames? If you know certain objects behave deterministically, can you "solve" for when they will collide ahead of time (ie, pool ball vs. side of pool table). Can you reduce the number of objects which need to be checked for collisions? A technique for this would be to separate objects into several lists. One list could be your "stationary" objects list. They never have to test for collision against each other. The other list could be your "moving" objects, which need to be tested against all other moving objects and against all stationary objects. This could reduce the number of necessary collision tests to reach an acceptable performance level. Can you get away with removing some object collision tests when performance becomes an issue? For example, a smoke particle could interact with a surface object and follow its contours to create a nice aesthetic effect, but it wouldn't break gameplay if you hit a predefined limit for collision checks and decided to stop ignoring smoke particles for collision. Ignoring essential game object movement would certainly break gameplay though (i.e., player bullets stop intersecting with monsters). So, perhaps maintaining a priority list of collision checks to compute would help. First, you handle the high priority collision tests, and if you're not at your threshold, you can handle lower priority collision tests. When the threshold is reached, you dump the rest of the items in the priority list or defer them for testing at a later time. Can you use a faster but still simplistic method for collision detection to get away from an O(N^2) runtime? If you eliminate the objects you've already checked for collisions against, you can reduce the runtime to O(N(N+1)/2), which is much faster and still easy to implement. (technically, it's still O(N^2)) In terms of software engineering, you may end up spending more time than it's worth fine-tuning a bad algorithm & data structure choice to squeeze out a few more ounces of performance. The cost vs. benefit ratio becomes increasingly unfavourable and it becomes time to choose a better data structure to handle collision detection. Spatial partitioning algorithms are the proverbial nuke to solving the runtime problem for collision detection. At a small upfront cost to performance, they'll reduce your collision detection tests to logarithmic runtime. The upfront costs of development time and CPU overhead are easily outweighed by the scalability benefits and performance gains.
Conceptual background on spatial partitioning
Let's take a step back and look at spatial partitioning and trees in general before diving into Octrees. If we don't understand the conceptual idea, we have no hope of implementing it |
outwit our successors. So unless we are absolutely sure that the machines we are building right now are not going to eventually become our new robot overlords, prudence is called for."
Alan Mackworth, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence at the University of British Columbia, thinks Hawking and Musk are being "a bit overdramatic," but are right to sound the alarm and spur public discussion.
He says AI is just coming out of science fiction and into the real world, in the form of technologies such as Google's self-driving cars, IBM's Jeopardy-winning robot Watson, and the increasing number of computers successfully posing as humans in the Turing test (which examines a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour that can't be distinguished from that of a human, such as having a random conversation with a person).
Mackworth invented the first soccer-playing robots. He is now developing AI technology for motorized wheelchairs to help people with dementia get around. He says machines are still far from being able to take off on their own: "If you look at what you can currently do in robot and computer learning, it's classifying Youtube videos to see which one has a cat in it and which one doesn't have a cat in it."
Military at forefront of AI development
But he is worried about the current use of AI to develop military technology, such as autonomous weapons and semi-autonomous drones.
"This technology is very, very powerful, and we have to build safeguards into it," he said.
Mackworth suggests that regulation of artificial intelligence may require international treaties and codes of ethics for robot designers, similar to those engineers must abide by.
Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer envisions newly conscious, superintelligent machines cooperating with humans in his Wake, Watch and Wonder trilogy. (Jim Ross/Canadian Press)
Enforcement, however, may not be that easy. It requires technology to verify what a robot can and cannot do, when compared to its specifications – something that is under development but doesn't yet exist.
Sawyer thinks that in order to keep humans safe from the potential threats posed by AI, the technology's development needs to be out in the open in places like publicly funded universities, rather than inside military agencies.
"There should be nothing classified about this research," he said. "By the point when you sit down in front of your computer and your computer says, 'Good morning, I'm in charge now,' it's too late."
While that moment may be decades or even centuries away, Sandra Zilles, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Computational Learning Theory at the University of Regina, says machines are already able to learn some things much faster than humans, and can reprogram themselves to perform certain tasks more efficiently.
She notes that besides the military, big tech companies like Google and Apple are also at the forefront of AI research, and that too has implications.
"They can steer the development of technology in a direction that is most useful to them," she said, "but maybe not the most useful to mankind."
Collaborative machines?
Despite the dark future envisioned by science fiction, both Mackworth and Sawyer see brighter possibilities.
Mackworth says he's not really worried about machines turning on us, because humans typically design machines to be tools and extensions of our own minds and brains.
Tesla Motors Inc. CEO Elon Musk tweeted this summer that AI was 'potentially more dangerous than nukes.' (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
"We should make sure that these machines are built to collaborate with us and not be totally autonomous."
Sawyer envisions newly conscious, superintelligent machines cooperating with humans in his fictional Wake, Watch and Wonder trilogy. He argues that machines are developing in an environment that is very different than the scarcity and natural selection that led to the evolution of humans.
"All the things that made us basically nasty, rapacious, competitive as a species are not necessarily hard-coded into whatever passes for the DNA of artificial intelligence," Sawyer says. "There's every reason to think that they would be fundamentally different psychologically from us, and that psychology may very much predispose them to being altruistic rather than being competitive and violent the way we are."
That said, he's not ready to put all his money on his own vision.
"I don't want to say, 'Don't worry,' because one of us is right – me or Stephen Hawking. Even I – even I would probably bet on Hawking."Damage soaking was removed after an update.
The contents of this page no longer exist in RuneScape, and this article is kept for historical purposes.
Damage soaking was an update to the Defence skill as documented in the December 2010 Behind the Scenes update. Damage soaking was added to the majority of head, body, leg and shield slot equipment. No other equipment slots were affected. Armour would soak any damage above 200 life points by a certain percentage. The first 200 life points of damage would not be soaked at all, regardless of the total amount hit.
This update was designed to rectify an imbalance between the potential damage per minute (DPM) and damage capacity (DC) of higher-level players. The rate of damage dealt at high combat levels was far superior to the rate of damage that could be withstood with certain armours and prayers, especially when in a multiplayer environment. Previously, NPCs and monsters dealt with this by having life points totalling way beyond 990. The update helped reduce all damage over 200 life points as higher level equipment would provide higher damage soaking levels.
It should be noted that no Dungeoneering equipment had damage soaking.
“ We have recognised an imbalance between the potential damage per minute (DPM) and damage capacity (DC) of higher-level players. The rate of damage that you can deal at high levels is far greater than the rate of damage you can withstand, especially when in a multiplayer environment. NPCs and boss monsters can deal with this issue because their life points can reach far beyond 990, but players' life points cannot. Dealing with this imbalance will be done in several ways, with the first of those ways being introduced this month in the form of damage soaking. In what will be a huge addition to the Defence skill and defensive equipment, we're aiming to add damage soaking stats (currently only applied to the chaotic, eagle-eye and farseer kiteshields) to the majority of head, body, leg and shield slot equipment. Damage soaking will help reduce all incoming damage values over 200 life points, with higher grades of equipment offering a greater percentage of'soak', and with members' equipment offering the greatest percentage of all. ” — Mod Mark [1]
Damage soaking did not apply to all damage dealt, but the damage which was in excess of 200 life points. The soaking percentage was applied to the excess damage, and did not occur if the hit was under 200. A common misconception was that a hit of 200 would activate the damage soaking for a flat soaking rate, or that the soaking effect was random and did not always occur on hits above 200.
Therefore, to find the actual damage received, simply subtract the damage soaked from the total damage received.
This formula meant that smaller hits from faster weapons would be reduced by smaller amounts, and that multi-hitting weapons (such as Dragon claws) were able to avoid much of the soaking, as the individual hits were rarely above 200.
The basic concept was that should a large amount of damage be dealt in a single hit, the armour would absorb some of that damage.
Soaking calculator
template = :Damage soaking/Calc form = damageCalcForm result = damageCalcResult param = damage|Starting damage|0|int| param = percentage|% absorbed|0|int|
This text will disappear if the form is loaded properly. This text will disappear if the form is submitted.British Columbia is taking a step in the right direction, with the introduction of a private member’s bill meant to outlaw employers from forcing gender-based dress code restrictions—particularly ones relating to female workers and high heels.
Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Green Party, and the politician who drafted the bill, doesn’t think it’s reasonable that businesses can force women to do their jobs in high heels. I agree.
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To start with, I have a problem with any sort of law mandating any sort of non-essential attire for anyone. Anything short of peremptory, respectable business-casual in office settings or necessities like steel-toed boots and helmets at a work site, really has no practical application.
Another problem is that the disputed rule seems to disproportionately affect women, in particular. I can think of no equivalent requirement that creates as much discomfort and potential for injury for men, as mandated high heels for women.
A lot of people criticizing the Green Party’s move to try and respond to such an unfair stipulation in the law are suggesting such action would be redolent of the archetypal “nanny state,” didactically and overbearingly picking into the affairs of businesses and engaging in unnecessary interference.
Is this bill a harbinger of an overbearing government undermining the business community? Puh-lease.
I’m a pretty regular patron of an assortment of restaurants, bars, pubs taverns and other places in which waiters and waitresses serve in their capacity as purveyors of good things to eat and drink. I have no issue with what the latter of those two types of people wear when they are bringing me my food and drink, and always finding that crucial moment when my mouth is full to ask me: “How’s the meal?”
I also know many women from back east with whom I grew up, who work and have worked, in places where the absurd stipulation of mandatory high-heeled shoes was and is in place. What do they take away from work, every day? Sore feet.
I mean, it makes sense. Vancouver podiatrist Faiyaz Dedhar has gone on the record to say that high heels are the locus and provenance of an assortment of chronic feet conditions, including Achilles tendon problems, blisters, corns and calluses. Kind of says how good an idea it is to give people a choice in whether or not they wear them to work.
I can’t say I’m familiar with what it’s like to wear a pair of heels, but – bear with me, I’m reaching, here — I can’t imagine balancing on those things makes your job any easier.
I worked, as a teenager and while in university, at places where I was expected to be on my feet for long hours. I had the luxury of insoles and comfortable shoes. Even then, my feet and ankles would ache, and being about 30 to 40 pounds lighter than I am now, I wasn’t carrying around a whole lot of weight on my feet, either.
Outlawing mandated high heels is probably in the best interests of practicality. All considerations of sexism aside, getting rid of women needing to wear those impractical shoes makes them able to do their job more efficiently, and what reasonable business would be opposed to that?
Why are policies like that in place anyway? Are high-heeled shoes really necessitous in putting forward an image of “fanciness” or being “dressed up?” Are such policies simply remnants of a latent sexism laced into the codified rules of conduct, primarily in the service industry? Have these policies just been blithely accepted and unquestioned in the past, and are only coming into the light of official scrutiny and criticism?
I think the answer lies somewhere in between all those possibilities.
An interesting particular to the scenario unfolding in B.C. regarding the rules with footwear for women at work is that there are several other provincial parties, and business associations that are onboard with Weaver’s bill.
It’s a good way to make people’s lives easier at work, and weed out the rotten apples, when you take a look at who decries and opposes the proposed bill. All kinds of good things can stem from it.Bibendum, a.k.a. the Michelin Man
Bibendum, a tubby white cartoon man made of tires, made his annual voyage to America last week and awarded stars to 57 restaurants in New York City. Bibendum is not, from the look of him, someone you would trust as the dread magistrate of gastronomy. But he is the mascot for Michelin, the company that essentially invented the concept of rating restaurants, and has always been the most important standard in the restaurant world. Whether it remains so and whether it should is open to question. (See pictures of how culinary culture became a pop phenomenon.)
There's no doubt, though, that in terms of power and influence, nothing has ever come near the Michelin guide. The guide, which was first published in 1900 and given away in the early days of motoring to promote auto travel, told French travelers where to eat by way of star rankings indicating quality. One star was good if you were nearby, two deserved a little detour and three was "worth a special journey." The stars were meant indicate food, rather than decor or service, but it became clear that only the biggest and most polished restaurants could ever aspire to multiple stars. The guide, whose multiple editions cover more than 45,000 restaurants in 23 countries, currently awards three stars to just 86 of them. And given France's cultural investment in gastronomy, such a high rating has become a defining honor like a Pulitzer Prize for writers or a championship in sports. It puts you in a special place, where many are called and few chosen. It is also ruinously difficult to pull off, and not a few chefs have gone crazy trying. One, Bernard Loiseau, killed himself reportedly because of a rumor that he was going to lose one of his stars. (He was depressed anyway. But still.)
Michelin spawned Zagat, Mobil, Yelp and every other restaurant-rating system you can think of, including that of your local newspaper and city magazine, but Michelin has always maintained its mystique. For one thing, its inspectors are anonymous and incorruptible; not a hint of scandal has ever been thrown on them. Michelin does not accept any advertising, and its funding by an entity completely outside the food world helps to guarantee its presumed objectivity.
Michelin is far from transparent, however, about what it (meaning its inspectors) considers to be great food. What separates a two-star restaurant from a three-star one? I spent some time with Jean-Luc Naret, the head of the Michelin guide, hoping to get some clarification on what makes a plate of chicken worth a special trip, rather than just a detour. On this point, he was only partially helpful: it has to be "an incredible experience" and absolutely consistent, both for lunch and dinner. But, of course, that just begs the question of what an incredible experience is. We don't know the inspectors; maybe they are blown away by blanquette de veau or soba noodles something that I might not even especially enjoy. (See pictures of what makes you eat more food.)
Certainly, you would never be able to tell from the actual book. The U.S. guides (New York City just got its sixth edition, San Francisco will get its fifth later this month and Chicago will get its first guide in November) may be the product of exhaustive connoisseurship on the part of the inspectors, who analyze the food for the quality of ingredients, composition, originality, the personality of the chef and so on, but the write-ups in the book itself are incredibly banal and uncritical. They sound like something from an in-flight magazine. Brooklyn's unstarred Chestnut: "Chestnut's farm-reared chef spends time sourcing the best ingredients and then lets them shine in a menu reminding diners that the best supermarket is nature itself. The simple décor has just the right amount of personality..." Of Le Bernardin, one of only five restaurants in New York City to get three stars, we are told "[Chef Eric] Ripert is a master of seafood, and his understanding of fish combined with his French technique makes for an unforgettable meal." All righty then! The formula is always the same: a snappy intro, a quick description of the room and service, and then a few lines about food invariably follow, with a cascade of food-copywriting clichés like "perfectly cooked," "wonderfully crispy," "succulent," "a gorgeous tangle of fresh spaghetti," etc., etc. It's not that Michelin is wrong Le Bernardin is one of the best restaurants in the world by any measure but you wouldn't know why from this entry.
Multiply this white noise by page after page, and you have no sense of exacting standards, a century of tradition or global authority. It's just another crappily written restaurant guide, not even as discerning as the insert from the Dallas Morning News. The star ratings only refer to each other rather than you making decisions about how far to drive. That leaves the brand, and with Michelin, the brand is all-powerful for now. Naret is an eloquent and persuasive spokesman for the company, and his efforts to modernize and expand it have paid off greatly: the Tokyo edition sold out in a day. But it's hard to imagine that any serious eater would use it in his hometown rather than the long, detailed review of the local critic, who actually says why he likes the place. Or the combined reviews on Yelp, which might be the single best review guide of all, given the ability of each educated consumer to write at length about what he likes and doesn't like. (Read "What Will the World's Best Restaurant Become Next?")
It's not that I don't agree with the Michelin ratings; they're O.K. But I don't understand them, and that's not O.K. I don't know a single eater in New York City who thinks that Corton (two stars) is a much better restaurant than Eleven Madison Park (one star). (Most people, including the critics at the Times, think the opposite.) Both do the same sort of tweezer food; it's merely a question of taste and emphasis. But you certainly can't discern much from their Michelin entries. One has "breathtaking" food and the other "irresistible" food. One has a "perfectly poached" lobster tail, while the other has a "soft, butter-poached" lobster. That's not good enough. Likewise, why does Del Posto (one star), with its "heavenly" pork loin and "perfectly al dente tangle of spaghetti" not rise to the same level as its uptown rival, Alto (two stars)? These questions are on Michelin to answer and it doesn't.
Still, I'll be the first to admit that Michelin serves a unique and desperately needed role in providing a universal, exacting standard for restaurants worldwide. Critics can never be completely objective, but they can be fair, and Michelin probably treats everybody about the same (although I would guess it is extra exacting with the lions of French cooking, like Joël Robuchon or Alain Passard. One might ask how Michelin can extend its authority to other countries at a time when even its own institution is losing its sway to blogs.
Naret has a response to that one: everyone needs knowledgeable advice, he says, since nobody knows everything, and so they would do better to lean on Michelin than otherwise. "This is our job, this is what we're doing around the world," he says. "The chefs and the industry see us as the only international benchmark." It's true, and it is Michelin's proudest boast. The foodies in any given city are sure to wildly overrate their local restaurants, and to ask a Texan to judge a quenelle is as silly as hoping to find a barbecue expert in the sixth arrondissement. But the inspectors, whoever they are, surely have their biases too, and as long as we don't know what they're really saying behind the scenes, Michelin will only be able to ride the residue of its famous stars so far. At some point, Mr. Bibendum needs to show what he really thinks, and why. Because going by the write-ups in his U.S. guides, at least, his tires are starting to lose their tread.
Josh Ozersky is a James Beard Awardwinning food writer and the author of The Hamburger: A History. His food video site, Ozersky.TV, is updated daily. He is currently at work on a biography of Colonel Sanders. Taste of America, Ozersky's food column for TIME.com, appears every Wednesday.
See the top 10 food trends of 2008.EA: Withholding The Next Great Videogame Franchise For The Next Console Is Good Business
from the so-you-get-GTA42-instead,-jerks dept
"The time to launch an IP is at the front-end of the hardware cycle, and if you look historically the majority of new IPS are introduced within the first 24 months of each cycle of hardware platforms," Gibeau says. "Right now, we're working on 3 to 5 new IPs for the next gen, and in this cycle we've been directing our innovation into existing franchises.
"As much as there's a desire for new IP, the market doesn't reward new IP this late in the cycle; they end up doing okay, but not really breaking through."
Console generartion jump between the NES to Sega Genesis: 4 years Console generation jump between the Genesis/SNES to Playstation/N64: 5 years Console generation jump between the Playstation to PS2/Xbox: 5 years Console generation jump between the PS2/XBOX to PS3/XBox 360: 4 years for Xbox, 5 years for Playstation
I'll admit that video game producer Electronic Arts confuses me quite often. Any company their size is going to suffer from some internal conflicting opinions, but as an organization EA sometimes comes off as suffering from multiple personality disorder. One personality says that sales pricing on games is horrific, while the other embraces free games. They've shown that they can use trademark law well, but then manage to swallow a crazy pill when it comes to recognizing how an endless stream of sequels hurts their business. That last link is from 2007, when the boss of EA at the time admitted that pumping out sequels instead of original titles was having a negative effect on the bottom line. It seems that in five short years, the new brass at EA forgot that admission.Speaking with Games Industry, current President of EA's labels, Frank Gibeau, discusses the chaos of the marketplace and the golden era of gaming he believes is going to come out of it. I'll admit, there's some very encouraging stuff in the piece, between once again acknowledging the emerging success of new business models, free to play games, and the power of the internet to massively expand the marketplace for gaming as a whole. That's all good thinking. But then we get to where he discusses EA's intellectual property strategy.In case you don't want to parse through the exec speak, let me break this down for you. EA is actively working on new, original franchises, but they won't release them until the next generation of consoles comes out. This is under the notion that new franchises released in the middle or late stages of a console's life are doomed to failure or mediocrity. There are examples of why that outlook shouldn't be taken as gospel: Pokemon (released 7 years into the original Game Boy's life), Grand Theft Auto (released roughly 4 years into the original Playstation's life cycle), Gran Turismo (released roughly 3 years into the original Plastation's life cycle), or Guitar Hero (released roughly 5 years into the PS2's life cycle). All of those titles, by the way, are among the best selling franchises of all time. The point is that if you match the desire for new titles that Gibeau acknowledges with great game franchises, you build huge sales.But even if Gibeau's supposition was true, there is a problem: the console life cycle this go around is longer than previous generations. While rumors about the next generation of gaming consoles surfaced way back in 2010, everyone's best guess for the soonest release is sometime in 2013 (and by "sometime", they mean Christmas at best). The XBOX 360 and PS3 came out in 2005 and 2006 respectively, which puts us somewhere in the neighborhood of a seven or eight year gap between console releases, depending on who gets to market first. Wii consoles are in roughly the same boat.For the sake of comparison, here are some other timelines for console generations
The point is that the strategy is going to have to change with what is looking like something between 1.5 and 2 times the life cycle of the console. Customers simply aren't going to buy sequels for longer periods of time and if EA doesn't want to fill their need for new titles, someone else will. And, despite his earlier words, even Gibeau hints that he recognizes this.
"This is the longest cycle that any of us have ever seen, and we're at the point where a little bit of fatigue has set in, and people are wondering what they can possibly do next. I've seen the machines that we're building games for, and they're spectacular."
"Gen 4 hardware is a huge opportunity, and it's going to lead to a huge growth spurt for the industry."
But then he goes right back to discussing how balls-droppingly great the next generation of hardware is going to be and how that's where they'll focus.Once again, it seems like they have multiple personality disorder. In the meantime, perhaps actually developing new material for the consoles your fans will have to deal with for the next couple of years yet might do wonders to turn around that sliding stock price
Filed Under: consoles, video games
Companies: eaPhoneDog vs Noah Kravitz over Twitter
An ex-employee of mobile specialist PhoneDog in the US is being sued over his Twitter account. Noah Kravitz worked as a reviewer and blogger for PhoneDog for four years, during which time his @phonedog_noah Twitter account achieved 17,000 followers.
When he left the company earlier this year, he changed the name of his account to @noahkravitz and carried on tweeting as normal, but PhoneDog has filed a suit against him, saying the Twitter account and its 17,000 followers belong to them.
I’ve previously written about a similar Twitter ownership dispute in the UK.
PhoneDog says Kravitz was allowed to use the account while he worked for them and that the followers were following the company. Kravitz counters that he set up the account himself using his personal email and was personally responsible for it. In a post that appeared briefly on Facebook before the post disappeared, a former colleague of Kravitz at PhoneDog said the president had previously acknowledged that Twitter accounts of staff were personal.
Kravitz refused to hand over the account when asked by his former company, so they have sued him for $340,000 (valuing each follower at $2.50 per month over the time since he left the company). If a court decides in the company’s favour, an important precedent will be set that will affect millions of users of not only Twitter but also Facebook, Google Plus and other social networks.For a guy with such an extensive injury history, Scott Kazmir’s last few years in the league have gone about as well as anyone could have hoped. He tossed 183 innings and had a 3.10 ERA pitching for the Astros and A’s in 2015, and managed 136 innings in 26 starts for the Dodgers last year. He went into spring training with a shot at the fourth or fifth spot in the 2017 rotation, but so far the news is pretty grim.
Kazmir threw 71 pitches in a simulated game yesterday, and his velocity sat in the 82-84 mph range. That’s an alarming development, given that his average fastball velocity in 2016 was 92 mph.
After the session, Kazmir said that he felt like he was getting over the hip issues that bothered him last season, but couldn’t really provide an explanation for the lack of zip behind his pitches. From ESPN:
“I feel close, really close,” Kazmir told reporters. “I was able to keep my tempo, keep my balance and use this hip to get through. It’s a lot of things that we have to focus on. It’s just a matter of putting that all together. “I don’t even want to know [about the velocity]. I know it’s not there yet.”
Maybe this is just a blip, and Kazmir’s velocity will return as the spring progresses. But given how fragile his body has proved to be in the past, it’s hard to feel bullish about his chances to earn a rotation spot. A nightmare scenario would be similar to the one Jered Weaver found himself in last season, when he was healthy enough to make 31 starts despite his velocity abandoning him, and ended up getting bashed for 37 homers.
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Whatever happens to Kazmir, the Dodgers will probably be fine. Clayton Kershaw, Rich Hill, and Kenta Maeda will keep things steady, and between Brandon McCarthy, Julio Urias, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Ross Stripling, and Alex Wood, they have plenty of options with which to fill out the last two rotation spots.Alan Johnson is introducing the new powers next week Local councils are to get the power to seize the assets of minor offenders under government moves next week. The Proceeds of Crime Act - brought in to target organised criminals could be used against housing benefit fraudsters and other less serious offenders. The Police Federation has expressed concern that "intrusive powers" are to be given to people who are not police. But the Home Office said seizing "ill-gotten gains" was a key part of the fight against all kinds of crime. The move, which is being pushed through next week by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, is set out in a Statutory Instrument, which means it will not be debated by MPs. Paul McKeever, of the Police Federation, told The Times: "The Proceeds of Crime Act is a very powerful tool in the hands of the police and police-related agencies and it shouldn't be treated lightly." Search warrants He added that there was a "behind-the-scenes creep of powers occurring" and the the public would "would want such very intrusive powers to be kept in the hands of warranted officers and other law enforcement bodies which are vetted to a very high standard rather than given to local councils". Seizing ill-gotten gains is a key part of the fight against criminals whether it is from small-time offences or organised crime
Home Office Under the move Accredited Financial Investigators, which include customs officers, Department of Work and Pensions investigators, trading standards and other local authority workers, are to be given the power to seize assets worth more than £1,000 ahead of a court ruling on their origin and to execute search warrants. At the moment, these powers are executed on the investigators' behalf by police officers. The Home Office said the powers will be used against people who have benefited significantly from criminal behaviour and that investigators using them are subject to a code of conduct. A spokeswoman said the powers would not be used against people in arrears on their council tax or parking fines, as has been reported. She said: "We are determined to ensure criminals do not profit by breaking the law. Seizing ill-gotten gains is a key part of the fight against criminals whether it is from small-time offences or organised crime. "Accredited Financial Investigators have played an integral role in the recovery of criminal assets since the Proceeds of Crime Act was introduced in 2003, they are fully trained and their powers carefully controlled in law. By giving them some new powers we are extending the fight against crime and freeing up valuable police time." But the Conservatives attacked the move - saying it could be abused by local authorities. Shadow communities secretary Caroline Spelman said: "We have already seen how surveillance laws designed to tackle terror and serious crime have been routinely abused and over-used by town hall officials. "I fear these new powers to inspect financial records and seize assets will also end up being misused and will divert resources to minor breaches like being late in paying a parking fine." 'Deeply disappointing' When the Proceeds of Crime Act was introduced it was meant to be used to deprive major organised criminals of their lavish lifestyles. The then home secretary David Blunkett said it would target "the homes, yachts, mansions and luxury cars of the crime barons". But Mr Blunkett said earlier this year that the law had been "deeply disappointing" after a BBC Panorama documentary revealed how major drug dealers and money launderers were making a mockery of it. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Panorama found that in the last three years the Scottish unit responsible for criminal confiscation has frozen £60m of assets - but has only succeeded in taking back £6m of that total. In the UK as a whole, £137m was recovered last year. The act has increasingly been used by police to seize the assets of minor offenders.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version[intro-text size=”25px”]Twice a month, Cleveland Cinemas plays host to the Late Shift Series, a collection of classic and beloved films that have achieved cult status among fanatic cinephiles. Teaming up with Melt Bar & Grilled, the Cedar Lee and Capitol theaters bring us the chance to watch our favorite flicks up on the big screen in all of their intended glory.[/intro-text]
This weekend, the cosmos get a whole lot sexier.
Saturday June 6th at 9:30PM and midnight, the Cedar Lee theater is beaming down the 1968 French/Itlaian sci-fi classic Barbarella. Starring the stunning Jane Fonda as the titular adventuress and directed by her then husband Roger Vadim, Barbarella tells the story of a gorgeous outer space Earth agent, thousands of years in the future, sent by the President to retrieve mad scientist Durand-Durand (yep, like the band), who has created the positronic ray- a weapon of mass destruction. Of course there are some hiccups along the way, and Barbarella encounters a series of oddball characters and treacherous obstacles on her mission to prevent all-out interplanetary war.
But let’s not forget that this movie was made in the sixties. It’s borderline insane, but often an enjoyable acid trip through the sexual revolution- in space. Barbarella is literally flying in a pink spacecraft, lined with brown shag interior. Her many outfits are just as wild, racy, and impractical, but I’m not complaining; the film is a psychedelic window into an era before my time. The sets and special effects are pretty cheesy and dated, but nearly fifty years after the films release, it’s still an absolute blast to watch, and you can clearly see the influences that Barbarella had on modern cinema.
There’s something playfully misogynistic about Barbarella. Aside from the skimpy costumes she wears, Barbarella is repeatedly sexually objectified throughout the film, and it appears that she loves every second of it. After the amazing zero-g strip tease credits sequence, Barbarella is saved by a burly fur trapper who wants to be repaid by making love to her, although on the Earth she’s from, sex is the combination of taking a pill and pressing your palm against that of another person. But nevertheless, they do it the old fashioned way, and this happens at least two more times throughout the movie with other guys she bumps into. Even the big bad guy in the end straps her into a machine intended to orgasm her to death. It’s nothing too graphic, but probably wouldn’t pass for its PG rating nowadays.
But the sixties were different times, and despite all of the raunchy side plots throughout the movie, Barbarella is still a heroine worth rooting for. Fonda is not only beautiful but sweet and assertive, and in the end she saves the day- in the sexiest way possible. So if you’re in the mood for some late night retro sci-fi sex-ploits, hit up the Cedar Lee Saturday.While previous reports have indicated that the FBI has sought to employ drone technology for years, newly unveiled documents from inside the agency show the extent to which the bureau believes it has the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance.
Growing skepticism over the US foreign drone program and how it may be used in connection with domestic security inspired Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) to file suit against the FBI. CREW, using a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, defeated the FBI in court and compelled law enforcement to turn over a database of documents on the growing drone program.
Among that stockpile released earlier this month was an extensive deck of slides titled “Legal Challenges to the Use of UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems).” The slides provide a glimpse into the FBI’s future drone plans, which the bureau clearly hopes will not be impacted by legal restrictions, and will provide instructions for agents who hope to use drones in the field now.
A Justice Department inspector general report published in September indicated that the FBI has been quietly spending millions of dollars to operate a small fleet of unmanned aerial devices in recent years. Then-FBI director Robert Mueller said in June that the bureau was in the “initial stages” of writing privacy policies for its still-developing surveillance policy. However, it was later revealed that the FBI has been using drones in a limited capacity since 2006 - years before experts had previously speculated.
The presentation that surfaced this month opens with a reminder that the FBI operates with “rigorous obedience to the Constitution,” especially the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure. Privacy advocates have argued that flying cameras through the air and sweeping up intelligence on unwitting subjects accused of no wrongdoing does constitute an unreasonable search.
The slides also mention the exclusionary rule, a legal principle that renders evidence collected in an unconstitutional manner inadmissible in a court of law.
“FBI counsel seemingly considers this requirement quaint and burdensome,” wrote Vice contributor Shawn Musgrave. “One slide notes an Australian High Court judge’s warning that the American high evidence standard puts it in danger ‘of becoming something of a legal backwater.’ It’s not a great start to a defense of drones’ ‘rigorous’ constitutionality.”
The February 2012 presentation also reminds agents to consider when they are required to obtain a warrant, such as when using a “thermal imager looking through walls” or a “GPS tracker installed on subject’s vehicle.” But perhaps more importantly were the cases which do not require a warrant at all, including surveillance conducted with a “helicopter, airplane (naked eye), or airplane (camera).”As Twitchy reported, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow announced not long ago that she had “Trump tax returns,” which sent just about the whole of social media into a frenzy as members of the resistance tried to work out with paper and crayon just how steps lay between Tuesday night’s broadcast and Hillary Clinton’s inauguration.
Maddow now has her own countdown clock pic.twitter.com/0nFcLKi9Gp — Joshua Hoyos |
I can’t answer these mysteries; just cherish it all.’ And in turn the Heron asks, with shocking clarity as it flies from right to left and left to right: ‘Why can’t our job here on earth be simply to inspire each other?’”
His death was immediately marked by his fellow authors. Stephen King called him “a truly great novelist”, adding: “Too soon. Far too soon.” Fellow fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay said: “Graham Joyce, a genuinely distinguished author and person has died, far too soon”, and the novelist Joanne Harris tweeted: “What a sad, sad loss. Such a talent, such a nice guy, and with a twinkle to the last … ”
“I was so lucky to be able to count Graham as a friend and utterly proud to have been able to be his publisher. I’m devastated to have lost a friend, devastated that I’ve now edited his last novel,” said Simon Spanton at Gollancz. “As a novelist he bore many of the characteristics that made him such a lovely man: a warm, endless affection for people; an understanding of their troubles; a fierce belief in social justice; a fascination with and acceptance of the numinous and a rich appreciation of the magic and the wonder we can find in the ordinary.
“Little consolation right now to his friends and family as they deal with his loss, but thank goodness he was a writer; his wonderful novels mean that we can continue to share his profound qualities, his generous outlook and pass them on to others.”
A quote from Joyce’s writing, “She said that eventually all the pain falls away, and what’s left behind is only beauty”, was shared many times on Twitter, Gollancz adding: “Thank you for what you left behind Graham Joyce.”(File)
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli authorities on Friday released two Palestinian fishermen from the Gaza Strip after three years of detention.
Head of the Gazan fishermen union Zakariya Bakr told Ma’an that Israeli authorities released fishermen Imad al-Din Mansour and Rami Jumaa via the Erez crossing.
Mansour and Jumaa were detained by Israeli forces while working off the coast of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip three years ago.
The practice has in effect destroyed much of the agricultural and fishing sector of the blockaded coastal enclave. The practice has in effect destroyed much of the agricultural and fishing sector of the blockaded coastal enclave.
Gazan fishermen, whose numbers are estimated to be around 4,000, have suffered from the near decade-long siege of the Gaza Strip, which limits their incursions to just six nautical miles into the sea in accordance with the ceasefire agreement signed with Palestinian factions in 2014. Gazan fishermen, whose numbers are estimated to be around 4,000, have suffered from the near decade-long siege of the Gaza Strip, which limits their incursions to just six nautical miles into the sea in accordance with the ceasefire agreement signed with Palestinian factions in 2014.
The Israeli army regularly detains and opens fire on unarmed Palestinian fishermen, shepherds, and farmers along the border areas if they approach Israel’s unilaterally declared “buffer zone,” which lies on both the land and sea sides of Gaza.Home secretary backed by 165 MPs and Leadsom comes second as Liam Fox is knocked out and Stephen Crabb withdraws
Theresa May has swept to victory in the first round of voting in the Conservative leadership race, winning the support of 165 of her party’s MPs, placing her far ahead of her closest rival, Andrea Leadsom.
Brexit live: Theresa May wins first round of Tory party leadership election Read more
The result means the home secretary is almost certain to be among the final two candidates selected by Tory politicians to be put forward for a vote by the grassroots of the party.
Leadsom secured the backing of 66 MPs, including many Eurosceptic figures who want to see someone who campaigned to leave the EU in charge of negotiating Britain’s exit.
She was followed by Michael Gove, with 48 votes, and Stephen Crabb, with 34. The fifth-placed candidate, who has been knocked out of the race, was the former defence secretary Liam Fox, on 16 votes. Crabb withdrew from the race about 90 minutes after the results were announced, saying he would support May and that she was “the only person who can unite our party and form a strong government at this serious moment”.
May said she was pleased by the result and very grateful to her colleagues, adding: “There is a big job before us: to unite our party and the country, to negotiate the best possible deal as we leave the EU, and to make Britain work for everyone.”
The result is a major blow for Gove, the justice secretary, who wrecked Boris Johnson’s campaign for leadership by abandoning him at the last moment in order to run himself.
The former London mayor endorsed Leadsom on Monday night in a move that is likely to have attracted a number of other leave campaigners to her campaign.
David Burrowes, who is supporting Leadsom, said: “We look like we are heading for an all-women shortlist. That is exciting, uplifting and energising for members.”
The energy secretary, Amber Rudd, who is backing May, said her candidate had secured half of all MPs. “It shows she’s the one who can unite the party. The other candidates got particular sectors but she’s got remain and leave, north and south. I think someone with such a broad reach of support will be right for the country.”
Some Johnson supporters were furious with Gove, with the MP Ben Wallace attacking him as having an “emotional need to gossip”, particularly after a drink, while Jake Berry tweeted that there was “a very deep pit reserved in hell” for people like him.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The five candidates in the first round of voting (L to R): Fox, May, Crabb, Leadsom and Gove. Photograph: PA
Asked on Sky News why he was not backing Gove, Johnson smiled and said: “Because Andrea Leadsom, I think, has all the qualities that you need at the moment. She’s got a lot of zap, a lot of drive, and all the experience.
“Plus I think she can articulate what’s needed at the moment, which is a bit of an antidote to some of the gloom and negativity and misunderstanding about what the Brexit vote means. Because some people think that it’s the end of the world. It’s not. On the contrary, it’s a massive opportunity for this country.”
Johnson voted along with hundreds of Tory MPs in a special room set up on parliament’s committee corridor, outside which supporters of each candidate stood with leaflets, stickers and badges. Sources said that 80% of the party had already cast their vote by halfway through the day.
Many joked about Ken Clarke, the former Conservative chancellor, being caught on camera as he criticised each of the leadership candidates, describing May as a “bloody difficult woman”.
Asked if David Cameron shared that view, the prime minister’s spokeswoman replied that he did not. “He has found she has done a very good job as home secretary and they have worked very closely together on a whole range of issues,” she said.
Asked if this amounted to an endorsement, the spokeswoman added: “I think it reflects the working relationship between prime minister and home secretary. It’s not that different to how he works with other cabinet ministers.”
The vote followed two sets of hustings in parliament on Monday night after which many Conservative MPs discussed the candidates in House of Commons bars.
All five candidates faced a packed room at 5.30pm organised by the backbench 1922 Committee, in which they took turns to speak and field questions for 20 minutes each. They then took part in half-hour sessions with the party’s 2020 group, which has members from the more progressive end of the party.
All of the candidates focused on the issue of life chances, with some MPs saying that Leadsom lost the room when she started talking about attachment theory and the brains of newborns, as she laid out her “three Bs - Brussels, banks and babies”. Others said that Fox and Gove had given the strongest performance, with May and Crabb both solid.Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 11) — Former senator Bongbong Marcos is eager to accept a post in President Rodrigo Duterte's administration, Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos said Monday.
"My poor brother is jobless kaya type na type niya mag-trabaho [My poor brother is jobless, which is why he would really like to work]," Marcos told reporters in Davao International Airport.
The provincial governor is part of President Duterte's delegation to the Middle East. Duterte is on state visits to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar from April 10 to 17.
Read: Duterte to bring home jailed OFWs granted clemency in Middle East
"Full support naman siya kay Presidente, so kung may maitutulong siya, I'm sure he'd be very willing to do so dahil ang bagal ng protesta niya eh," Marcos added.
[Translation: He has shown full support for the President, so if he can help, I'm sure he'd be very willing to do so because his protest is (moving) so slow.]
Marcos was referring to her brother's electoral protest against former Camarines Sur Representative Leni Robredo, who narrowly beat him in the 2016 vice presidential elections. The former senator has alleged poll fraud.
Read: BBM camp asks SC to junk Robredo's appeal
Bongbong Marcos said April 6 that Duterte has yet to offer him a position in his government, but would be glad to serve if he was offered one.
Read: Marcos: No Cabinet post offer from Duterte yet
"If a president asks you to serve in whatever capacity, hindi mo naman pwede hindian. Siyempre para sa bansa 'yan [you can't just say no. Of course, it's for the country]," Marcos said at the 70th birthday celebration of Pampanga representative and former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
LOOK: Duterte graces CGMA's 70th birthday
"Of course, I will be happy, I will be proud, I would be honored to serve in any position in the Duterte administration," he added.
The former legislator said talks of his appointment were premature, since he was still covered by the year-long ban on candidates holding public office.
After Duterte ally and supporter Ismael Sueno was dismissed as Interior Secretary on April 3 over alleged corruption, speculation arose over Bongbong Marcos assuming the post.
Read: Abella: Duterte dismisses DILG Secretary Sueno due to 'loss of trust and confidence'
But Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella said on April 4 that "no comment, no mention, and absolutely no reference" was made to Marcos as Sueno's replacement.
Duterte has previously acknowledged the support of the Marcoses.
Read: Duterte: I will allow Marcos' burial at Libingan ng mga Bayani
He fulfilled a campaign promise by allowing the burial of their father, the late deposed strongman Ferdinand Marcos, in the Libingan ng mga Bayani on Nov. 18, 2016 despite protests from anti-Marcos activists and human rights victims during Martial Law under Marcos's rule.
Read: Marcos buried at Libingan ng mga Bayani
CNN Philippines Senior Correspondent Ina Andolong contributed to this report.Earlier this week, Glenn Beck prophesied that that fight against ISIS was soon going to explode into World War III and now, it seems, that time has arrived as he declared on his radio program today that the entire world is already locked in a massive global war for its very survival, even if Beck is the only one with enough foresight to recognize it.
Despite the fact that his current theory about WWIII contradicts his last theory about WWIII, Beck has “a growing sense of surety” that the world has now entered “the beginning of sorrows.”
“We are in World War III,” Beck said. “It just hasn’t caught up yet. We’re here!”
“I told you last year, ‘And so it begins,'” he continued. “I have a growing sense of surety that what I believe is here, is indeed here … We are indeed setting the stage for global war and this is beginning of sorrows … This is the beginning of sorrows. I’m telling you, we don’t understand what is coming yet. We don’t see.”
“The gloves are about to come off on the entire world,” Beck warned. “God help us, we may see nuclear impacts on the face of the earth in our lifetime … The gloves are about to come off and this is the beginning of sorrows”:A rather common question on StackOverflow, the Delphi newsgroups and elsewhere is how to display a drop down menu when the user presses a button.
There are many proposed solutions and even something built into newer versions of Delphi (Which doesn’t work for me for some reason.)
Here is mine (which is based on this answer on StackOverflow):
First, I create a helper class based on TComponent. It links the button (which can be TButton or TBitBtn or anything else derived from TCustomButton) to the popup menu and hooks its OnClick event. To access the OnClick event, which is protected in TCustomButton, we need to cast it to TCustomButtonHack. The OnClick event then displays the popup menu. For convenience I set the helper class’s parent to the button, so it automatically gets freed when the button does get freed.
type TButtonPopupMenuLink = class(TComponent) private FBtn: TCustomButton; FMenu: TPopupMenu; FLastClose: DWORD; public constructor Create(_btn: TCustomButton; _pm: TPopupMenu); procedure doOnButtonClick(_Sender: TObject); end; { TButtonPopupMenuLink } type TCustomButtonHack = class(TCustomButton) end; constructor TButtonPopupMenuLink.Create(_btn: TCustomButton; _pm: TPopupMenu); begin inherited Create(_btn); FBtn := _btn; FMenu := _pm; FMenu.PopupComponent := FBtn; FBtn.OnClick := Self.doOnButtonClick; end; procedure TButtonPopupMenuLink.doOnButtonClick(_Sender: TObject); var Pt: TPoint; begin if GetTickCount - FLastClose > 100 then begin Pt := FBtn.ClientToScreen(Point(0, FBtn.ClientHeight)); FMenu.Popup(Pt.X, Pt.Y); { Note: PopupMenu.Popup does not return until the menu is closed } FLastClose := GetTickCount; end; end;
And just for some more convenience I add a procedure that just creates that helper class, so I don’t have to expose the class through the unit’s interface but only that procedure:
procedure TButton_AddDropdownMenu(_btn: TCustomButton; _pm: TPopupMenu); begin TButtonPopupMenuLink.Create(_btn, _pm); end;
To use it I call that procedure from the form’s constructor:
constructor TMyForm.Create(_Owner: TComponent); begin inherited Create; // other stuff TButton_AddDropdownMenu(b_MenuButton, pm_MenuButton); end;
I have put that code into u_dzVclUtils, which is part of my dzlib library.The reveal for Mass Effect Andromeda was different in a number of ways, there was no Shepard, it's in a different galaxy, and the music was entirely different than previous Mass Effect games. Originally written by Stan Jones and covered by a number of artists, the Johnny Cash version of Ghost Riders In The Sky was picked by BioWare as the song to reveal Mass Effect Andromeda with.
BioWare's studio director Yanick Roy has responded to fans requests of replacing the Johnny Cash tune with music that was more fitting for the Mass Effect universe. Roy replied with a resounding 'no,' followed by an apology and a reason.
"No, sorry, because there are very good reasons for that choice of song for the trailer that should become clear later on."
What are the reasons behind the music? Roy didn't explain, but the meaning of the song might mean something…
As per Wikipedia:
The song tells a folk tale of a cowboy who has a vision of red-eyed, steel-hooved cattle thundering across the sky, being chased by the spirits of damned cowboys. One warns him that if he does not change his ways, he will be doomed to join them, forever "trying to catch the Devil's herd across these endless skies". Jones said that he had been told the story when he was 12 years old by an old cowboy friend.
That might not give away very much, but the songs lyrics might….
An old cowboy went ridin out one dark and windy day
Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way
When all at once a mighty herd of red-eyed cows he saw
Plowin through the ragid skies and up a cloudy draw
Their horns were black and shiny and their hot breath he could feel
A bolt of fear went through him as they thundered through the sky
For he saw the riders comin hard and he heard their mournful cries
Yippie i aye ye ye
Ghost riders in the sky
Their shirts all soaked with sweat
He's ridin hard to catch that herd
But he aint caught em yet
Cause they got to ride forever in that range up in the sky
On horses snortin fire as they ride on hear their cries
'if you wanna save your soul from hell a-ridin on our range
Then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride
Tryin to catch the devil's herd across these endless skies
Yippie i ohhh oh oh
Yippie i aye ye ye
Their brands were still on fire and their hooves were made of steel
Yippie i ohhh ohh ohh
Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred
As the riders loped on by him he heard one call his name
Ghost riders in the sky (x3)
Ok, so it doesn't seem to be adding up to much. The trailer did have canyons and deserts, reminiscent of New Mexico — which does bring on the old western feel. The protagonist of Andromeda is out looking for planets for colonization – perhaps making him somewhat of a lone ranger. In the trailer he/she comes across enemies, mabe those are the Ghost Riders from the sky…
What if, while out on his/her mission our protagonist comes across these alien monsters that must be stopped before they destroy a part of the galaxy?
Honestly, I don't know.
As for then the game releases, you won't be playing the game with Johnny Cash strumming in the background. Roy promised that "The game's music itself will be much closer to what you would traditionally associate with "Mass Effect music.""
[GamesRadar]Hockey could have a performance enhancing drug problem on its hands.
The International Ice Hockey Federation will request the names of 14 Russian players who were noted in a July 18 report from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Independent Commission.
IIHF president Rene Fasel told Russian news agency TASS that the federation will “for sure” request the names of the 14 hockey players flagged for doping in the report.
“We will do it…, at least if we find out they tested positive we will of course suspend them,” Fasel told TASS.
The WADA report revealed state-run doping among Russian athletes who competed at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. The host country totalled 33 medals, including 13 gold, which was more than any other nation at the Sochi Games.
It was not immediately clear if the 14 players flagged were members of the Russian men’s or women’s teams. The Russian men’s squad at the 2014 Games included 16 players who were on NHL rosters.
Russia finished a disappointing fifth in the men’s ice hockey tournament at the games with a roster that featured NHL superstars Pavel Datsyuk, Evgeni Malkin, and Alex Ovechkin. The women’s team finished sixth at the 2014 Games.
Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren chaired the WADA Independent Commission, which revealed Russia’s widespread doping program and attempt to cover it up at the 2014 Games.
The International Olympic Committee ruled against a blanket ban on Russian athletes competing in next month’s Rio de Janeiro Summer Games on Sunday. The IOC deferredBY: Follow @BillGertz
Documents made public from the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton's private server provide clues about the current review of more than half a million emails linked to Clinton presidential campaign vice chair Huma Abedin.
Abedin was questioned by FBI agents and Justice Department officials, including those involved with counterintelligence matters, on April 5.
During those discussions, Abedin revealed that she used four different email accounts while she was deputy chief of staff for operations in Clinton's seventh floor office at the State Department.
The email accounts included her official State Department account, [email protected], the private server account, [email protected], and her private email, [email protected]. Abedin's fourth email account was associated with the campaign activities of her estranged husband, former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner.
The FBI reopened its Clinton email investigation after agents recovered a laptop computer from Wiener that reportedly contains some 650,000 emails now being reviewed by FBI agents. Weiner's laptop was obtained during an investigation into allegations the former congressman exchanged illicit messages with a 15-year-old girl.
The FBI began reviewing the emails after receiving a search warrant on Monday.
FBI Director James Comey revealed to Congress last week that he ordered the email investigation to be reopened after "pertinent" information was uncovered in the separate investigation of Weiner.
The Wall Street Journal, quoting people close to the FBI and Justice Department, reported last weekend that FBI and Justice Department officials disagreed with the decision to renew the email probe.
Word of the FBI's renewed email investigation was a political bombshell for Clinton, coming 11 days before Election Day and again raising questions about her character.
Clinton and her campaign spokespeople have called for the FBI to release further details about the new email cache.
On Monday, Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik wrote to congressional Democrats who sought additional details of the new probe. "We assure you that the Department will continue to work closely with the FBI and together, dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible," Kadzik stated in a three-paragraph letter.
Abedin's lawyer, Karen Dunn, said in a statement on Monday that Abedin was unaware that her emails were on Weiner's laptop. "Ms. Abedin will continue to be, as she always has been, forthcoming and cooperative," she said.
The original FBI investigation was prompted by the discovery of secret intelligence information in Clinton's emails. The probe, thought to have been finished in July, seeks to find out how classified information was placed on the unsecure server and whether foreign intelligence services or other hackers were able to steal it through cyber intrusions.
The classified information included some of the most sensitive secrets kept in what are called Special Access Programs, including information on how drone strikes are conducted.
Abedin told agents she was not aware of any attempts to hack her email accounts, according to the FBI report of her interview.
"Abedin recalled that some people at DoS had issues with their Gmail accounts but she never had a Gmail account," the report said.
While working for Clinton, Abedin held a top-secret security clearance. She had a classified computer system, along with a separate unclassified computer, at her desk in Clinton's office.
"Abedin could access her clintonemail.com account and her Yahoo account via the internet on the unclassified [Department of State] computer system," the FBI report states.
Abedin told the FBI that printing difficulties on the State Department network led her to routinely forward emails to her non-State Department accounts for printing.
During questioning by the FBI, Abedin was shown several emails that revealed lines of inquiry being pursued by investigators.
For example, one email with the subject line "Fwd: U.S. interest in Pak Paper 10-04" appeared to contain a classified document that was forwarded by Abedin to her personal Yahoo account in October 2009. The document had come from an aide to Richard Holbrooke, who was special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the time.
"Abedin was unaware of the classification of the document and stated that she did not make judgments on the classification of material that she received," the report states, adding that she relied on senders to properly mark and transmit sensitive material.
Another email chain dated August 16, 2010 shown to Abedin contained the subject line, "Re: your yahoo acct." It appeared to warn Abedin that her Yahoo account had been hacked.
"Abedin did not recall the email and provided that despite the content of the email she was not sure that her email account had ever been compromised," the report said.
Another email from October 2009 shown to Abedin involved communications security procedures for use during travel in Moscow. Abedin told investigators the email contained instructions to be followed by Clinton and "all the traveling team."
"Abedin stated that they used computers that were set up and controlled by the Mobile Communications Team to access their DoS and personal email accounts when they were in Russia," the report said.
The questioning indicates investigators were trying to determine if Russian intelligence may have compromised the emails and cell phones of Clinton and her team of aides during a visit to Russia.
Another email involved Clinton requesting that Abedin schedule a conference call with Jacob Sullivan, a senior State Department official. The message discussed whether the call should be conducted on secure lines or unclassified telephone.
The email contained classified information that was redacted from public release involving Sullivan's meeting with Hamid bin Jassim, the former prime minister of Qatar.
Abedin said she could not recall the email exchange or the context but noted that generally she would be told by Clinton whether conference calls should be held on secure lines or not. Abedin said it would be unusual for her to read the content and decide whether the call should be secure or unclassified.
Another email shown to Abedin appeared to indicate that the private email server had been hacked.
According to the FBI report, Abedin told investigators she "lost most of her old emails" when the clintonemail.com server was transitioned to a post-State Department server with the address hrcoffice.com.
"Abdein did not know if the system administrator had archived the mailboxes before the system was taken down," the report said.
Abedin's claim that she lost most of her emails during the server transition will likely be checked in the FBI review of the new emails found on the Weiner laptop.
The renewed FBI investigation also may be able to resolve questions about missing boxes of emails that disappeared between the time Clinton turned them over to lawyers for review and the time they were ultimately delivered to the State Department.
An identified State Department witness told the FBI that 14 boxes of emails were supplied to Clinton's lawyers at Williams & Connelly for review prior to being turned over to the State Department. Only 12 boxes were retrieved in December 2015.
Officials stated they were unsure whether "the boxes were consolidated or what could have happened to the two other boxes."
In July, Comey called Clinton "extremely careless" for placing highly classified information on the private server. He suggested that hostile foreign actors may have accessed the email server, although the FBI was unable to prove conclusively it was hacked.
The New York Times reported that FBI investigators are using a special computer program that assists with the analysis of emails to determine if they contain classified information.A dense, highly-magnetized, gas-filled region of space has been associated with the origins of Fast Radio Bursts—bright pulses of energy that appear to Earth-based telescopes as short flashes of radio waves, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Scientists have been working to characterize these mysterious radio pulses ever since they were first detected roughly 10 years ago. Only 16 Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) have ever been detected, the study authors explained, but some believe there could be thousands each day.
“We now know that the energy from this particular burst passed through a dense magnetized field shortly after it formed,” lead author Kiyoshi Masui, an astronomer with the University of British Columbia, said in a statement. The discovery “significantly narrows down the source’s environment and type of event that triggered the burst—and means the source of the pulse likely resides within a star-forming nebula or the remnant of a supernova,” he added.
Masui and his colleagues were able to detect and identify the new FRB through the use of data-mining software he developed alongside Jonathan Sievers of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. The software made it easier for astronomers to search for bursts during an analysis of data collected by radio telescopes, the research team explained.
One of two explanations for the signal’s unique imprint
Within the data, they discovered what co-author and Carnegie Mellon university faculty member Jeffery Peterson called “a very peculiar signal that matched all the known characterizes of a Fast Radio Burst, but with a tantalizing extra element that we simply have never seen before.”
Further analysis revealed that the burst exhibited a corkscrew-like twist called Faraday rotation, which is observed in radio waves that pass through strong magnetic fields. They found that this particular FRB passed through two separate screens (regions of ionized gas) on its way to Earth, and used this information to pinpoint the relative locations of each screen.
The stronger of the two screens was found close to the burst’s source, meaning it is within the source galaxy and likely less than 100,000 light-years away from said source. Furthermore, they concluded that the imprint found on the signal had to come either from a nebula that surrounded the source, or from a galactic center.
“Taken together, these remarkable data reveal more about an FRB than we have ever seen before and give us important constraints on these mysterious events,” Masui said. “We also have an exciting new tool to search through otherwise overwhelming archival data to uncover more examples and get closer to truly understanding their nature.”
—–
Feature Image: Jingchuan Yu, Beijing Planetarium
Comments
commentsDistribution of the Russian language in Estonia according to data from the 2000 Estonian census
The population of Russians in Estonia is estimated at 320,000, most of whom live in the urban areas of Harju and Ida-Viru counties. Estonia has a 300-year old history of small-scale settlement by Russian Old Believers along Lake Peipus.
The Estonian name for Russians vene, venelane derives from an old Germanic loan veneð referring to the Wends, speakers of a Slavic language who lived on the southern coast of the Baltic sea.[1][2]
Prince Yaroslav the Wise of Kievan Rus' defeated Chuds in 1030 and established fort of Yuryev (in modern day Tartu),[3] which survived until 1061 when the Kievans were driven out by the tribe of Sosols.[4][5]
A medieval proto-Russian settlement was in Kuremäe, Vironia. The Orthodox community in the area built a church in the 16th century and in 1891 the Pühtitsa Convent was created on its site.[6] Proto-Russian cultural influence had its mark on Estonian language, with a number of words such as "turg" (trade) and "rist" (cross) adopted from East Slavic.[7]
In 1217, an allied Ugaunian-Novgorodian army defended the Ugaunian stronghold of Otepää from the German knights. Novgorodian prince Vyachko died in 1224 with all his druzhina defending the fortress of Tarbatu together with his Ugaunian and Sackalian allies against the Livonian Order led by Albert of Riga.
Orthodox churches and small communities of proto-Russian merchants and craftsmen remained in Livonian towns as did close trade links with the Novgorod Republic and the Pskov and Polotsk principalities. In 1481, Ivan III of Russia laid siege to the castle of Fellin (Viljandi) and briefly captured several towns in eastern Livonia in response to a previous attack on Pskov. Between 1558 and 1582, Ivan IV of Russia captured much of mainland Livonia in the midst of the Livonian War but eventually the Russians were driven out by Lithuanian-Polish and Swedish armies. Tsar Alexis I of Russia once again captured towns in eastern Livonia, including Dorpat (Tartu) and Nyslott (Vasknarva) between 1656 and 1661, but had to yield his conquests to Sweden.
17th century to 1940 [ edit ]
A Russian Old Believer village with a church on Piirissaar
The beginning of continuous Russian settlement in what is now Estonia dates back to the late 17th century when several thousand Russian Old Believers, escaping religious persecution in Russia, settled in areas then a part of the Swedish empire near the western coast of Lake Peipus.[8]
In the 18th century after the Great Northern War the territories of Estonia divided between the Governorate of Estonia and Livonia became part of the Russian Empire but maintained local autonomy and were administered independently by the local Baltic German nobility through a feudal Regional Council (German: Landtag).[9] The second period of influx of Russians followed the Imperial Russian conquest of the northern Baltic region, including Estonia, from Sweden in 1700–1721. Under Russian rule, power in the region remained primarily in the hands of the Baltic German nobility, but a limited number of administrative jobs was gradually taken over by Russians, who settled in Reval (Tallinn) and other major towns.
A relatively larger number of ethnic Russian workers settled in Tallinn and Narva during the period of rapid industrial development at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. After the First World War, the share of ethnic Russians in the population of independent Estonia was 7.3%.[10] About half of these were indigenous Russians living in Narva, Ivangorod, the Estonian Ingria and the Petseri County, which were added to Estonia territory according to the 1920 Peace Treaty of Tartu, but were transferred (without Narva) to the Russian SFSR in 1944.
In the aftermath of World War I Estonia became an independent republic where the Russians, comprising 8% of the total population among other ethnic minorities, established Cultural Self-Governments according to the 1925 Estonian Law on Cultural Autonomy.[11] The state was tolerant of the Russian Orthodox Church and became a home to many Russian émigrés after the Russian October Revolution in 1917.[12]
World War II and the Estonian SSR [ edit ]
The majority of the pre-war Russian population in Estonia lived in border areas that were annexed by the Russian SFSR in 1944.
After the Occupation and annexation of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union in 1940,[13][14] repression of ethnic Estonians followed. According to Sergei Isakov, almost all societies, newspapers, organizations of ethnic Estonians were closed in 1940 and their activists persecuted.[15] The country remained annexed to the Soviet Union until 1991, except for the period of Nazi occupation between 1941 and 1944. During the era of Soviet occupation, the Soviet government maintained a program of replacing the indigenous Estonians with immigrants from the Soviet Union. In the course of violent population transfers, thousands of Estonian citizens were deported to the interior parts of Russia (mostly Siberia), and huge numbers of Russian-speaking Soviet citizens were encouraged to settle in Estonia. In the Ida-Viru and Harju Counties, cities such as Paldiski, Sillamäe, and Narva were ethnically cleansed and the indigenous Estonian population was totally replaced by Russian colonists. As a result of Soviet occupation, the Russian population in Estonia grew from about 23,000 people in 1945 to 475,000 in 1991, and the total Slavic population to 551,000, constituting 35% of the total population at its peak.[16]
In 1939 ethnic Russians had comprised 8% of the population; however, following the annexation of about 2,000 km2 (772 sq mi) of land by the Russian SFSR in January 1945, including Ivangorod (then the eastern suburb of Narva) and the Petseri County, Estonia lost most of its inter-war ethnic Russian population. Of the estimated 20,000 Russians remaining in Estonia, the majority belonged to the historical community of Old Believers.[17]
Most of the present-day Russians in Estonia are recent migrants and their descendants who settled in during the Soviet occupation between 1945 and 1991. Following the terms of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed the Baltic States in 1940. The authorities carried out repressions against many prominent ethnic Russians activists and White emigres in Estonia.[18] Many Russians were arrested and executed by different Soviet war tribunals in 1940–1941.[19] After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Baltics quickly fell under German control. Many Russians, especially Communist party members who had arrived in the area with the initial occupation and annexation, retreated; those who fell into the German hands were treated harshly, many were executed.[citation needed]
After the war, Narva's inhabitants previously evacuated by the Germans were for the most part not permitted to return and were replaced by refugees and workers administratively mobilized from western Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.[20] By 1989, ethnic Russians made up 30.3% of the population in Estonia.[21]
During the Singing Revolution, the Intermovement, International Movement of the Workers of the ESSR, organised the indigenous Russian resistance to the independence movement and purported to represent the ethnic Russians and other Russophones in Estonia.[22]
In independent Estonia (1990–present) [ edit ]
Today most Russians live in Tallinn and the major northeastern cities of Narva, Kohtla-Järve, Jõhvi, and Sillamäe. The rural areas are populated almost entirely by ethnic Estonians, except for Lake Peipus coast, which has a long history of Old Believers communities. In 2011, University of Tartu sociology professor Marju Lauristin found that 21% were successfully integrated, 28% showed partial integration, and 51% were unintegrated or little integrated.[23]
There are efforts by the Estonian government to improve its tie with the Russian community with Prime Minister Ratas learning Russian to better communicate with them.[24] The younger generation is better integrated with the rest of the country such as joining the military via conscription and improve their Estonian language skills.[24 |
. [9]
References [ edit ]Police in Beavercreek, Ohio backed into, then arrested a woman protesting in front of the Walmart where cops shot a black patron holding a toy gun earlier this year.
The protests began inside the store, but employees called for a storewide evacuation shortly after the protesters staged a “die-in” in the very aisle where police shot and killed John Crawford III on August 5, 2014.
In this video, protesters — including the open carry activist recording protest — can be heard singing “justice for John Crawford, justice for us all” as they peacefully moved toward the exits:
According to one shopper, Roxanna Lee, cashiers became “flustered” as news of the protest spread, until one of them announced that a “Code Sam” — store nomenclature for a potential security threat — had been called.
Cashiers then began to herd angry shoppers out of the store, where they were greeted not only by protesters, but law enforcement officials from multiple jurisdictions, including Beavercreek, Fairborn, Kettering, Bellbrook, Sugarcreek Twp. and the Greene County Sheriff’s Office. In this video, police can be heard threatening the protesters — who are holding up their arms and chanting, “hands up, don’t shoot” — with arrest if they do not leave the parking lot:
According to Counter Current News, police began to focus an undue amount of attention on one African-American male protester, which led another protester — an older white woman — to demand to know why they were “singling him out.”
At that point, a Beavercreek Police Department cruiser allegedly backed into her. In another video, one of Counter Current News’ “citizen journalists” can be heard shouting, “that cop right there — 149 — just backed into that old lady! He just backed into her! They ran over her!”
In the video below, three officers can be seen pulling the older woman onto the hood of a squad car and arresting her for resisting arrest.
“I’m not resisting,” she can be heard saying, “I’m just asking why you singled him out.” The woman — whose name is not known — is one of at least four people arrested at the protest.
[CORRECTION: This article originally claimed that police “ran over” a protester. However, video of the incident shows a police SUV slowly backed into the woman and an officer who tried to move her out of the way. Neither the woman nor the officer appeared to be hurt. Raw Story regrets the error.]North Korea has started operating a new plant to produce weapons-grade uranium, doubling its capability to make fuel for atomic bombs, a senior South Korean official told the JoongAng Ilbo yesterday.“In 2012, the North started building a new facility next to its old uranium plant, about 120 meters long and 15 meters wide,” the official in charge of handling North Korean intelligence said. “The new facility is about the same size as the old one. It recently completed construction and has started operation.”The new plant to produce highly enriched uranium is in the Yongbyon nuclear complex, the center of the country’s nuclear arms program. It was built next to a uranium facility that was shown to a visiting U.S. scientist in 2010. The North invited former Los Alamos National Laboratory director, Siegfried S. Hecker, to Yongbyon and showed him the facility with about 2,000 gas centrifuges to enrich uranium.Infrared cameras used by Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities have detected heat that was emitted when the centrifuges in the new plant began operating, the source said. “We have to monitor a little longer to see if the new plant actually started producing weapons-grade materials, but it is our assessment that it is in operation,” he said.In August, the Institute for Science and International Security said construction materials inside the Yongbyon nuclear complex had disappeared while a train was detected on a railway linked to a building. It concluded that work was continuing to expand the centrifuges and reactor facilities.The newly built facility is about the same size as the old one, according to the source, leading to the estimate that it is also equipped with about 2,000 centrifuges.“If the North operates all 4,000 centrifuges year-round, it can produce about 80 kilograms [176 pounds] of highly enriched uranium annually,” said a nuclear engineer from a state-run institute who requested anonymity. “That is enough to build four to five nuclear bombs.”The operation of the new facility is expected to worsen fears about Pyongyang’s nuclear program.“Although warheads using highly enriched uranium are less powerful than plutonium-based bombs, they are relatively easier to build,” said Lee Choon-geun, a research fellow at the Science and Technology Policy Institute. “They can be built without a nuclear test.”Lee said the North can also produce highly enriched uranium at other clandestine facilities outside of Yongbyon.With the progress, the last remaining hurdle in the North’s nuclear arms program will be acquiring the technology to miniaturize nuclear warheads so they can be fitted onto ballistic missiles. Although Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities have not obtained hard evidence that the North had succeed in producing a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile, they suspect that Pyongyang has almost mastered the technology.The North started its nuclear arms program by producing weapons-grade plutonium, but made a switch to producing weapons from highly enriched uranium. It admitted to the existence of the uranium-based program in 2002.Since then, the North conducted three nuclear tests. The first one took place in 2006 and two additional tests followed. The first and second in 2006 and 2009 were believed to test plutonium-based devices, but the most recent one in February last year was believed to be a test of a uranium-based device.Defense Minister Han Min-koo testified at the National Assembly on Oct. 27 that the North has technology capable of building a bomb using its uranium enrichment program. He also said it is believed that the North’s miniaturization of its nuclear technology has improved considerably, although there was no confirmation on how far.A nuclear expert in Washington said the time has come for the South to assume that the North is a nuclear-armed state, saying it takes a minimum of two years or a maximum of seven years for a country to succeed in miniaturization of nuclear warheads after a nuclear test.“We continuously monitored the Punggye-ri nuclear test site of the North and the amount of earth detected before last year’s nuclear test was just a little more than half of what was observed at the time of the first test,” said a South Korean intelligence official who exchanged information with U.S. authorities. “That shows that the space for the place where the nuclear explosive device was installed was reduced.”For a nuclear-tipped missile, it is required to miniaturize an atomic warhead to smaller than 90 centimeters (35 inches) in diameter and less than one ton in weight. Detonation technology for the highly enriched uranium inside the warhead is also key.The Korean government believes that the North has tested detonation devices since the early 1990s and the frequency of the tests rapidly increased recently. Intelligence analysts, therefore, suspect that the North is in the last stage of miniaturization.Concerns are also high because highly enriched uranium weapons can be produced without explosion tests. The type is known as “Little Boy,” which the United States dropped in Hiroshima in August 1945.“If the North uses the ‘gun’ method, like the Little Boy for which the United States used 64.1 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, the North can create nuclear bombs without tests,” said a South Korean government official. “If the North attempts to create nuclear arms by secretly using the gun-type bombs, it is hard to detect and stop the program.”Although the South Korean government’s official stance is that there is no evidence that the North has succeeded in miniaturization, concerns are growing that Pyongyang is just one step away from possessing nuclear-tipped missiles.Gen, Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, already addressed the issue. “Personally, I think that they certainly have had the expertise in the past,” Scaparrotti said last month. “They’ve had the right connections, and so I believe have the capability to have miniaturized a device at this point, and they have the technology to potentially actually deliver what they say they have.”BY JEONG YONG-SOO, SER MYO-JA [[[email protected]]]BEST VIDEO SO FAR IMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCyJAIHcoJg According to a post on Facebook, two members of Texas Carry were arrested within the past hour to 2 hours outside of the capital building. The members were carrying openly holstered pre-1899 pistols that are not classified as firearms under Texas law.Based on the conversations posted online in the recent weeks/months, I would imagine that the government intends to prosecute them NOT under unlawful carry of a weapon but under disorderly conduct, which makes it an offense when one "displays a firearmin a public place in a manner calculated to alarm;" - meaning that the case hinges not on whether or not the weapon qualifies as a firearm, but whether or not it was carried in a manner calculated to cause alarm. Common sense - and probably mountains of case law from all across the country - tells us that it is not displayed in a manner calculated to cause alarm when it is properly holstered. We shall see. I will try to post any updates I find as quickly as possible.According to the Facebook posts this was not a simi-peaceful arrest as the previous ones were. This was a full blown, guns drawn, fingers on trigger, to-the-ground takedown. The officers refused to tell the ones arrested what laws they had broken, and they refused to tell bystanders why they were being arrested. When questioned, they simply replied "we are just doing what we are told." Whoever is doing the telling, needs to be booted from their office. Better, yet, boot them from Texas. Send them to Chicago, perhaps, they ought to love it there...I believe the following video is of the arrests made today. WARNING offensive language throughout. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cow1HBEH1TY&feature=youtube_gdata_player But you can't say a few curse words are any more offensive than false arrests, broken oaths, and blind obedience to an oppressive state.A bare-bones news story. Hopefully more will be reported in the near future. http://www.khou.com/news/texas-news/Witnesses-2-handcuffed-at-Texas-Capitol-gun-rally-229394821.html I'm now reading that they've been charged with criminal trespass. It'd be laughable if it weren't a matter of law abiding citizens being arrested, abused and oppressedThis article is over 2 years old
Liberal National party ahead by single vote in recount as Mark Dreyfus writes to Malcolm Turnbull to request Brandis stop scrutineering
The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has written to Malcolm Turnbull asking that he stop George Brandis from participating in the scrutiny of votes in the crucial Herbert recount this week.
The Liberal National party is ahead by just one vote in the recount of the north Queensland seat of Herbert, with talk of a messy resolution ending up in the court of disputed returns.
Herbert is the last federal seat to be decided in the 2016 election.
If the Coalition retains the seat it will have 77 seats in the 150-seat parliament, allowing it to appoint a speaker while retaining an absolute majority.
With the Australian Electoral Commission saying the recount could take up weeks, the focus on the seat has become intense.
On Sunday Dreyfus sent a letter to the prime minister asking him to stop the attorney general from having any further involvement in the vote recount.
Brandis has been acting as a Liberal party scrutineer at the counting centre in Townsville, overseeing the sorting and counting of votes and checking for irregularities.
“The Australian Electoral Commission is now conducting a recount. Clearly this is a very sensitive process,” Dreyfus’s letter says.
“You are no doubt also aware that, quite extraordinarily, the attorney general, Senator Brandis has been participating in the scrutiny of votes in the seat of Herbert.
“Labor scrutineers advise that the attorney general took a very active personal role in the scrutiny. He personally objected to ballots and argued points of procedure with Australian Electoral Commission officials.
“A very sensitive recount is now taking place in Herbert. Any ongoing involvement by the attorney general in the scrutiny risks undermining public confidence.”
It appears likely Labor or the Liberal National party will end up taking the final result to the court of disputed returns, arguing for a fresh election.
It has been reported as many as 85 of the 628 army members who the Australian defence force says did not cast votes while they were on exercise in South Australia could have been personnel from Townsville.
There have also been accusations of absentee ballot papers not being made available to Herbert voters in other north Queensland seats.
Behind the'successful' 2016 election: the tension at the heart of the Greens Read more
On Sunday the attorney general, George Brandis, said regardless of the outcome of the recount, the Liberal National party should “rejoice in its own success” at the election.
“The government went backwards in a number of states but in Queensland, depending on what happens in the Herbert recount, either we will have kept the same number of seats in the House of Representatives or, on a worse-case scenario, have gone backwards by one,” he said.
“The federal election was a great success for the LNP.”
When the first count in Herbert finished last week, Labor’s Cathy O’Toole led the sitting Coalition MP Ewen Jones by just eight votes.
A margin of less than a hundred votes in any seat is cause for an automatic recount.
Australian Associated Press contributed to this report17 points · 78 comments
Subway removes ham and bacon from nearly 200 stores and offers halal meat only after'strong demand' from Muslims
48 points · 17 comments
Refugees welcome.
28 points · 4 comments
Mother of girl, 16, raped by three Somali men tells how rapists' relatives terrified her throughout the trial
24 points · 11 comments
Syrian refugee: We take the food throw it away
23 points · 7 comments
Munich: Refugee Mob attacking Women and Men in the Subway.
24 points · 102 comments
Migrants sexually harass German School Girls - Mayor dismisses Grandfather: "Don't provoke them"
20 points · 29 comments
African Refugees Say Arab Muslims More Racist than Europeans (2012)
24 points · 2 comments
Exhibitionists and sexual verbal abuse in a small Village in Germany. Covered up till now. Four Incidents over 4 weeks. All suspects are described with "black hair". "PC" speak for invaders.
23 points · 5 comments
Former Islamic extremist: ‘The far Left is helping ISIS’
10 points
The Paradox of ToleranceNew Pentax Mobile Site
Easy access to PentaxForums.com from your mobile device
By PF Staff in Site News on Apr 22, 2014
Today, we're happy to unveil a overhauled version of our mobile site with a host of improvements to make it even easier to browse while on the go. Even though we've featured a mobile site since 2011, we feel that it hasn't been robust enough for comfortable mobile browsing until now.
The new mobile site lets you browse not only the forum, but also our homepage news and in-depth reviews. On the forum you'll now be able enjoy larger images and easier access to new content and private messaging.
Our mobile skin currently supports all web-enabled smartphones and tablets, such as the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Samsung Galaxy, and other Andriod devices. iPads have large screens and will therefore always be shown our full site.
Activation
To activate our mobile site, simply visit the homepage (pentaxforums.com) or the forum (pentaxforums.com/forums/) from your mobile web browser. The mobile site should load automatically. However, if you're shown the full version of our site, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the "Enable Mobile" or "Mobile Skin" links, as shown in screenshot 1 and screenshot 2.
Deactivation
If feel your phone or tablet has a big enough screen to use our full site, you can always switch back using the "full site" link at the bottom of each mobile page, as shown in this screnshot.
Old vs. New
As you can see, the touch-friendliness, design, and readability of the new mobile skin have been drastically improved. The new skin will also stretch both next and images to match the width of your screen, so photos become larger on larger screens.
New Mobile Homepage:
Old Mobile Homepage:
Walkthrough
Next, we will take a closer look at some of the features of the new mobile site.
Forum Homepage
On the forum homepage you will find buttons taking you straight to new posts or unread PMs. You will also see a list of the latest forum threads.
Directly below the thread list is the traditional forum index that you're used to seeing on the desktop site.
Login and Menu
The menu is located in the upper-right corner of the mobile skin. There, you will find links to different sections of the forum. You will also be able to log in and register via the menu.
The arrow to the left of the menu button allows you to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. Similarly, the transparent arrow at the bottom of each page allows you to scroll to the top.
Forum menu screen
Once you log in, you will see additional links to content that you've created, as well as links to your private messages and subscribed threads.
When you head over to the homepage, you will see a slightly different menu with links to in-depth reviews and news articles. Both menus allow you to quickly switch between the forum and homepage.
Browsing Forums
Each forum contains the traditional thread listing, complete with content previews, latest post information, and links to the first unread post or last page of each thread.
The new mobile site also features arrows and buttons to facilitate easy navigation back to the forum index.
The "new thread" interface has gotten a larger text box with easy-to-read fonts.
Reading Threads
When you go into a thread, you will see a reply button, simplified pagination, and easy-to-read post bits.
You can "Like" other members' posts at the touch of a button:
And at the bottom of each thread, you will see the familiar Quick Reply editor:
Below the quick reply editor you'll see buttons to subscribe to or ignore the current thread.
Searching
The magnifying glass icon at the top of each page brings down a search box that will allow you to search the forum or homepage, depending on where you are on the site.
The search results consist of a simplied thread listing. Click on the "info" button for a thread preview and more information.
New Posts
The "New Posts" listing brings up a simplifed thread listing with thread thumbnails where appropriate.
Each thread can be expanded using the info button, just like search results.
User CP
At the bottom of each forum page, you will find a link to your user control panel.
From there, you can change settings, make a donation, browse subscribed and ignored threads, and access your PM inbox.
Homepage News
The mobile homepage gives you access to our news stories and in-depth reviews. When you open www.pentaxforums.com, you'll see a feed with the latest news stories.
When you click in to a news story, you'll be able to read the whole article and leave comments.
A new feature of the mobile skin is the ability to go from one story to the next via buttons directly above the comment area. It's no longer necessary to back to the homepage and click into the next story.
Within each story, there's also a link to the category index for that story.
Homepage Reviews
Clicking on the appropriate link in the menu will take you to our newly-redesigned review index. This page contains a list of the latest reviews as well as links to all 6 of our in-depth review categories.
Clicking on "Camera Reviews" would take you to the camera review index:
Similarly, here's the Pentax lens review index:
We've greatly improved the readability of each individual review. You'll find arrow buttons to return to the corresponding review index from each page, and at the bottom of each page you'll find a large button taking you to the next page. There's also a dropdown that will take you to any page of your choosing within the current review.
The larger your screen, the larger images you'll see. If there's a full-size sample that you'd like to enlarge, simply tap on it and it will open in a separate browser window.
Future Features
Currently, our user reviews, photo albums, and photo gallery are not available via the mobile site. You will be shown the full site whenever you try to access these sections from a smartphone.
In the future, we plan to make all 3 of these sections mobile-friendly.
Our forum (but not the homepage) is currently also accessible via the Tapatalk mobile app. However, support for this app may be dropped in the future, so we recommend that all users switch over to the new mobile site.
To conclude, we understand that there are hundreds of different mobile devices out there, and that it's difficult to make a one-size-fits-all mobile site. Therefore, we welcome your suggestions in the comments section. If you're not able to see the mobile site from your phone or tablet, please let us know what device you're using in the comments section below.
We hope to see you on the mobile site soon!Breaking The Silence: Truth And Lies In The War On Terror
Six months after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and two years after the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, John Pilger’s documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror highlighted the hypocrisy and double standards of the American and British adventures of 2001-3, which led to the deaths of more than a million people.
The film opens with a series of haunting war photographs. Over the carnage, George W Bush says, ‘The United States will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies, and freedom.’ His voice dissolves into the high-pitch of his co-conspirator, Tony Blair, who exalts his actions as ‘a fight for freedom’ and ‘a fight for justice’.
Pilger asks, ‘What are the real aims of this war and who are the most threatening terrorists?' In a remote village in Afghanistan, he interviews Orifa, who lost eight members of her family, including six children, when an American plane dropped a 500-pound bomb on her mud-brick home. This is juxtaposed with Bush telling Congress that the United States is ‘a friend to the Afghan people’. Few countries have been helped less by the United States – less than three per cent of all aid to Afghanistan is for reconstruction from war damage.
Kabul, the capital, is a maze of destruction, with cluster bombs not cleared from the city centre and families living in abandoned buildings. ‘I’ve spent much of my life in places of upheaval, but I’ve rarely seen such a ruined city as Kabul,’ says Pilger, standing in a shoe factory where the populations of two villages have squatted, destitute.
Most of the damage was inflicted not by the ‘official enemy’, the Taliban, but by warlords backed, trained and funded by the United States, who restored the poppy harvests and opium trade, which the Taliban had banned.
Recalling the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pilger reveals that President Jimmy Carter signed a secret presidential decree authorising the bank-rolling of the warlords, known as the mujahedin, to fight the Red Army. Among them, the CIA and Britain's MI6 trained Islamic extremists, including Osama bin Laden, as part of what was called Operation Cyclone. From this, says Pilger, ‘came the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and [the attacks of] September 11th’.
The Taliban were also the United States's secret friends. Shortly after they took power in Afghanistan, they were offered a bribe by the administration of President Bill Clinton if they backed a plan for an oil pipeline from central Asia through Afghanistan. However, when George W Bush became President, the connection between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban was an embarrassment, and the tie was cut.
Pilger's interviews with administration officials – described by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern as ‘the crazies’ – are perhaps the highlight of a film made when 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq were raw. He interviews Under Secretary of State John Bolton, who is today Donald Trump's National Security Adviser. Bolton tells Pilger that the United States has done more ‘to create conditions in which individuals can be free around the world than any other country’. When Pilger points to the US record of bombing countries into submission, Bolton says, ‘Are you a Labour Party member… or a Communist Party member?’ When Pilger replies that Tony Blair's Labour Party are his allies, he says, ‘Oh, really?’
Of all Pilger's films about American foreign policy, Breaking the Silence achieved something of a ‘cult’ status as counter-history and was shown across the United States – thanks in part to Ray McGovern, who took the film on a tour of campuses and small towns. ‘We warn people,’ he said, ‘about the crazies.’ Nothing, he might add today, has changed.
Awards: The Chris Statuette in the War & Peace division, Chris Awards, Columbus International Film & Video Festival, Ohio, 2004.
'Breaking the Silence: Truth And Lies In The War On Terror' was first broadcast on ITV1, 22 September 2003Starting in the April 15, 2017 crawl, har tables will include a _third-parties custom metric. This includes name and version information for ~100 of the most popular JavaScript libraries used on the web. This enables an exciting new area for analysis.
The format of the metric is a JSON-encoded array of library objects like this: [{"name":"jQuery","version":"1.4.2"}]
Here’s an example of a query that gets all library names and versions for all pages in the 4/15 crawl:
CREATE TEMPORARY FUNCTION parseJson(libs STRING) RETURNS ARRAY<STRUCT<name STRING, version STRING>> LANGUAGE js AS """ try { return JSON.parse(libs); } catch (e) { return []; } """; SELECT url, lib FROM ( SELECT url, parseJson(TRIM(JSON_EXTRACT(payload, "$._third-parties"), '"')) AS libs FROM `httparchive.har.2017_04_15_chrome_pages`) CROSS JOIN UNNEST(libs) AS lib ORDER BY url;
Note that this uses the standard SQL dialect (rather than legacy). You can run the query here. Alternatively, you can browse the results of this query in the temporary httparchive:scratchspace.2017_04_15_js_libs table (a permanent table still TBD).
Using this scratch table, it’s really easy to get answers to questions like “How popular is jQuery?”:
SELECT ROUND(jquery.count / total.count, 2) FROM (SELECT COUNT(0) AS count FROM `httparchive.scratchspace.2017_04_15_js_libs` WHERE lib.name = 'jQuery') AS jquery, (SELECT COUNT(0) AS count FROM `httparchive.har.2017_04_15_chrome_pages`) AS total
It turns out that jQuery is used by 82% of the ~500K sites crawled by HTTP Archive!
How about the top 3 most popular jQuery versions?
SELECT APPROX_TOP_COUNT(lib.version, 3) FROM `httparchive.scratchspace.2017_04_15_js_libs` WHERE lib.name = 'jQuery';
Results:
f0_.value f0_.count 1.12.4 80179 1.11.1 28507 1.11.3 26073
Version 1.12.4 is by far the leader. Interestingly, the latest version (3.2.1) is all the way down at number 42 on the list of popular versions.
There’s so much more to explore with this data, so dig in and share your findings!
Check out https://github.com/HTTPArchive/httparchive/issues/77 for more about how this works under the hood.
PS: We’re working on expanding the detection to platforms (Wordpress, etc) as well so stay tuned.In 2013 we called it the renter’s paradox: Washington has legal pot, but many people, including renters and tourists, don’t have a place to “legally” use it. At the time, City Attorney Pete Holmes said the legislature needed to address the issue. This week, Holmes issued a wide-ranging memo urging the legislature to make legal pot reforms, including allowing for “marijuana use lounges.”
Single family homeowners have a legal place to consume marijuana; others, however, such as out-of-town visitors, the homeless, and renter and condominium owners whose building do not permit marijuana use, have fewer options. Enforcement against public marijuana use will be more effective if people have alternative locations to use marijuana legally.
With a prohibition against using marijuana “in view of the general public,” the situation has left some conscientious renters and tourists wondering where they can technically smoke-up.
Holmes envisions the new lounge businesses would be 21 and over, allowed to sell food but not alcohol, and restricted to vaporizers and edibles. Since legal pot can’t be used where it’s sold, lounge customers would have to bring their own product.
The Seattle City Council would also have to exempt such lounges from a local ban on e-cigarettes. Holmes said city council member Nick Licata is already working on legislation to do that.
Holmes issued his memo a week before legislators convene for their 2015 session on Monday. The session will be the first for Capitol Hill resident Rep. Brady Walkinshaw, since he ran unopposed in November for Sen. Jaime Pederson’s 43rd District seat.
In no uncertain terms, Holmes also said the Legislature needed to take action to fold the state’s medical marijuana system into the highly regulated I-502 framework.
“Licensing commercial marijuana activity outside the I-502 system … would send a message that the City endorses a parallel but different system for such activity, perhaps conflicting with state law and undercutting arguments for legislation at the state level,” Holmes wrote in his memo. “We cannot go back, and we can no longer delay: commercial marijuana activities outside state licensing and regulation must cease.”
In a statement released last week, Mayor Ed Murray said he too wanted to see the Legislature further regulate medical marijuana, but did not want to limit access to deserving patients. “Shutting down all collective gardens is not the right solution because it leaves our patients out in the cold,” he said.
In the meantime, 2015 could see the opening of the first I-502 marijuana store on Capitol Hill as Tok makes plans to open on 15th Ave E.
Pete Holmes Marijuana MemoIn 1974, the economist Richard Easterlin made a shocking claim. Between 1946 and 1970, he said, Americans had not become happier, despite strong economic growth. Easterlin proposed a paradox: Yes, economic growth makes nations happier–but only to a point. Once certain basic needs are met, he said, the relationship between wealth and happiness breaks down.
The Easterlin Paradox is an important concept in happiness economics, which generally looks for non-economic reasons for why nations are happy or not. Many countries appear to be happier than the United States despite having less GDP per capita. That suggests other factors like welfare and health care–which the U.S. doesn’t provide as well as countries–are as important to satisfaction levels.
But there’s a problem with the theory, say economists now. Many nations, including the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, have continued becoming happier as they’ve become richer. How come some countries bottom out on happiness when economic growth improves and other don’t?
lornet via Shutterstock
A new paper from Shigehiro Oishi and Selin Kesebir from the University of Virginia and London Business School suggests an explanation: a country’s level of inequality. Crunching the data for 34 nations, they find inequality is a strong “moderating factor” in whether nations become happier when they grow economically.
“Our analyses demonstrate that once one considers income inequality, the Easterlin paradox is not so paradoxical anymore. When economic growth is more evenly distributed across the population, the Easterlin paradox rarely emerges,” the paper says. “When economic growth is concentrated among a small segment of the population, it is more likely to emerge, and economic growth is not associated with an increase in life satisfaction.”
The researchers looked at two sets of data: the first from the World Database of Happiness, a collection of self-reported surveys of happiness; and second, a sample from 18 Latin American countries, which had less developed economies. In the first sample of 16 countries, “economic growth was more strongly associated with increases in life satisfaction when there was less income inequality,” even in advanced countries. In the second, each increase in equality, by a measurement called the Gini coefficient, led to a commensurate decrease in life satisfaction.
The researchers offer a couple of possible explanations. First, people on the lower rungs of the income scale don’t benefit when economic growth surges, as has been happening in the United States of late. Second, inequality makes people more envious. “When inequality is high and people are exposed to the increasing wealth of others, they may focus more on their relative economic standing and less on their absolute standing,” the paper says.Agriculture Spews More Methane than Oil and Gas
The recent Porter Ranch methane spill in Los Angeles County spewed about 66 tons of methane into the air every hour for four months. After the leak was finally sealed in February, scientists estimated it had discharged a total of 106,000 tons of methane into the air, making it the worst such leak in U.S. history.
Reducing methane emissions linked to oil and gas is critical to addressing the global climate crisis and will require major efforts to upgrade natural gas production and storage infrastructure. Leaks from old pipelines and equipment are a major source.
But agriculture is an even bigger source of methane emissions than oil and gas production, according to a paper published last week (April 1) by an international team of scientists. The study found that since 2006, more methane emissions have spewed from agriculture worldwide than from fracking for gas and oil production.
So why are agriculture’s methane emissions exempt from regulation?
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and pound for pound it warms the climate 30 times more than carbon dioxide. Because of this, the Obama Administration announced last year that the Environmental Protection Agency would require the oil and gas industry to cut methane emissions by 40 percent by 2025. And in a blog post this March, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said oil and gas were the world’s largest industrial sources of methane.
This new study seriously calls that assertion into question.
The researchers, led by Hinrich Schaefer at the New Zealand National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research, looked at the chemical signatures, or isotopes, of methane emissions from data collected all around the world. Methane released from fracking has a different isotopic signature than methane from cow burps and rice production, the main sources of agricultural emissions.
The study found that the isotopic signature of the increased methane in the atmosphere since 2006 was consistent with agricultural sources and was likely the result of rapid growth in beef cattle and rice production in Asia.
The emissions spike documented in the study was the equivalent of about 150 Porter Ranch spills in one year!
This finding came as a shock to the researchers, who had assumed oil and gas would be the biggest source since the U.S. began widespread fracking for oil and gas around 2006.
Agriculture accounts for about a third of all greenhouse gas emissions globally and about 10 percent of U.S. emissions. But even though emissions from U.S. agriculture have jumped by 17 percent since 1990, EPA’s methane strategy completely ignores agriculture.
In fact, last year Congress renewed a provision attached to the federal budget that strictly forbids the EPA from tracking emissions from livestock operations. It is the only industry to enjoy such an exemption.
There are steps farmers can take to reduce methane, such as better management of livestock manure. Some farmers, like northwest Indiana dairy producer Mike McCloskey of Fair Oaks Farms, are recycling livestock manure and turning it into fuel. And Duke Energy in North Carolina recently announced that it plans to buy waste from nearby livestock operations and turn it into usable natural gas.
Most farmers, however, aren’t given the right incentives to reduce emissions, and their pollution is largely unchecked.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Instead of giving industrial agriculture free rein to pollute our air and water, it’s time to include it in our plans to reduce climate-warming emissions.Ambitious creators in any industry could stand to learn a thing or two from director Ron Howard. For instance, when Twitter co-creator Biz Stone was tapped to participate in Canon’s Project Imagina10n filmmaking contest recently, he revealed that Howard’s career was an inspiration for the path of his social media empire. “We were getting a lot of media attention early on with Twitter,” Stone told Co.Create recently. “And I told everyone on the team that we didn’t want to burn out quickly from being in the spotlight. We wanted to grow and develop like Ron Howard.”
Ron Howard on the set of Rush
While there are indeed other filmmakers who first became famous as child actors before pursuing fruitful careers in front of and behind the camera–Drew Barrymore and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are prominent examples–Howard will always be the golden yardstick by which they’re measured. It’s hard to imagine anyone else so thoroughly eclipsing his acting roots by helming classics like Splash, Apollo 13, and A Beautiful Mind, the last of which brought in an Academy Award for Best Picture. Among his many other accomplishments, Howard is also the one who conceived and produced Arrested Development, and handpicked Mitch Hurwitz to take the reins.
One does not reach a position of Ron Howard’s cinematic stature without acquiring rare insight into the inner-workings of what makes a film a success. With his latest effort, the Nika Lauda racing biopic, Rush, now in theaters, and Project Imaginat10n contest videos available online, Howard offered Co.Create three bits of wisdom for filmmakers that could also apply to creatives in any field.
Rush
Challenge your story idea. Imagine yourself asked to watch it. Really imagine others committing the time to view it. Understand what you and your friends would appreciate about a movie version of your idea, then go for it.
Ransom
Dream, write, discuss with collaborators and plan your approach and organization so you are maximizing your resources–and then use all of it as |
last couple years. But you only get to play Old School at Eternal Weekend once a year.
We jammed around 10 games, Farkas on our deck, me playing stock White Weenie, a deck which is prevalent because it is cheap to build, plus not a great matchup for us because of Icatian Javelineers. We split the games down the middle, which I was happy with, as I think we get a lot better against them after sideboard (we get the 4th Swords and 2 Earthquakes).
We bump into Randy Buehler at Bruegger’s for breakfast, where I mention I think restricting Jayemdae Tome is a perfect fix for the format. It knocks The Deck back into regular Tier 1, (instead of being in its own tier of pure evil), yet still allows people to play it if their dirty little hearts desire. Despite being a Deck lover and player, he actually seems to be on board. Old School rules committees around the world I implore you to restrict this card. It is the key to The Deck’s dominance, and makes unnecessary the gentlemen’s agreement that is (kind of) in place regarding people not playing it. I also think it is quite an elegant solution.
We get to the Omni Hotel around 10:30, with half an hour to spare. We register, and say hi to Jaco, who came to Pittsburgh from Chicago basically to run this tournament. He didn’t even play! He procured all the prizes. He ordered a custom stamp that said EC Old School 2017 that he stamped them all with. He printed out pairings, made judge rulings. He did it all. Sure he played Vintage on Friday, but that was just a side event for him. He is the godfather of American Old School Magic. I can barely look him in the eye, he exudes such a powerful aura. It is basically like the movie Old School, he is our Luke Wilson. Randoms in the tourney hall whisper and point at him, giggling like school girls. Or maybe that’s just me, I dunno. Out of respect for Jaco, I decide to donate a beta Veteran Bodyguard to the prize pool. I picked it up a while ago, never use it, and felt like it would make a great prize, as despite being pretty unplayable even in Old School, it is just dripping with flavor and nostalgia. He thanks me, and we get out of dodge before I become tongue tied and embarrass myself more than I already have.
The room the tourney was played in was amazing – it felt like a 90’s PTQ. Small-ish party room in a random hotel, held maybe 200 people tops. There was even a guy wearing a “1996/1997 Pro Tour Qualifier Competitor” t-shirt that could not have been more fitting.
Rather than jamming the 75 card mirror, I take out my cube so we can stretch our Magic muscles a little pre-tourney. It’s close to the MTGO holiday cube, minus all the garbage they put in to promote the recent sets, and plus a few very broken cards they don’t include for some reason. Farkas and I do a quick Let’s Make a Deal draft before the tourney. In Let’s Make a Deal you set up a big stack of cards (maybe 50-60 per person, more than a regular draft because you end up drafting lots of cards you don’t use.) Farkas and I used like 110 for our 2-man. You then place 6 cards face down in a row beside the big stack. First person looks at the first face down card, and either drafts it, or moves onto the next card, drafts it, or moves onto the next card, etc, until finally drafting a card. You then add a card to each pile he saw, ending with the drafted card. Then the other player does the same thing, but now some piles have more than one card. If you pass on all 6 piles, you pluck one off the top of the big stack, and you have to do it face up so all drafters get some free utils via this small sweat. I drafted a 4 color pile of turds that really could only win by casting Upheaval with my 4 mana rocks. I did just that against Farkas’s U/B control deck game 1, and then we packed it up because the main event was starting.
I know this is absurd, but I was actually nervous for this tourney, which of course is not at all in the spirit of Old School Magic. But it really has become my passion, and I had basically been working on this deck for 2 years. Thankfully I brought handles of vodka, rum, and Fireball, and poured myself a tall one right before Round 1 to take the edge off. I made it a rule of mine that I would have at least as many drinks as rounds we were in, a goal I met and then some. I am sure my play generally suffered, but there was only 1 REALLY egregious error that I will get to later.
Round 1 vs. Michael Scheffenacker
Michael was on U/R Burn, but certainly not anything stock/netdecked, as he was playing main deck Backfire, which is actually pretty damn good tech. The perfect spell for U/R Burn. After winning the die roll, he led on Black Vise, and then Backfired my Turn 1 Savannah Lions. Black Vise is a card I am basically in love with, especially with Atog, and I was very close to playing it myself in this tourney. At the end of the day I thought there would be a lot of aggro decks because of our gentlemen’s agreement, and Vise is pretty bad against aggro. But it’s good against just about anything Turn 1 on the play of course. I decide not to attack with my Lion as I am behind in the race thanks to the Vise. The race is super close, and in the end I can get him to exactly 1, but I am at 1 and die on my upkeep to my Dib. He also played an Ankh this game, which was interesting. First of all, it made me think he had Atogs even though I never saw any. And secondly, if that was true, did he have a lot more artifacts that would make my sideboard Dust to Dusts good? I think this is one of the coolest things about Old School. Decks play out so differently every game, and you never know anyone’s actual list unlike Standard (vomit), so sideboarding is very difficult unless you are playing against something super stock (cough, The Deck, cough.) I think in the end I did not bring in Dust to Dust, as I had 4 REB that were obv great and I did not have that many cards to take out. I may have shaved a Disenchant for one but who the hell knows. Finally, what do I do with Swords? He did not play a creature Game 1, but almost certainly had Dibs and likely Atogs as well?
Unfortunately I really do not remember many details about the next 2 games. I know Game 2 I won another slightly less close race, being careful to not play more than 1 creature for fear of Earthquake, and doing as much as I could to keep open white mana in case he Blood Moons, which is a very scary card for my Plateau/Underground Sea manabase. Game 3 I think he led on Black Vise again on the play, I had a meh draw, and he burned me out pretty easily.
I felt pretty bad at this point. I just lost Round 1 of a tourney I had prepared a long time for to some stick playing Backfire (just kidding Michael!!). But thankfully I had a Fireball to cure me. I poured myself another over ice (which somehow was graciously provided and refilled throughout the day by the hotel staff).
Farkas won his round, and tells me the story of the rules lawyer who sat next him. If you are unfamiliar with Old School, rules lawyering is basically the worst crime you can commit. I think it is even worse than peeling an extra card, as everyone did that back in 1994. This guy’s opponent plays The Abyss on his turn, and says go. Douchebag McGee untaps, goes to draw his card, says the word “draw?” and as he is drawing his card his opponent says oh hey you forgot to sack a dude for The Abyss. McGhee claims that he already draw his card and it is too late, and apparently the inquisitive tone he used to say the word “draw” was his attempt to let his opponent stack The Abyss trigger! First of all this is Old School, what the eff is a trigger. Secondly, c’mon man, we are not trying to qualify for the PT here, stop being a dick. But Douchy held his ground, and he was not forced to sack a dude. Apparently no judge was called, as I assume anyone judging in that scenario would have given Doucherson a match loss/DQ for unsportsmanlike conduct. This story, much more than my Round 1 loss, was really souring what was supposed to be one of the most fun days ever.
0-1. Farkas 1-0.
Round 2 vs. Matt Slack
Matt is a tiny little man. He is also a Lord of the Pit. I won the die roll, he mulliganed, kept a risky one, and I just ran him over with a great aggro draw that I think involved Power Sinking his last ditch Erhnam. We chat a little bit, and I realize that I recognize his voice from an episode of the superb Flippin’ Orbs podcast that he did. He was interviewed by fellow Lord Grant Castleton about his second place finish at the Old School Player’s Ball (which I would have of course flew in for, but it was on the exact day I was leaving for a family vacation at Disney World, one of the few things I get as excited about as playing Old School). Because of this, I knew he was playing a very counter heavy version of Arabian aggro, so I knew REB would be great, when in general they are only medium against him. So I brought in all 4, whereas if I did not know his decklist I would have probably brought in 1 or 2 only as I have other sideboard cards against him (Swords, Control Magic). I tell him this as I am doing it and we have a good laugh about it. Game 2 it’s my turn to mulligan and I keep a sketchy 6. He just runs me over, dropping his hand and Timetwistering (his 61st card!!!!). Both of these games were blowouts, so I was hoping for a real game in Game 3. Like I truly wanted that to happen, I was not just saying it like people do in other more mainstream (for now) formats. You know like when they say “oh sorry” after your double mulligan or whatever. Now that I think about it, Old School is the only format where I reply “You too” when my opponent wishes me luck. I usually just say thanks. Truly the greatest Magic format and greatest community, it is Magic as Richard Garfield intended.
Well I got my wish in Game 3 – it was pretty epic. I got off to a great start, with a Mox and a Sol Ring on the play. A couple turns later I had Mind Twist and 5 mana, and he had 6 cards in hand. I did not want to play Mind Twist into his untapped mana. On his turn he drew and played an Erhnam, tapping out. I Swords’d it, and hoped to draw another mana source so I could hit 5 out of his 6 cards. I did not, so I just twisted away 4 out of his 6, still pretty deece. On his turn he draws, says the words “Land for the turn” as he plays Library (this can’t be good) and then casts the Timetwister I missed with my Mind Twist! I at least drew into a Strip Mine for his Library, but he still got a card off of it. On his next turn, he casts Erhnam, which I allow, intending to Control Magic it on my turn, which I do. He plays Chaos Orb, targets the Control Magic, but misses his flip!!! From there it was not too rough, as the Twister drew me into mostly action and now I had his stolen his Djinn. I have lethal on the board, he has nothing, but I am at 7. On his turn he draws, plays Regrowth for Timetwister, hoping to draw a Psi Blast and a Bolt. He draws 2 Bolts! He can get me to exactly 1, but I untap and kill him. Really epic game with tons of huge swings.
1-1. Farkas 2-0.
Round 3 vs. Joseph Alane
Joseph was on G/R/W. Apes, Ehrnams, Swords, Bolts, Disenchants, and lots of Sylvans. He had Channel and a full set of Fireballs too. And some Forks. Honestly a lot of similar cards, at least in style, to my deck. But my last 5 cards are Ancestral, Time Walk, Braingeyser, Demonic, and Mind Twist, whereas his are like 3 Sylvans, Regrowth, and Fork. Not really a fair fight. This was a theme throughout the weekend. Game 1 is relatively even. He draws multiple Sylvans, but I draw multiple Disenchants, which is quite lucky as those are basically his only targets for those. He Forks my Ancestral at some point, but I have been nickel and diming him all game and eventually deal the last few with a Dib that he cannot Bolt. Game 2 was more of the same, I think I sideboarded out 2-3 Disenchants, a Power Sink, and a Fireball for Control Magics and the 4th Swords. I am likely a much bigger favorite after board, and the game played out exactly that way, partially due to his medium draws, but mostly due to all my blue cards.
2-1. Farkas 3-0.
Round 4 vs. Nam Tran
At this point I was quite buzzed, prolly 5 deep. This was my first match against The Deck, and I am still not sure how I won. He won the roll, got off to a great Decky start countering and killing my stuff, and played a Tome that I did not have a Disenchant for. He was still at like 16 at this point and I honestly was about to concede, but I figured I would play a little longer to see his wincon – was he on Moat/Abyss/Serra/something new I have never even seen before? Then I won. Holy Pikula! I ripped a Disenchant which somehow resolved, and he kept drawing lands while I drew threats. I honestly must have been 95% to lose at that point. Misers be misin,’ as they say. I really like the matchup after sideboard, as of course I hate The Deck and everyone who plays it with a fiery passion (um, except for you Nam). I cut 3 Swords, 3 Bolts, and some other card (usually the 4th Bolt) for 4 REB and 3 Dust to Dust. I mulligan and keep an ok hand in Game 2, but he has it all again, and eventually gets to a point where he has 2 Disrupting Scepters out and I am hellbent with nothing on board. I was about to concede again. I draw Braingeyser for the turn, normally the perfect card, but I only have one blue mana, so I say go. For some reason he forgets to Scepter me, possibly drunk so he forgot? So I get to go, hoping (a) to draw a blue source and (b) that he has no counter. I draw Ancestral. Oh mise. I cast it, and he doesn’t counter!! I draw into Lotus and Braingeyser for like 5, get a Dust to Dust and pull out another unwinnable game. I have never really played a game like that, especially as I am an AGGRESSIVE conceder (like if my opponent Ancestrals on Turn 1 and I don’t have mine I seriously consider conceding). Maybe that is a bad strategy? Yet here I played back to back games where I won from horrible positions, it was pretty insane. Had I not lost Round 1, I might be starting to think this was my day.
3-1, Farkas 4-0. I believe this was also the round that we realized Farkas had a huge dick drawn on one of his beta Control Magics. I own like 10 of them and must have given him that one by accident? Or maybe on purpose, who knows. Anyway, that’s another thing about Speds, we love drawing dicks. Mostly on Magic cards, but we don’t discriminate, we will draw them anywhere. It’s not even that big of a deal, something like 8% of kids do it or whatever. It was only out of respect for Jaco that we did not pepper that room with penises using the sharpies he generously provided for autographing each other’s Argothian Pixies.
Round 5 vs. Matt Moss
Now this guy is a true miser. He is a Lord of the Pit, but I thankfully did not know it at the time, as I would have been quite intimidated. He is very hammered, as he is carrying around a handle of gin, and I believe he is gunning for the heaviest drinker trophy. He is on UW, but not The Deck. He has all the usual UW stuff, but Serras/Dibs/Moats instead of Tomes/Septers/The Abyss. I can certainly respect that. At this point the games are getting kinda hazy for me. I know Game 1 he rolled me pretty good. I saw no Moats, but given he was UW with Serras and Dibs I should have realized this, but alcohol/etc. Game 2 I roll him, pretty sure I Mind Twisted him for the full amount with Blast backup on like Turn 4. Game 3 was another doozy. It is kind of back and forth, we kill each other’s things, while I have a Lion out doing some light work though, and I get him to around 10 or 12, when he drops a Moat. I have a Disenchant or 2 left in the deck, but that is bad for me as it turns off almost all of my dudes. He plays a Dib, which I Control Magic. He Disenchants, and I decide to Swords it now as I will gain the life and I am likely to have to Swords it anyway. I have another Control Magic in my hand though, and could just run it back, but I felt like it would be fine to just Control the next thing he played. This may have been a mistake though, as he clearly did not have any answers to the Dib at that point, so if I take it back it might just go the distance. As it stood we both had nothing going on and were just hoping to draw gas, and he was a lot better at it than I was. He drew another flyer, which I Controlled, and he Disenchanted. I did draw my miser’s Fireball, which at the last second I had sideboarded back in (took it out for game 2) over a Bolt as it seemed like he did not have many Factories. He had countered a ton of stuff this game, I think using all 4 Counterspells and his Mana Drain. I went for it, rather than wait for a Blast, Fireball for 9 (he had taken some city damage), to kill him, but he had Power Sink. He then drew 2 more flyers over the next few turns and started doing some real damage, but time was called. I was at 9 and he had 2 more attacks with a Serra and a Dib. I had just a Dib out. He attacks with both, I block Dib, take 4, go to 4 on my upkeep. I draw nothing, he attacks, I chump block Serra, go to 1, and the game is a draw.
Except in Old School there are no draws, any game that ends in a draw goes to sudden death Chaos Orb flips! He won the roll, so he got to go first, which I think is an advantage as it puts more pressure on me. Anticlimactically, he missed his first flip, and I nailed mine as I always do. 50 pushups and 50 Orb flips a night, every night, no exceptions. I did not miss a flip all weekend, prolly went 30 for 30, including side events and fun games. Matt took this loss really well, as he obviously would have won next turn unless I ripped something, plus he missed his first Orb flip. Great guy, great match, whole thing was back and forth, full of haymakers, and ended with an Orb flip; quintessential Old School.
4-1, Farkas 5-0.
Round 6 vs. Chris Bergeson
Chris was on Goblins. Not Mono Red though, he was splashing at least blue for Power, as well as a light splash of white and green. Game 1 is going ok, as he has a couple of goblins and like 4 cards in hand. Then he Chain Lightings me, Goblin Grenades me, and drops Lotus in to Wheel of Fortune! This guy! He drew a little more burn off his Wheel, and that was that. COP Red time. Game 2 my Serendibs did serious work. They knocked him pretty low, and when he eventually double Bolted one the game was basically over. Game 3 I had Library and he had no Strip! That is basically ggs right there, but I also followed that with a Turn 3 COP Red. I drew a lot of lands off Library so it took me a while to actually kill him, but it was inevitable from Turn 1. There were a lot of these sorts of red decks in the tourney, many of which, like Chris, did very well. Pre-tourney I was unsure of the COP Red slot, but it more than earned its keep today. I would not play without it going forward. At some point in this match I ran a Lion into a goblin with Pendelhaven out, but I think it was Game 3 and I was so far ahead nothing mattered. I would love to blame the alcohol for that one but I think I just fell for an on board trick.
5-1, Farkas 6-0! Only 2 undefeateds left!
Round 7 vs. Nathan Mullen
Nathan is another Lord of the Pit. He is also a dead ringer for McLovin from Superbad. In fact his whole aura is very McLovin-ish, other than his tats. This is not at all to say he is not pure gas, as he clearly is (also very much like McLovin). I am just surprised the other Chicago guys have not nicknamed him McLovin yet. Nate is on the W/G/R deck that he and Jaco played to Top 4 finishes at the Old School Player’s Ball. Lions, Apes, Pixies, Preachers, Burn, Swords, Disenchants, plus 3 Sylvans and 2 Bazaars for his card draw/selection engine. I basically knew his exact list, whereas he had no real idea what the hell I was on. I’m sure that made a difference during sideboarding. This is another matchup where our first X cards are very similar, but then I play Ancestral/Walk/Geyser/Mind Twist/Tutor, whereas he plays 3 Sylvans and 2 Bazaars. He cannot usually even pay life with Sylvan as I am so aggressive. Game 1 he has a Preacher I cannot kill, and I flood out, and he beats me pretty easily. I sideboard in Earthquakes and the 4th Swords, for I think 2 Disenchants and a Power Sink. Possibly the other way around. Sink is a lot worse on the draw, especially against his super low curve, and Disenchant really only hits Sylvan, and I guess his Factories, but I know he only plays 2. I don’t remember the details of Game 2, but I am able to pull it out without a ton of trouble. Game 3 got a little weird. I am way ahead after Mind Twisting his hand away on like turn 4. It was only 3 cards, but they were all gas. I still have a lot of life (16?), and he does not play Wheel or Twister, so I like my chances. I topdeck a Lion, play it, say go. He draws, says go. I draw a blank, say go. He draws, does nothing, says go. I draw, and say go. He draws, plays a Javelineer, and says go. I draw, play a land, and say go. He untaps, shoots my Lion. I’m like what is this sorcery? What Lion did he shoot? Oh the one I cast 3 turns ago that I NEVER ATTACKED WITH because it was kinda hiding out under my Mox for some reason. We were very scrunched this round, so my cards were all on top of each other, but I mean that was just embarrassing. Next turn I drew Library, stripped his Bazaar, and he had no Strip for me. I waited a couple turns to get up to 7 cards, eventually I drew a Dib and a Serra, and that was that.
This round I also sat next to this complete miser Dominic Dotterer. He is another Lord, and an all-around great guy (redundant I know, but I assume some readers do not fully understand how broken the Lords are). Dom was also vying for the heaviest drinker award, and was one of the frontrunners. Dom was playing against the baggy guy who angle shot his opponent’s The Abyss in Round 1. I felt obligated to point this out. The guys tried to defend his play as “ethical” somehow. I mean his play may have been technically correct (although I am not sure about this), but ethical is just about the opposite of what I would call him. When my opponent plays The Abyss, I don’t even mention the word trigger, or do anything involving the actual rules of Magic, I just sac a dude on my upkeep like a gentleman. He got all hot and bothered, said he was doing the guy a favor so that he won’t make the same mistake next time!!! I eventually let it go, but not before making it clear that the whole room thought he was a bag.
I was 6-1 at this point. Farkas lost to fall to 6-1. In Game 3 he missed an Orb flip on a Control Magic that would have won him the match. Orb flipping is a legitimate skill in Old School. Practice those flips kids! So there is only 1 undefeated left now, the guy who beat Farkas. He literally flew in from New Zealand just to play in this tourney, but forgot his deck, so had to make a deck here with whatever scraps he could rustle up! It was actually very similar to our deck, minus 6 lands! I’m not exactly sure what that means for my deckbuilding skills. He basically cut 6 lands from our deck and ran Tundra Wolves and Unstable Mutation instead. It was really an amazing story in so many ways.
In the Old School tournament there was no Top 8 playoff, they run Swiss+1. You play whatever the correct number of rounds is for the number of people in the tourney, and then 1 more after that instead of a playoff. So generally tiebreakers are extremely important for actually winning the tourney. I figure I am out of the running given my Round 1 loss, but Farkas obviously has great breakers as he started 6-0, so we think he has a real shot to finish 1st overall if he wins his last round and the New Zealander loses.
Round 8 vs. John Grudzina
I had seen John playing The Deck earlier, so I knew I was in for a battle. At least, given his deck choice, he is playing the most gorgeous Deck possible. All Alpha/Beta and really crisp cards. One of the few decks in the room that looked better than mine. These games were not actually that close though. Game 1 I played a dude or 2, and dealt him some damage until he Balanced, which killed my guys, but brought him down to 2 cards. He followed it up the turn after with a Tome, but I had a Disenchant. I topdecked a Serendib that went the rest of the way on its own. I think I am generally a small dog to The Deck Game 1, and a deece favorite after board, so I was feeling pretty good here. Out go the Bolts and Swords, in come the REBs and Dust to Dust. I think he mulliganed this game. I resolved an early Ancestral on his upkeep after Red Blasting his counter, and drew Library, which he could not find a Strip Mine for, and that was game. I probably drew 10 extra cards. He Mind Twisted 3 of them away at some point, but I just played draw/go for 3 turns to get back up to Library. Again it took a while to finish him because I drew a lot of air, but no one can come back from that. I did Dust to Dust a Tome and a Mox at one point which felt pretty good. In case you haven’t noticed, Library is just busted in this format. It is the best card by a mile. If someone has one going and the other guy can’t kill it, nothing else matters.
Farkas won his last round against Douchy Von Baggerson, who was on mono red, while at 1 life in Game 3! Douchy was very upset, it was great. So Farkas and I are both 7-1, but Gene (the New Zealander) also won his last round, so he was the clear winner of the tourney as the only 8-0. I wasn’t even upset about it, as his story was unreal. I will say it is mildly insane how few mana sources he ran: 19 lands/Moxes, plus a Lotus. I played 25 lands/Moxes plus a Lotus and Sol Ring, and I kinda wanted another! But his story is just so damn old school, he literally opened his trade binder an hour before the tourney to build a deck. Very fitting ending to the tourney. Farkas ended up in 2nd as predicted, and somehow my tiebreakers were great despite losing in rd 1 and I ended up in 3rd. Farkas won a City of Brass, and I won an Alpha Regrowth, which I believe is my 4th, so now I am pot committed to playing some 4 Regrowth deck in Type 1 at some point. Farkas gave me the City as a thank you for brewing the deck, breaking the format, and handing him a fully powered deck right before the tourney. This is slightly less generous than it sounds, as the city is going right into the 2000+ card cube that us Speds have been playing for 22 years every time we get together (yes we invented Cube draft, and for the record it is called Broken draft). We basically just shuffled 2000 random cards together in 1995 and started making packs to draft because draft is the purest and best form of Magic. The cube is a living breathing thing however. Every time we get together we vote out the worst cards and then vote in some new spice that we like from a new set or an old set, whatever you want to nominate is fine. The Broken Draft currently has 5+ sets of Power (6 Ancestrals because mise, 5 of everything else). Yes I have Ancestraled into Ancestral, and it feels better than you are imagining. Oh and for the love of god, the card is called Ancestral, not Recall. Recall is an entirely different card. If you are the kind of person who, after casting Ancestral, says “Recall?” kindly close this tab in your browser.
At this point we are starving and the Omni hotel staff is kicking us out. So we walk back to our hotel with our foster children Will and Chris, who came a couple hours ago to cheer their elders on. We go to this meatball place across the street from the hotel which was surprisingly great. We all finish our food except for Will who ordered double meatballs so he takes them to go. Back in the room Will is trying to get to sleep for Type 1 Worlds the next day, as he is apparently some kind of master of the format, while Farkas and I are trying to brew something for Chris to play. Oh and Farkas and I decided to just skip Type 1 because we would be too tired/hungover to brew and play anything at this point. Chris really only has cards for Dredge, but Farkas and I say we will pay his entry fee if he plays whatever we build for him. He is on board, so Farkas and I get right to work figuring out the correct number of Chaos Orbs for him to play. I only have 3 real Chaos Orbs, but I have like 7 IE/CE, so I feel like 10 is the right number. This strategy gets tossed when Farkas has an idea to brew a deck called “Not Great Bob” based on the iconic scene in Mad Men where, after getting some bad news, Pete is asked how his day is going in the elevator after work and replies “Not great Bob.”
This is one of the funnier jokes in the kingdom of Sped. The joke (like all jokes) gets funnier the more often and louder you say it. It is so prevalent that we sometimes just write or say ngb to save time because we say it so often. We played the clip for Will and Chris and they are not exactly impressed. Anyway, the deck was based around Confidants, comboing with Emrakul, Draco, and Autochthon Wurm. The plan was to play Bob, reveal a 15 drop, and then hopefully die, so that when your friends asked you how the round went you could reply “Not great Bob.” You could also say this every time you revealed a 15 drop to your Bob during the match. The deck also played the Nourishing Shoal engine so you could reveal the Wurm, gain 15 life and then combo again. The deck also ran Death’s Shadow as an actual combo after a Not Great Bob hit. In the end we passed out before actually building the deck and Chris just ran Dredge, but man that would have been a great story. For those interested, the deck is also playable in Legacy. You lose Top, so your Bob hits are sometimes great, but the meat and potatoes are still there.
Friday
Those guys leave at 8:00am for Type 1, while Farkas and I try to figure out what to play at the Old School side event. We both need to win side events at some point so we can get into the Revised Sealed deck they are running on Sunday, where you open a Revised Sealed deck that is a part of your pool, and then draft Eternal Masters to finish out your deck. Oh and house rule that Contract from Below is a 1 mana draw 7. It was VERY important for us to qualify for this. Because of this, we both just ran back Temple of Sped from yesterday with 1 tiny change. Farkas, a control player at heart, really wanted a main deck Earthquake in his White Weenie deck so he cut the Fireball, moved an Earthquake to the main, and added a Blue Elemental Blast to the board. I changed nothing. We got bagels again, and went over to the venue around 10:30. There were tons of awesome artists there selling all sorts of cool stuff. I bought a couple of cool prints from R.K Post from The Nightmare Before Christmas (What’s this?) and Peter Pan (Second star to the right and straight till morning) for my kids. Farkas bought the original art to Bewilder from Time Spiral. He collects Magic original art, and has like 15-20 originals. He was also planning on buying this insane Chaos Orb print from Mark Tedin that was done on metal, but when he went back to buy it someone had already scooped it.
Old School started at noon, and only had 11 people! I figured it was all but a certain one of us would 4-0, possible both of us depending on how the chips fell. It turned out that someone was me. At 3-0 I played against a B/R deck that felt like a bad matchup as he had Hymns and Blood Moons (the scariest cards for me), but I won a tight Game 3 after killing his second Blood Moon off a topdecked Mox Pearl with a full grip. Farkas went 3-1, putting our combined record with the deck at 21-3 on the weekend. Also here is a board state I witnessed in this tournament:
It was 3:45 at this point, and there was a Modern Masters 2HG tourney at 4:00. We hopped in, after Farkas lost the CCR for the $100 buy-in. We opened what I think was a medium pool but who knows really. Farkas ended up with a U/R affinity/Control deck with 2 Thoughtcasts, Bolt, Electrolyze, and Niv-Mizzet. He played 41 cards because we could not figure out what to cut, plus the mana felt better at 17/41 (hah!). I on the other hand, played a full on masterpiece. I had 3 Skyreach Mantas and a Matca Rioters, plus that 2/2 flyer for R3 you can cast form your graveyard for BGURW as a 4/4. I also had 2 Rampant Growths, 4 Ravnica bouncelands, and 2 land cyclers. But that is not the half of it. I also played an Eye of Ugin to go |
and if it's worth the businesses' while we'll try to promote it again, maybe even monthly," she said.
Old-fashioned Poke-fun
But if a smartphone game isn't your thing, there's also an opportunity to go old-school.
The Stellarton Library is holding an old-fashioned scavenger hunt for Pokemon on Thursday, Aug. 25 from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Librarian Trecia Schell says the branch staff wants to appeal to original players, as well as kids. Participants can hunt for Pokemon on original playing cards, and create their own.
"It's a great way for families to experience it together, too," said Schell. "It's a way for everyone, including ourselves, to learn more about the Pokemon craze — both the high-tech version on your phone and the traditional vintage version that some of us may have grown up with."What's in the Box?
More than 200 High-Quality Components!
1 Oversized Game Board
15 Scribe Pawns (3 x 5 Colors)
5 Victory Points Markers (Cubes)
61 Gold Cards (18 ones, 12 twos, 12 fives, 9 tens, 10 twenties)
5 Theft Cards
39 Favor Tokens
15 Stones
15 Pyramids
15 Double Pyramids
4 Offering Tiles
48 Farmer Tokens
1 Starting Player Token
1 Rulebook
Rule Like an Egyptian
Welcome to the shifting sands of your Egyptian Empire! The land is fertile, fed by the waters of the Nile, and will produce a bountiful harvest should you give the word. You can build your legacy stone by stone until towering pyramids rest before you. These masterful feats of engineering will stand the test of time, but you'll have to build them first!
In Amun-Re, players take on the mantle of Egyptian royalty as they divide up the land in auctions. Gain control of a province and send farmers to work it so that you will have the resources necessary to build it up and leave your mark for kingdoms to come. Can you outbid your rivals and build a Kingdom that will stand the test of time? This is Amun-Re!
Fight Over Provinces!
The core of Amun-Re involves auctions in which players will attempt to outbid each other for control of various provinces. The player that bids the most will gain control of a province and they will reap any of the rewards or options it entails. The provinces a player controls dictate how much money they can receive, how many favors they can buy, and ultimately how their strategy will play out.
There are two parts to a game of Amun-Re: the Old Kingdom and the New Kingdom. As the game moves from the Old Kingdom to the new, everything players have built up will crumble away, leaving only pyramids behind to mark the achievements of past kingdoms. Players must build a legacy that will last if they wish to come out on top in the end!
Build up your Resources!
In order to build their legacy, players will need resources. Money is power in the world of Amun-Re as it allows players to hire farmers to work their land and produce more money on which to build an empire.
Recruit Farmers
Players will need to spend money to hire farmers that will work their land. For each farmer on a province, the player controlling that province will receive an amount of money as dictated by the offerings made to Amun-Re. Some provinces will produce a set amount of money regardless of the number of farmers on it, so players must plan carefully if they wish to have a steady flow of capital.
Build Pyramids
One way players can spend their hard-earned money is by buying stones to build pyramids. Pyramids built in provinces will provide bonuses to the player controlling the province. As the game shifts to its second phase, the only thing that will remain from the Old Kingdom will be the pyramids that were built previously. Provinces with pyramids will be more valuable than ever as players auction for control of provinces once again.
Acquire Favors
Another option available for players to spend money on is favor cards. Players may buy a number of favor cards as dictated by the symbols in a province they control. These cards can be used for a variety of effects, from cheaper pyramids to free farmers.
Make Offerings to Amun-Re
Players will have an option to make offerings to Amun-Re at the end of every round. The total collective offerings will dictate how high Amun-Re will raise the waters of the Nile and subsequently how much money the provinces will produce. Manage the offering level to best complement your strategy and keep Amun-Re appeased!Bali bombers put to death
Updated
The Indonesian Attorney-General's Office has confirmed that the three Bali bombers have been executed by firing squad for their involvement in the 2002 bombings which killed more than 202 people, including 88 Australians.
A spokesman for the Attorney-General, Jasman Pandjaitan, said all three men have been declared dead.
Earlier news emerged from inside the Bali bombers' prison on Nusakambangan Island in Central Java that the three men - Imam Samudra, 38, Amrozi, 47, and Mukhlas, 48 - were killed.
All three were shot at the same time by three separate firing squads about 12:15am (local time), before a medical team declared them dead.
The bombers' families have also acknowledged the deaths of the three men.
Their bodies have been cleaned and wrapped by family members in preparation for their burials in their home villages in East and West Java later today.
Local news websites are reporting that the three men were driven 10 minutes away to an isolated area within an abandoned prison called Nirbaya, which is also on the island.
The three men were sentenced over the attacks five years ago.
A helicopter will take the remains of Imam Samudra to his village of Serang in West Java.
A brother of Amrozi says his brother is a martyr.
"We confirm that our brother has passed away. Now his soul is flying with the green birds into heaven," he said.
The executions have been repeatedly delayed by a series of failed appeals and most recently, by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in September.
The bombers said they carried out the attacks in retaliation for US-led aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In a statement issued by their lawyers before the executions, the men said their blood would "become the light for the faithful ones and burning hellfire for the infidels and hypocrites".
In an earlier interview, the militants said their only regret was that some Muslims were killed in the blasts.
The two explosions on Bali's Kuta strip on October 12, 2002 - one at Paddy's Bar and the other at the Sari Club - dealt a severe blow to the island's tourist industry.
Travel warning
Yesterday Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the Government was reissuing its travel warning for Indonesia.
People are being warned to reconsider any travel to Indonesia and Bali due to the possibility of reprisal attacks.
Mr Smith says the Government is aware that a large number of Australian students are planning to go to Indonesia for schoolies week from mid-November.
He says they want students and parents to be aware that reprisals could occur.
"The executions could prompt a strong reaction," he said.
"We continue to receive credible information that terrorists could be planning attacks in Indonesia.
"You should exercise great care, particularly around locations such as beaches, bars, malls and other venues associated with foreign interests."
The attacks by the south-east Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) were intended to deter foreigners as part of a drive to make Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, part of a larger Islamic caliphate.
Although there have been no major bomb attacks since 2005, Indonesia is still considered at risk.
The Indonesian anti-terrorist unit, Detachment 88, was involved in a series of raids last year that authorities say rounded up the heads of JI and its military wing.
- ABC/Reuters
Topics: prisons-and-punishment, law-crime-and-justice, crime, unrest-conflict-and-war, terrorism, bali, indonesia
First postedPremier Jim Prentice warned Friday that spending cuts are coming and tax hikes are under consideration to deal with what he said is the Alberta government’s worst fiscal situation in generations.
In a year-end interview at McDougall Centre, Prentice also said that other capital projects — including new schools promised during the fall byelection campaign — could be deferred along with a planned cancer centre for Calgary that has already been put on hold.
The premier said Alberta is facing an “unprecedented fiscal hole” of $6.25 billion in the upcoming budget year, with a $5-billion shortfall expected the year after — due to falling oil prices.
It adds up to a government financial position worse than during the worldwide recession of 2008-09 or the doldrums of the early-1990s that led to major cuts under Ralph Klein.
“You have to go back a generation — maybe several — to find a time when Alberta has faced some of the challenges that we face now,” said Prentice, who has presided over a whirlwind of activity since becoming premier, including this week’s floor crossing of a majority of Wildrose MLAs into his Progressive Conservative government.
“These are going to be very difficult challenges... 2015 is going to be a pivotal year for our province.”
But opposition leaders said Prentice was launching a scare campaign to prepare the province for cuts likely to have the biggest impact on middle and working class Albertans.
NDP Leader Rachel Notley said Prentice had “descended into complete hyperbole.”
“He can run around with this chicken little routine all he wants but voters have seen this story before. They know it in their sleep. And they’re tired of it,” she said.
Liberal Leader Raj Sherman scoffed at the notion that the government is in worse shape than during the last decade’s recession, when oil fell to under $40 US a barrel.
“He wants to start cutting and he wants to start tightening the belt. He wants to do exactly what Wildrose wants to do,” he said.
However, both Notley and Sherman said the province does need to look at tax measures such as moving to a progressive income tax system or increasing the corporate tax rate.
Prentice reiterated his opposition to a sales tax but affirmed that other tax options — including moving away from the 10 per cent flat tax on personal income — will be looked at.
“We have to look at the revenue side of government and we’re certainly doing that,” he said.
“No decisions have been made on any of these fronts yet.”
The government’s fiscal woes have sprung from a dramatic drop in oil prices over the last three months. The government’s budget was based on $95.22 US a barrel but prices have dipped under the $60 level recently.
Prentice said the government does need to throttle back spending, especially in health, but maintained “we can do this without damaging core public services. That’s clearly a principle I’ve enunciated.”
The premier said the government will also review its capital plan to determine what can be deferred.
That includes 55 new schools promised by the premier during this fall campaign for seats and 50 new schools promised by his predecessor, Alison Redford.
“We’re focused on understanding how the changes to the economy will affect changes to population. Part of the schools we talk about are current needs, some are future needs and we have to make sure we have this all assessed,” he said.
Prentice did stress the importance of building new schools and spoke repeatedly of the need to address the province’s massive infrastructure deficit.
However, Notley and Sherman said Prentice is preparing to break a signature pledge to voters.
“Premier Prentice is doing exactly what Premier Redford did. Saying something before an election to get elected,” said Sherman.
Prentice confirmed that plans for a new cancer centre in Calgary, originally slated to have construction begin in 2016, have been delayed.
Ron Kneebone, an economist at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, said the situation for the government isn’t worse than previous times but is instead almost an exact repeat.
The Tory government has repeatedly “painted itself into a corner” by accelerating spending when energy prices are high, only to be forced to cut when they plummet, he said.
If Prentice wants to truly change things, he must pledge not to let that happen again and commit to banking surpluses for the future once oil prices rise again, said Kneebone.
“Finally … there’s got to be some combination of raising additional revenue — that’s got to be in there — and cutting back on spending,” he said.
[email protected]
Twitter.com/JamesWoodHeraldCONCORD, Calif. —The same SUV that hit and killed a father and his daughter in Concord Easter weekend had been pulled over by police in Walnut Creek a week before the fatal crash, according to the Walnut Creek police log.
Walnut Creek police recorded in their log that an officer made a traffic stop Friday, March 30, and cited a juvenile for weapons and drugs, and the plate matched that of the Escalade involved in the fatal Concord crash.
The 17-year-old driver had lost control of his SUV while he was speeding down Treat Boulevard and struck and killed a father and his daughter as they rode their bikes Saturday, April 7.
It's been more than two weeks, but Steven Pierce said he clearly remembers the night police stopped a white SUV in front of his home on Naranja Drive in Walnut Creek.
"(I) saw the police, saw a white SUV. They had a dog in the SUV sniffing around, and then the police spent quite a while going through the SUV themselves," Pierce said.
One week later, police said, the same white Cadillac Escalade was the one that veered onto a sidewalk and struck Solaiman Nuri, 41; 9-year-old Hadessa Nuri; and Nuri's 12-year old daughter.
Solaiman Nuri and his daughter Hadessa were killed. The other daughter suffered minor injuries.
Officers arrested the teenage driver.
Police confirmed the license plate of the teen's SUV matched the plate found in the Walnut Creek police log.
The driver's father declined to speak with KTVU after a crew approached the family's home Thursday night.
A friend and neighbor of the victims said this new information makes the incident even more frustrating.
"Who takes responsibility for that?" said Steve Saiz, the victims' neighbor. "Who's going to make the call and say, 'This should not have happened?'"
Last week, the teen driver was released from juvenile hall because charges have not yet been filed.
Concord police now say the investigation could take another three weeks to complete.
Photo caption: Bicycle and car in Concord crash (KTVU)Norway has taken out a front-page advertisement in a major Afghan newspaper warning would-be migrants that potential asylum seekers “will be returned by force”, while the Belgian asylum secretary has written directly to migrants asking them not to come.
The headline of the ads, on the front pages of the Afghanistan Times and the Hasht-e-subh newspapers, read “Stricter immigration regulations in Norway – important information!”.
The print campaign began on Monday. A justice ministry spokesman said they may run next week as well and that Norway was considering doing the same in other countries.
One of the largest groups of asylum seekers are Afghans. Norway considers Kabul relatively safe even though much of Afghanistan remains chronically unstable amid continued fighting between the Western-backed government and Taliban militants.
“Afghans without need for asylum coming the #Arctic_route from #Russia, risk being sent to #Kabul. 500 returned from #Norway 2014/15,” a tweet from the immigration directorate read.
It was a reference to the northern route taken by some migrants in contrast to a majority that travels through Turkey and into Greece.
Norwegian embassies are also active in spreading the information.
Norway’s campaign emulates a similar move by Denmark, which in September published advertisements in Lebanese media outlining recent government measures including cuts of up to 50 percent in benefits for asylum seekers.
While it is yet to be seen whether Norway’s newspaper adverts will deter newcomers, it will at least be seen by thousands, quite possibly unlike Belgium’s effort this week. Already fending off accusations that the nation has become a haven for Islamist ‘sleepers’ and now resembles a “failed state”, the Belgian government’s announcement to migrants may add to their embarrassment.
Liked just 59 times, and shared 16 times compared to the 15,100 followers for the Norwegian effort, the message self-consciously signs itself off “This is a genuine message of the Belgian government”, perhaps anticipating it not being taken entirely seriously.
Emanating from the desk of Belgian State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Theo Francken, the message tells would-be migrants: “Paying smugglers to get you to Europe is a waste of money, a waste of time, brings you or your loved ones in very dangerous situations and this without any guarantee of success. Do not put faith in false promises by smugglers or social media!”
“The Belgian government can and will refuse to decide your asylum claim when fingerprints are registered in another European member state… A rejection of your asylum claim will result in an order to leave the country within 30 days. If you don’t leave voluntarily, then Belgium will return you by force to Kabul”.
The media campaigns by Norway and Belgium follow a similar initiative by Denmark in September, advertising changed in migration rules as a means to deter attempts to claim asylum. Printed in a number of foreign newspapers including titles in Turkey and the Lebanon, the advert informed migrants that the benefits they could claim in the country had been halved by the new government, and receiving the money depended on them taking Danish lessons and integrating into society.
Reuters Contributed To This ReportWhen a Washington Post columnist fell for a fake news story on the "satire" site Daily Currant a few weeks ago, Breitbart.com's John Nolte suggested the paper was without "a shred of self-awareness, integrity, and dignity" and wrote that it "never... let facts get in the way of a good Narrative."
Of course, that was before his own outlet got fooled by the exact same "satire" site. Over the weekend, Breitbart.com's Larry O'Connor published a post based on a Daily Currant item with the title "Paul Krugman Declares Personal Bankruptcy." The Daily Currant had its piece picked up by an Austrian magazine, and in turn by a blog called The Prudent Investor, which is republished on Boston.com (a property owned by Krugman's employers at The New York Times). "Krugman Files for Bankruptcy," O'Connor crowed:
In his post, O'Connor jabbed Krugman for supposedly spending "$84,000 in one month" on Portuguese wines and "a dress from the Victorian period," and concluded that "apparently this Keynsian [sic] thing doesn't really work on the micro level."
O'Connor's post was deleted without explanation. (Later, on Twitter, he wrote that he'd trusted Boston.com.) In a post on his blog today, Krugman admitted that he'd seen the false reports but kept quiet because he "wanted to wait and see which right-wing media outlets would fall for the hoax."
This is your monthly reminder that The Daily Currant is not a news source but a "satire" site whose output is largely limited to semi-believable political wish-fulfillment articles distinguished by a commitment to a complete absence of what most people would recognize as "jokes."
[Media Matters]An electrical current is pumping into T.J. Oshie when he is working out, when he is warming up before games, when he is recovering after them and when he is sleeping, roughly 12 hours a day in all.
The Washington Capitals forward is one of roughly 75 NHL players who make the Accelerated Recovery Performance (ARP) machine part of their daily routine. Electrodes are attached to him as often as shoes are.
In large part because of player testimonials — proponents include Chicago’s Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith and Minnesota’s Zach Parise — the ARP has become a more common sight in NHL locker rooms, though teams don’t endorse the machine. It is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but a neurologist and a physical therapist interviewed for this story said that while the ARP doesn’t do any harm, the evidence for it being a benefit is empirical and anecdotal.
In the Capitals’ locker room, Oshie and defenseman Taylor Chorney are the most avid ARP users, even putting electrodes on their forehead because “it feels like you’ve had five cups of coffee,” Chorney said. Their enthusiasm eventually spread to defensemen Karl Alzner and John Carlson.
The device releases an electrical impulse to signal the brain to lengthen certain muscles, with the intent of increasing flexibility and blood flow and breaking down scar tissue. The sensation is one of prickling or tingling. One machine is intended for therapeutic purposes, while a variation is designed for training. Each is portable, small enough to fit in a backpack. Cords hang from each machine, connecting the electrodes to it, and a touch screen at the front has a timer and settings to control the pulse frequency and flow of the current.
A detail photo of the ARP device T.J. Oshie is attached to as many as 12 hours a day. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
“Last year we were the outcasts, and everybody was kind of looking at us like we were idiots,” Chorney said. “You’re putting it on your forehead, and they’re wondering what the heck is going on. Guys get curious.”
[Capitals eager for opportunity to end Blue Jackets’ long winning streak]
Oshie had been having chronic lower-back pain when his roommate and St. Louis Blues teammate Chris Porter suggested he try using the machine as a way to warm up before a game. The pain went away almost instantly, and Oshie was hooked.
When Oshie broke his ankle in November 2010, he rented an ARP to use throughout his rehab. Electrodes were attached to him between 16 and 20 hours a day. He was back on the ice in January, a month ahead of schedule.
“That kind of sold me there,” Oshie said.
When Oshie was traded to Washington in the summer of 2015, he started working with EVO UltraFit and owner Jay Schroeder, and a lot of the training program involved the ARP. Schroeder uses the ARP on himself and also said his dog sleeps with electrodes attached to it every night. (Schroeder cautioned that the ARP is unsafe for cats.)
Schroeder is available on call for Oshie, and if Oshie wakes up from a pregame nap with a stiff neck, for example, he can text Schroeder for immediate instructions about how to work out the stiffness with the ARP.
Part of Schroeder’s service to Oshie is occasional visits, and he was in town this fall when Oshie injured his shoulder against the Detroit Red Wings on Nov. 18. Oshie said he was using the ARP 13 to 14 hours a day when he was injured, attaching the electrodes as soon as he put his two daughters to sleep. That, coupled with the work of Washington’s training staff, had him back in the lineup after seven games, slightly earlier than expected, Capitals Coach Barry Trotz said.
[D.C. Sports Bog: Ovi-Time: Looking back at Alex Ovechkin’s overtime goals]
Alzner used the ARP about a month before training camp as he was recovering from sports hernia surgery and a groin injury. But he admitted to being nervous to try it.
“It doesn’t seem right, you know?” Alzner said. “It’s weird to see what your muscle does when it’s on, how it moves and it contracts. It just doesn’t seem right. Then once you figure out exactly what it’s doing and get some more information on it, then it starts to make more sense.”
As Capitals center Jay Beagle recovered from a broken hand last season, he was struggling to get the swelling to go down, so Oshie suggested Beagle try using his ARP for a few weeks. It seemed to work, but Beagle still remained slightly skeptical.
“I just don’t know if it actually works,” Beagle said. “I don’t like doing things that don’t help, you know what I mean? But I think it did help. It helped the swelling get out. Would it have been the same thing — you know, it was a two-week process — so would it have been the same with ice and all that?”
Research on the ARP and similar electrical stimulation devices is sparse. The lone independent study of the ARP was conducted at the University of Hawaii medical school, which tested 25 patients recovering from anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. It concluded that the ARP “significantly improves” quadriceps strength after ACL surgery.
“A lot of it is the anecdotal evidence that the players really, really stand by it and say, ‘This seems to give me an edge,’ ” said John Bottoms, a physical therapist at TRIA Orthopaedic Center in Minnesota. “If they feel that ARP gives them that, that’s beneficial to them... I haven’t seen any negative effects, so if I have an athlete that says, ‘I want to do ARP,’ I would never say, ‘I don’t think you should do that.’ ”
[Justin Williams continues his hot offensive stretch with three-point night]
Beagle isn’t against the ARP and respects the teammates who use it every day, but he also isn’t shy in teasing them about it, joking that it’s “a toaster.”
“Sometimes a certain player — I’m not going to say who — will sit there with it on and say, ‘I’m getting so warm right now,’ ” Beagle said. “He’s doing a warmup mode on it. I’ll be riding the bike, like hard. And I’ll be like, ‘No, this is warm,’ you know what I mean? I’m getting my body warm, and he’ll just be sitting there with it on his head.”
Along with using the ARP for therapeutic purposes, many players work out with electrodes on their forehead or body. Cords dangle from them as they’re squatting or lunging. Some sleep with it because “it’s a great time to train,” Schroeder said. Alzner initially heard “that you could pretty much sit there and strap it on and it’d be your workouts and you didn’t have to do anything.
“Of course, that piqued my interest,” Alzner said. “That’s a game-changer then, obviously. I can watch TV and work out.”
In reality, it’s the opposite. Oshie and Chorney are part of a group of players who train with Schroeder and EVO UltraFit in Minnesota during the summer. Oshie said the offseason training with it was so intense that he wasn’t sure he could continue on after two weeks.
“It’s a lot of stuff you don’t normally see in a gym,” Islanders forward Anders Lee said. “It’s a lot of iso holds, and you’d be expected to do these lunge holds for five minutes. You’re not allowed to fail basically.”
Schroeder said he has gotten resistance from some NHL teams who aren’t comfortable with him coming to their practice facility. The Capitals don’t endorse the machine, but they understand that players have certain preferences.
“At first, definitely, everyone’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Lee said. “So many guys now around the NHL are using it. I think the number is growing each year. I guess now we’ve gotten past the initial shock value.”Image copyright Newshub Image caption Rod Bray of Northbridge Properties surveys his surprising new problem
A property developer in New Zealand is offering a reward after an entire house was dumped on land in an Auckland suburb.
The graffiti-strewn and derelict bungalow appeared over a week ago on an area that had recently been cleared for a new retail centre in Takanini, to the south of New Zealand's largest city, the Newshub website reports.
But unlike Dorothy's house in the Wizard of Oz, the hovel probably arrived on the back of a truck, rather than being lifted by a tornado.
Rod Bray of developers Northbridge Properties told Newshub that the culprits were probably trying to cut their own demolition costs by fly-tipping the house.
"The options are either pay to have it demolished, or you dump it somewhere else and make it someone else's problem," he said, pointing out that it would cost his company over NZ$20,000 ($13,800; £10,300) to remove it.
Offering a NZ$1,000 ($690; £515) reward for information that might lead to a conviction, Mr Bray said that if those responsible do the decent thing and take the house away, then no further action will be taken, the Papakura Courier reports.
"It's a level up from the old mattresses and household refuse people have been dumping," he said. "It's the first time I have seen a whole house dumped."
Next story: Icelandic women politicians go public on harassment
Reporting by Alistair Coleman
Use #NewsfromElsewhere to stay up-to-date with our reports via Twitter.Jure Grando Alilović or Giure Grando (1579 – 1656) was a villager from the region of Istria (in modern-day Croatia ) who may have been the first real person described as a vampire in historical records. [1] He was referred to as a strigoi, štrigon or štrigun, a local word for something resembling a vampire and a warlock. [2]
Jure Grando lived in Kringa, a small town in the interior of the Istrian peninsula near Tinjan. He died in 1656 due to illness but according to legend, returned from the grave at night as a vampire ( štrigon ) and terrorised his village until his decapitation in 1672. Ana and Nikola Alilović, daughter and son of Jure, fled from Istria to Volterra, Italy at young ages. [3]
The legend tells that, for 16 years after his death, Jure would arise from his grave by night and terrorise the village.[4] The village priest, Giorgio, who had buried Jure sixteen years previously discovered that at night somebody would knock on the doors around the village, and on whichever door he knocked, someone from that house would die within the next few days.
Jure also appeared to his terrified widow in her bedroom, who described the corpse as looking as though he was smiling and gasping for breath, and would then sexually assault her.[5] When Father Giorgio eventually came face to face with the vampire, he held out a cross in front of him and yelled "Behold Jesus Christ, you vampire! Stop tormenting us!"
The bravest of the villagers led by the prefect Miho Radetić chased and tried to kill the vampire by piercing his heart with a hawthorn stick, but failed because the stick just bounced off of his chest.[5] One night later, nine people went to the graveyard, carrying a cross, lamps and a hawthorn stick. They dug up Jure's coffin, and found a perfectly preserved corpse with a smile on its face.[6] Father Giorgio said: "Look, štrigon, there is Jesus Christ who saved us from hell and died for us. And you, štrigon, you cannot have peace!"[6] They then tried to pierce its heart again, but the stick could not penetrate its flesh.[3]
After some exorcism prayers, Stipan Milašić (one of the villagers), took a saw and sawed the head off the corpse. As soon as the saw tore his skin, the vampire screamed and blood started to flow from the cut. According to folklore, peace finally returned to the region after Jure's decapitation.PHILADELPHIA/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A portrait of the engineer at the helm of a speeding Amtrak train that derailed in Philadelphia began to emerge on Thursday as the man’s lawyer said his client could not remember the crash, and rescuers pulled an eighth body from the wreckage.
With the engineer facing intense scrutiny over his role in the accident, Philadelphia police said they launched a criminal investigation into Tuesday’s crash of the New York-bound train. The locomotive and all seven cars jumped the tracks while barreling into a curve at more than 100 miles per hour (160 km per hour), twice the speed limit.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the engineer, identified as Brandon Bostian, 32, fully engaged the train’s emergency braking system seconds before the wreck.
But his attorney, Robert Goggin, said Bostian was unable to recall hitting the brakes or much else about the derailment, which left a trail of twisted metal and human carnage along the tracks, and injured more than 200 people.
NTSB member Robert Sumwalt, updating reporters on the board’s probe into the cause of the wreck, said the engineer has agreed to be interviewed by agency investigators, who were giving him a day or two to recuperate from his injuries first, and that he was entitled to be accompanied by his lawyer.
“We look very much forward to the opportunity to interview him. We appreciate that opportunity. We feel that interview will provide us a lot of information,” Sumwalt said.
While Bostian recovered in seclusion, bits and pieces about his life started to surface. A University of Missouri graduate with a business degree, he has been an engineer for more than four years after working with Amtrak as a conductor, according to his LinkedIn page. While in college, he worked in a Target Corp (TGT.N) store.
Bostian, who hails from Memphis, Tennessee, was described as quiet and unassuming by people who crossed his path in Forest Hills, a middle-class section of Queens where he resides.
Jose Quinones, 65, the superintendent of the large brick building where Bostian makes his home, said he was an easy-going tenant who had lived there for two or three years. While polite, Bostian mostly kept to himself, Quinones said.
He said he was shocked to learn Bostian was involved in the derailment. “I didn’t know he had that kind of job,” he said.
Three workers at the nearby Gloria Pizza shop said Bostian was a regular customer.
“He comes in once or twice a week and orders a slice,” said a man named Tony, who did not want to give his last name. “He’s a nice guy, polite.”
But Yochana Mashat, 58, who lives on the same floor as Bostian described his neighbor as standoffish.
He said he regularly rode the elevator with Bostian but never spoke to him. “He’s like a statue,” Mashat said.
Hours after the derailment, Bostian blacked out his Facebook Inc (FB.O) profile photo while dozens of his Facebook friends wrote comments, offering condolences and encouragement.
Efforts to reach Bostian’s relatives and social media connections were unsuccessful.
“REMEMBERS COMING INTO THE CURVE”
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said the engineer spoke briefly with investigators in the hours after the crash but declined to be interviewed in depth.
Emergency workers and Amtrak personnel inspect a derailed Amtrak train in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania May 13, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
At a news briefing, Police Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan said his department was working with Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams on an investigation.
Bostian was cooperating with authorities, according to Goggin, his lawyer, but had no memory of the crash and no explanation for what happened.
“He remembers coming into the curve, he remembers attempting to reduce speed, but thereafter he was knocked out just like all the other passengers on the train,” Goggin said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program.
Bostian, who suffered a concussion and gash to his head, does not recall deploying the emergency brakes, the lawyer said.
“We will have to wait for his memory to come back or for other facts to be ascertained by the NTSB,” the lawyer said.
Sumwalt said it was common for someone to suffer memory loss after a traumatic event.
While many questions about Tuesday’s wreck remain unanswered, Sumwalt has said the derailment could have been avoided by an advanced safety system called “positive train control” (PTC), which automatically slows or halts trains moving too fast or heading into a danger zone.
Amtrak said it aims to have the technology up and running between Washington and Boston by the end of the year, as required by law. For now, the rail line only has intermittent PTC service, an Amtrak official said.
Authorities have accounted for all 243 people, including five crew, believed to have been on the train when it crashed, the mayor said.
On Thursday morning, a cadaver dog found the body of a passenger in the twisted metal of the first car, Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Derrick Sawyer said.
Slideshow (6 Images)
Litigation stemming from the wreck began on Thursday with the filing of a claim against Amtrak by an employee of the railway who said he was riding train No. 188 as a passenger and suffered a traumatic brain injury and other injuries. The lawsuit seeks more than $150,000 in damages.
The latest fatality to be identified was Robert Gildersleeve, 45, an executive of the environmental company Ecolab.
Mayor Nutter said officials would release no information about the deceased, but seven of them, including Gildersleeve, have been identified by people who knew them.Not to be confused with Syrianska IF Kerburan
Syrianska Football Club, also known as Syrianska FC or simply Syrianska,[2] is a Swedish professional football club based in Södertälje in Stockholm County. The club was founded by Syriac-Aramean immigrants in 1977 as Suryoyo Sportklubb, or Suryoyo SK. In 1986, its name was changed to Syrianska SK. The club adopted its present name as it grew and advanced through the league system. In 2010, after two years in Superettan, Syrianska was promoted to Allsvenskan (the highest tier in Swedish football) for the first time in club history.[3] This made Syrianska FC the 61st team to play in Allsvenskan.[4][5] Since the Syriac (Aramean) people do not have an official national team, Syrianska is often seen as a substitute.[6]
Syrianska FC has a worldwide fan base.[7][8][9] Their promotion to Allsvenskan received extensive coverage on Swedish TV sports programs and in documentaries and domestic and foreign magazines.[10][11][12]
History [ edit ]
Chart showing the progress of Syrianska FC through the Swedish football league system. The shades of gray represent league divisions.
The |
ed by the purple line. We know $y$ and are trying to estimate $w_1$ and $w_2$ from our knowledge of $c_1$ and $c_2$.
The $\ell_1$ solution vector and the the $\ell_2$ solution vector are in blue and green. The norm balls for the solution vectors are also graphed.
When we change $c_1$, we see that the solution tends to minimize the distance between the norm ball and the line of all possible solutions. We can see when we increase $\lambda$, our estimate gets smaller. This makes sense because we are placing more emphasis on this value, and it reaches it’s optimum at the origin.
Change all possible solutions ($c_1 =$ -1.5 )
$\lambda =$ 0.1 $\lambda =$
We can think of this optimization for $\ell_2$ and $\ell_1$ as minimizing the distance between the norm balls and the line of all possible solutions. We see that the $\ell_1$ norm tends to give solutions with more zeros in them such as $(1, 0)$ or $(0, 1)$. The $\ell_2$ solution gives more non-zero values off the axis which means, by definition, the $\ell_1$ solution is more sparse than the $\ell_2$ solution.
Now that we know what tool to use we can start to tackle this cancer problem!
Predicting breast cancer
In a class this semester Rob Nowak and Laurent Lessard introduced a breast cancer dataset described in a New England Journal of Medicine article. This dataset tests cancerous and health patients for gene expression levels (295 patients in total, roughly 8000 genes). We’d like to design a predictor for breast cancer based off levels of gene expression.
In this dataset, we observe if someone has cancer or not, indicated by $\yb$, with each element being $\pm 1$ indicating the presence of cancer. For these 295 patients, this dataset also provides tests the expression levels of 8,000 genes, as expressed by $\Xb$. The $i$th row in $\Xb$ corresponds to $\yb_i$ – it contains the gene expression levels for patient $i$.
In this problem, we’d like to determine how important each gene is for cancer. We will assign a weight to each gene, and a weight of 0 means it’s not at all important. We will assume that the underlying model takes the sign of our prediction, or $\yb = \sign{\left(\Xb\wb\right)}$ where $\sign{\left(\cdot\right)}$ is applied element-wise.
We will solve this problem formulation we saw above, the LASSO problem formulation:
$$ \widehat{\wb} = \arg \min_\wb
orm{\yb - \Xb\wb}_2^2 + \lambda
orm{\wb}_1 $$
As we saw above, it will encourage that most $w_i$’s are 0, or have no importance in determining if someone has breast cancer or not. We saw above why this formulation made sense, but now let’s see how to solve it!
The solution to this optimization problem has no closed form solution meaning we have to find our solution iteratively. We’ll choose to solve this with an alternating minimization method (a method for biconvex optimization).
This method utilizes the fact that both the error term and the regularization parameter term are positive. Given two positive parameters, it’s natural to optimize one then the other to minimize their sum. If you were minimizing the product, it’d be natural to drive one as close to 0 as possible.
A method of alternating optimization is the proximal gradient method with rigorous justification in academic papers. Given suitable loss functions and regularization parameters, this method does two steps (typically in a for-loop):
Take a step towards the solution that minimizes the error as defined by the loss function. This takes a step in the negative gradient (scalar case: derivative) direction because the gradient/derivative points to the direction the function increases. Enforces that the solution that minimizes the loss function should also minimize the regularization function. This takes the solutions found in (1) and enforces that they must be acceptable.
These steps can be written as
$$ \mathbf{z} = \wb_k - \tau
abla F\left(\wb_k\right)) $$
$$ \wb_{k+1} = \arg \min_\wb
orm{\wb - \mathbf{z}} + \tau \lambda
orm{\wb}_1 $$
where $
abla F(\wb_k)$ represents the gradient of $
orm{\yb - \Xb\wb}$ at the point $\wb_k$ (which represents the estimate at iteration $k$) and $\tau$ represents some step size. The equations correspond to steps (1) and (2) above.
The derivations are in the appendix and results in
$$ \mathbf{z} = \wb_k - \tau \cdot 2 \Xb^T \left(\Xb\wb - \yb\right) $$
$$ \wb_{k+1} = \textrm{sign}(\mathbf{z}) \cdot \left(\abs{\mathbf{z}} - \tau\lambda/2\right)_+ $$
where $(\cdot)_+$ is the soft thresholding operator that keeps the positive elements of the input and sets the rest to $0$. All the operations ($\textrm{sign}$, $(\cdot)_+$, multiplication, etc) are done element-wise.
We can implement these functions as follows:
def proximity ( z, threshold ): """ The prox operator for L1 regularization/LASSO. Returns sign(z) * (abs(z) - threshold)_+ where (.)_+ is the soft thresholding operator """ x_hat = np. abs ( z ) - threshold / 2 x_hat [ x_hat < 0 ] = 0 return x_hat * np. sign ( z ) def gradient ( A, x, y ): """ Computes the gradient of least squares loss at the point x """ return 2 * A. T @ ( A @x - y )
We can also implement the alternating minimization. As equations $(1)$ and $(2)$ mention, the output of the gradient step is fed into the proximity operator.
# X is a fat matrix, y a label vector, y_i \in {-1, 1} X, y = breast_cancer_data () # our initial guess; most of the values stay zero w_k = np. zeros ( X. shape [ 1 ]) tau = 1 / np. linalg. norm ( X ) ** 2 # guarantees convergence for k in range ( int ( 1e3 )): z = w_k - tau * gradient ( X, w_k, y ) w_k = proximity ( z, tau * lambda ) # binary classification tends to take the sign # (we're only interested in the proprieties of the weights here, not y_hat) y_hat = np. sign ( A @ w_k )
After wrapping this function in a class, this turns into the basics of sklearn.linear_model.Lasso. I have done this and the source is available on GitHub.
When we find the optimial waits, we don’t want to use all the data. We can save a set of training data and never see it until we test on it. Using only 80% of the dataset to train our weights, we get the following set of weights!
$\lambda = $ 73
With this $\lambda$, this prediction gives accuracy of 81.36% when predicting on 20% dataset of the data reserved for testing. If we had a balanced dataset (we don’t) we’d get accuracy of 50% by flipping a coin. While we don’t have ideal accuracy, we do have a solution with many zeros which is what we set out to do.
The content of this blog post was finding sparse solutions, but how can we improve these results? We are performing binary classification – we’re predicting either “yes” or “no”… but we don’t really use that information. We just naïvely used a least squares loss which penalizes points that are easy to classify and too far on the correct side of the decision boundary!
The next post will focus on support vector machines, classifiers that don’t have punish accuracies that are too correct. They do this by using hinge loss and logistic loss.
Appendix
For ease, we will drop the bold face math, meaning $x := \xb, A := \Ab, y:=\yb$. Also note that all operators are evaluated element-wise (expect matrix multiplication). This applies to $(\cdot)_+$, and use element-wise multiplication and sign operators.
This “proof” details the iterative soft thresholding algorithm. This method can be accelerated by the algorithms FISTA or FASTA by choosing a different step size at each iteration with $\tau_k$.
For rigorous justification why the proximal gradient method is justified, see academic papers.
Least squares gradient
Given $\phi(x) =
orm{Ax - y}_2^2$, the gradient is $2A^T(Ax - y)$.
Proof: We can choose to represent squared error as $(Ax - y)^T (Ax-y)$. Then using intuition from scalar calculus and some gradient identities,
$$ \begin{aligned} x + y &= 1\\ x &= y \end{aligned} $$
$$ \begin{aligned}
abla \phi(x) &= \frac{d (Ax - y)}{dx} \cdot 2\cdot (Ax - y)\\ &= 2 A^T (Ax - y) \end{aligned} $$
Proximity operator
Given the proximity operator for $\ell_1$ regularization as $\phi(x) =
orm{y - x}_2^2 + \lambda
orm{x}_1$, the optimum solution is given by $\widehat{x} = \sign(y)\left(\abs{y} - \lambda/2\right)_+$ where $(\cdot)_+$ denotes the soft thresholding operator.
Proof: The definition of the proximity operator results in a separable equation that allows us to write
$$ \begin{aligned} \phi(x) &=
orm{y - x}_2^2 + \lambda
orm{x_i}_1\\ &= \sum_i (y_i - x_i)^2 + \lambda \abs{x_i} \end{aligned} $$
This equation can be minimized by minimizing each term separately.
$$ \pder{\phi(x)_i}{x_i} = -2(y_i - x_i) + \lambda\pder{\abs{x_i}}{x_i} $$
$$ \pder{x}{y} $$
This last term on the end, $\pder{\abs{x_i}}{x_i}$ is tricky: at $x_i = 0$, this term is not differentiable. After using subgradients to skirt around that fact, we can say that $\pder{\abs{x_i}}{x_i} = \sign(x_i) = \pm 1$ which makes sense when we’re not at the origin.
This function is convex which allows us to set the derivative to 0 and find the global minima.
$$ \pder{\phi(x)_i}{x_i} = 0 = -2(y_i - x_i) + \lambda\sign(x_i) $$
$y_i > 0$ implies that $x_i > 0$ which allows us to write
$$ \Align{ x_i &= y_i - \frac{\lambda}{2}\sign(y_i)\\ &= \sign(y_i) (\abs{y_i} - \lambda/2) } $$
But when $\abs{y_i} < \lambda/2$ we run into difficulty because $y_i > 0 \implies x_i > 0$. To get around this fact, we set all the values where $\abs{y_i} < 0$ to 0 and subtract $\lambda/2$ from the rest (this is detailed further in a StackExchange post). With this, we can now write
$$ x_i = \sign(y_i) \cdot (\abs{y_i} - \lambda/2)_+ $$
where $(x)_+ := \max(x, 0)$.Country in northwest Europe, part of the United Kingdom
This article is about the country. For other uses, see Wales (disambiguation)
Wales (Welsh: Cymru [ˈkəmri] ()) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain.[9] It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in 2011 of 3,063,456 and has a total area of 20,779 km2 (8,023 sq mi). Wales has over 1,680 miles (2,700 km) of coastline and is largely mountainous, with its higher peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), its highest summit. The country lies within the north temperate zone and has a changeable, maritime climate.
Welsh national identity emerged among the Britons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century, and Wales is regarded as one of the modern Celtic nations. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's death in 1282 marked the completion of Edward I of England's conquest of Wales, though Owain Glyndŵr briefly restored independence to Wales in the early 15th century. The whole of Wales was annexed by England and incorporated within the English legal system under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. Distinctive Welsh politics developed in the 19th century. Welsh liberalism, exemplified in the early 20th century by Lloyd George, was displaced by the growth of socialism and the Labour Party. Welsh national feeling grew over the century; Plaid Cymru was formed in 1925 and the Welsh Language Society in 1962. Established under the Government of Wales Act 1998, the National Assembly for Wales holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters.
At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, development of the mining and metallurgical industries transformed the country from an agricultural society into an industrial nation; the South Wales Coalfield's exploitation caused a rapid expansion of Wales' population. Two-thirds of the population live in South Wales, including Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and the nearby valleys. Now that the country's traditional extractive and heavy industries have gone or are in decline, Wales' economy depends on the public sector, light and service industries and tourism.
Although Wales closely shares its political and social history with the rest of Great Britain, and a majority of the population in most areas speaks English as a first language, the country has retained a distinct cultural identity and is officially bilingual. Over 560,000 Welsh language speakers live in Wales, and the language is spoken by a majority of the population in parts of the north and west. From the late 19th century onwards, Wales acquired its popular image as the "land of song", in part due to the eisteddfod tradition. At many international sporting events, such as the FIFA World Cup, Rugby World Cup and the Commonwealth Games, Wales has its own national teams, though at the Olympic Games, Welsh athletes compete as part of a Great Britain team. Rugby union is seen as a symbol of Welsh identity and an expression of national consciousness.
Etymology
The English words "Wales" and "Welsh" derive from the same Germanic root (singular Walh, plural Walha), which was itself derived from the name of the Gaulish people known to the Romans as Volcae and which came to refer indiscriminately to all non-Germanic peoples. The Old English-speaking Anglo-Saxons came to use the term Wælisc when referring to the Britons in particular, and Wēalas when referring to their lands.[10] The modern names for some Continental European lands (e.g. Wallonia, Wallachia and Valais) and peoples (e.g. the Vlachs via a borrowing into Old Church Slavonic) have a similar etymology.[10][11][12][13]
Historically in Britain, the words were not restricted to modern Wales or to the Welsh but were used to refer to anything that the Anglo-Saxons associated with the Britons, including other non-Germanic territories in Britain (e.g. Cornwall) and places in Anglo-Saxon territory associated with Britons (e.g. Walworth in County Durham and Walton in West Yorkshire),[14] as well as items associated with non-Germanic Europeans, such as the walnut.
The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, and Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales. These words (both of which are pronounced [ˈkəm.rɨ]) are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning "fellow-countrymen".[15] The use of the word Cymry as a self-designation derives from the location in the post-Roman Era (after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons) of the Welsh (Brythonic-speaking) people in modern Wales as well as in northern England and southern Scotland (Yr Hen Ogledd) (English: The Old North). It emphasised that the Welsh in modern Wales and in the Hen Ogledd were one people, different from other peoples.[16] In particular, the term was not applied to the Cornish or the Breton peoples, who are of similar heritage, culture, and language to the Welsh. The word came into use as a self-description probably before the 7th century.[17] It is attested in a praise poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan (Moliant Cadwallon, by Afan Ferddig) c. 633.[18] In Welsh literature, the word Cymry was used throughout the Middle Ages to describe the Welsh, though the older, more generic term Brythoniaid continued to be used to describe any of the Britonnic peoples (including the Welsh) and was the more common literary term until c. 1200. Thereafter Cymry prevailed as a reference to the Welsh. Until c. 1560 the word was spelt Kymry or Cymry, regardless of whether it referred to the people or their homeland.[15]
The Latinised forms of these names, Cambrian, Cambric and Cambria, survive as lesser-used alternative names for Wales, Welsh and the Welsh people. Examples include the Cambrian Mountains (which cover much of Wales and gave their name to the Cambrian geological period), the newspaper Cambrian News, and the organisations Cambrian Airways, Cambrian Railways, Cambrian Archaeological Association and the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art. Outside Wales, a related form survives as the name Cumbria in North West England, which was once a part of Yr Hen Ogledd. The Cumbric language, which is thought to have been closely related to Welsh, was spoken in this area until becoming extinct around the 12th century. This form also appears at times in literary references, as in the pseudohistorical "Historia Regum Britanniae" of Geoffrey of Monmouth, where the character of Camber is described as the eponymous King of Cymru.
History
Prehistoric origins
Wales has been inhabited by modern humans for at least 29,000 years.[19] Continuous human habitation dates from the end of the last ice age, between 12,000 and 10,000 years before present (BP), when Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from central Europe began to migrate to Great Britain. At that time sea levels were much lower than today, and the shallower parts of what is now the North Sea were dry land. The east coast of present-day England and the coasts of present-day Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands were connected by the former landmass known as Doggerland, forming the British Peninsula on the European mainland. Wales was free of glaciers by about 10,250 BP, the warmer climate allowing the area to become heavily wooded. The post-glacial rise in sea level separated Wales and Ireland, forming the Irish Sea. Doggerland was submerged by the North Sea and, by 8,000 BP, the British Peninsula had become an island.[20][21] By the beginning of the Neolithic (c. 6,000 BP) sea levels in the Bristol Channel were still about 33 feet (10 metres) lower than today.[22][23][24] John Davies has theorised that the story of Cantre'r Gwaelod's drowning and tales in the Mabinogion, of the waters between Wales and Ireland being narrower and shallower, may be distant folk memories of this time.[25]
Neolithic colonists integrated with the indigenous people, gradually changing their lifestyles from a nomadic life of hunting and gathering, to become settled farmers about 6,000 BP – the Neolithic Revolution.[25][26] They cleared the forests to establish pasture and to cultivate the land, developed new technologies such as ceramics and textile production, and built cromlechs such as Pentre Ifan, Bryn Celli Ddu and Parc Cwm long cairn between about 5,800 BP and 5,500 BP.[27][28][29][30] In common with people living all over Britain, over the following centuries the people living in what was to become known as Wales assimilated immigrants and exchanged ideas of the Bronze Age and Iron Age Celtic cultures. According to John T. Koch and others, Wales in the Late Bronze Age was part of a maritime trading-networked culture that also included the other Celtic nations.[31][32][33][34] This view, sometimes called "Atlantic-Celtic", stands against the view that the Celtic languages have their origins farther east with the Hallstatt culture.[35] By the time of the Roman invasion of Britain the area of modern Wales had been divided among the tribes of the Deceangli, Ordovices, Cornovii, Demetae and Silures for centuries.[25]
Roman era
The Roman conquest of Wales began in AD 48 and took 30 years to complete. Roman rule lasted over 300 years. The campaigns of conquest are the most widely known feature of Wales during the Roman era, because of the spirited, but ultimately unsuccessful, defence of their homelands by two native tribes: the Silures and the Ordovices. Roman rule in Wales was a military occupation, save for the southern coastal region of south Wales, east of the Gower Peninsula, where there is a legacy of Romanisation.[36] The only town in Wales founded by the Romans, Caerwent, is in south east Wales.[37] Both Caerwent and Carmarthen, also in southern Wales, became Roman civitates.[38] Wales had a rich mineral wealth. The Romans used their engineering technology to extract large amounts of gold, copper and lead, as well as modest amounts of some other metals such as zinc and silver.[39] Roman economic development was concentrated in south-eastern Britain, and no significant industries located in Wales.[39] This was largely a matter of circumstance, as Wales had none of the necessary materials in suitable combination, and the forested, mountainous countryside was not amenable to industrialisation. Although Latin became the official language of Wales, the people tended to continue to speak in Brythonic. While Romanisation was far from complete, the upper classes of Wales began to consider themselves Roman, particularly after the ruling of 212 that granted Roman citizenship to all free men throughout the Empire.[40] Further Roman influence came through the spread of Christianity, which gained many followers when Christians were allowed to worship freely; state persecution ceased in the 4th century, as a result of Constantine I issuing an edict of toleration in 313.[40]
Early historians, including the 6th-century cleric Gildas, have noted 383 as a significant point in Welsh history,[41] as it is stated in literature as the foundation point of several medieval royal dynasties. In that year the Roman general Magnus Maximus, or Macsen Wledig, stripped all of western and northern Britain of troops and senior administrators, to launch a successful bid for imperial power; continuing to rule Britain from Gaul as emperor.[42][43] Gildas, writing in about 540, says that Maximus departed Britain, taking with him all of its Roman troops, armed bands, governors and the flower of its youth, never to return. Having left with the troops and Roman administrators, and planning to continue as the ruler of Britain in the future, his practical course was to transfer local authority to local rulers. The earliest Welsh genealogies give Maximus the role of founding father for several royal dynasties, including those of Powys and Gwent.[44][45] It was this transfer of power that has given rise to the belief that he was the father of the Welsh Nation.[41] He is given as the ancestor of a Welsh king on the Pillar of Eliseg, erected nearly 500 years after he left Britain, and he figures in lists of the Fifteen Tribes of Wales.[46]
Post-Roman era
Welsh. The pale blue areas in the east were controlled by Britain in AD 500: The areas shaded pink on the map were inhabited by the Britons, here labelled. The pale blue areas in the east were controlled by Germanic tribes, whilst the pale green areas to the north were inhabited by the Gaels and Picts
The 400-year period following the collapse of Roman rule is the most difficult to interpret in the history of Wales.[40] After the Roman departure from Britain in AD 410, much of the lowlands of Britain to the east and south-east was overrun by various Germanic peoples. Before extensive studies of the distribution of R1b Y-DNA subclades, some previously maintained that native Britons were displaced by the invaders.[47] This idea has been discarded in the face of evidence that much of the population has, at the latest, Hallstatt era origins, but probably late Neolithic, or at earliest Mesolithic origins with little contribution from Anglo-Saxon source areas.[48] However, by AD 500, the land that would become Wales had divided into a number of kingdoms free from Anglo-Saxon rule.[40] The kingdoms of Gwynedd, Powys, Dyfed and Seisyllwg, Morgannwg and Gwent emerged as independent Welsh successor states.[40] Archaeological evidence, in the Low Countries and what was to become England, shows early Anglo-Saxon migration to Great Britain reversed between 500 and 550, which concurs with Frankish chronicles.[49] John Davies notes this as consistent with the British victory at Badon Hill, attributed to Arthur by Nennius.[49] This tenacious survival by the Romano-Britons and their descendants in the western kingdoms was to become the foundation of what we now know as Wales. With the loss of the lowlands, England's kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria, and later Wessex, wrestled with Powys, Gwent and Gwynedd to define the frontier between the two peoples.
Having lost much of what is now the West Midlands to Mercia in the 6th and early 7th centuries, a resurgent late-7th-century Powys checked Mercian advances. Aethelbald of Mercia, looking to defend recently acquired lands, had built Wat's Dyke. According to John Davies, this endeavour may have been with the agreement of Powys king Elisedd ap Gwylog, as this boundary, extending north from the valley of the River Severn to the Dee estuary, gave Oswestry to Powys.[50] Another theory, after carbon dating placed the dyke's existence 300 years earlier, is that it may have been built by the post-Roman rulers of Wroxeter.[51] King Offa of Mercia seems to have continued this consultative initiative when he created a larger earthwork, now known as Offa's Dyke (Clawdd Offa). Davies wrote of Cyril Fox's study of Offa's Dyke: "In the planning of it, there was a degree of consultation with the kings of Powys and Gwent. On the Long Mountain near Trelystan, the dyke veers to the east, leaving the fertile slopes in the hands of the Welsh; near Rhiwabon, it was designed to ensure that Cadell ap Brochwel retained possession of the Fortress of Penygadden." And, for Gwent, Offa had the dyke built "on the eastern crest of the gorge, clearly with the intention of recognizing that the River Wye and its traffic belonged to the kingdom of Gwent."[50] However, Fox's interpretations of both the length and purpose of the Dyke have been questioned by more recent research.[52] Offa's Dyke largely remained the frontier between the Welsh and English, though the Welsh would recover by the 12th century the area between the Dee (Afon Dyfrdwy) and the Conwy, known then as Y Berfeddwlad. By the 8th century, the eastern borders with the Anglo-Saxons had broadly been set.
In 853, the Vikings raided Anglesey, but in 856, Rhodri Mawr defeated and killed their leader, Gorm.[53] The Britons of Wales later made their peace with the Vikings and Anarawd ap Rhodri allied with the Norsemen occupying Northumbria to conquer the north.[54] This alliance later broke down and Anarawd came to an agreement with Alfred, king of Wessex, with whom he fought against the west Welsh. According to Annales Cambriae, in 894, "Anarawd came with the Angles and laid waste Ceredigion and Ystrad Tywi."[55]
Medieval Wales
The southern and eastern parts of Great Britain lost to English settlement became known in Welsh as Lloegyr (Modern Welsh Lloegr), which may have referred to the kingdom of Mercia originally and which came to refer to England as a whole.[nb 1] The Germanic tribes who now dominated these lands were invariably called Saeson, meaning "Saxons". The Anglo-Saxons called the Romano-British 'Walha', meaning 'Romanised foreigner' or'stranger'.[56] The Welsh continued to call themselves Brythoniaid (Brythons or Britons) well into the Middle Ages, though the first written evidence of the use of Cymru and y Cymry is found in a praise poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan (Moliant Cadwallon, by Afan Ferddig) c. 633.[10] In Armes Prydain, believed to be written around 930–942, the words Cymry and Cymro are used as often as 15 times.[57] However, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement onwards, the people gradually begin to adopt the name Cymry over Brythoniad.[58]
From 800 onwards, a series of dynastic marriages led to Rhodri Mawr's (r. 844–77) inheritance of Gwynedd and Powys. His sons, in turn, would found three principal dynasties (Aberffraw for Gwynedd, Dinefwr for Deheubarth and Mathrafal for Powys). Rhodri's grandson Hywel Dda (r. 900–50) founded Deheubarth out of his maternal and paternal inheritances of Dyfed and Seisyllwg in 930, ousted the Aberffraw dynasty from Gwynedd and Powys and then codified Welsh law in the 940s.[59] Maredudd ab Owain (r. 986–99) of Deheubarth (Hywel's grandson) would, (again) temporarily oust the Aberffraw line from control of Gwynedd and Powys.
Maredudd's great-grandson (through his daughter Princess Angharad) Gruffydd ap Llywelyn (r. 1039–63) would conquer his cousins' realms from his base in Powys, and even extend his authority into England. Historian John Davies states that Gruffydd was "the only Welsh king ever to rule over the entire territory of Wales... Thus, from about 1057 until his death in 1063, the whole of Wales recognised the kingship of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn. For about seven brief years, Wales was one, under one ruler, a feat with neither precedent nor successor."[2] Owain Gwynedd (1100–70) of the Aberffraw line was the first Welsh ruler to use the title princeps Wallensium (prince of the Welsh), a title of substance given his victory on the Berwyn Mountains, according to John Davies.[60]
c. 1354 or 1359 – c. 1416 ) at Cardiff City Hall Statue of Owain Glyndŵr or 1359 –) at Cardiff City Hall
Within four years of the Battle of Hastings, England had been completely subjugated by the Normans.[2] William I of England established a series of lordships, allocated to his most powerful warriors along the Welsh border, the boundaries fixed only to the east (where they met other feudal properties inside England).[61] Starting in the 1070s, these lords began conquering land in southern and eastern Wales, west of the River Wye. The frontier region, and any English-held lordships in Wales, became known as Marchia Wallie, the Welsh Marches, in which the Marcher Lords were subject to neither English nor Welsh law.[62][contradictory] The area of the March varied as the fortunes of the Marcher Lords and the Welsh princes ebbed and flowed.[63]
Owain Gwynedd's grandson Llywelyn Fawr (the Great, 1173–1240), wrested concessions[which?] through the Magna Carta in 1215 and receiving the fealty of other Welsh lords in 1216 at the council at Aberdyfi, became the first Prince of Wales.[64] His grandson Llywelyn ap Gruffudd also secured the recognition of the title Prince of Wales from Henry III with the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267.[65] Later however, a succession of disputes, including the imprisonment of Llywelyn's wife Eleanor, daughter of Simon de Montfort, culminated in the first invasion by King Edward I of England.[66] As a result of military defeat, the Treaty of Aberconwy exacted Llywelyn's fealty to England in 1277.[66] Peace was short lived and, with the 1282 Edwardian conquest, the rule of the Welsh princes permanently ended. With Llywelyn's death and his brother prince Dafydd's execution, the few remaining Welsh lords did homage for their lands to Edward I. Llywelyn's head was carried through London on a spear; his baby daughter Gwenllian was locked in the priory at Sempringham, where she remained until her death 54 years later.[67]
The English interpretation of the treason of Llywelyn was that his fiefdom had escheated to the king. The Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 provided the constitutional basis for post-conquest government of the Principality of North Wales from 1284 until 1535/6.[68] It defined all of Wales as "annexed and united" to the English Crown, still separate from England but under the same monarch. The king ruled directly in two areas: the Statute divided the north and delegated administrative duties to the Justice of Chester and Justiciar of North Wales, and further south in western Wales the King's authority was delegated to the Justiciar of South Wales. The existing royal lordships of Montgomery and Builth remained unchanged,[69] and the remainder of Wales was still controlled by the marcher lords.
To help maintain his dominance, Edward constructed a series of great stone castles: Beaumaris, Caernarfon and Conwy. His son, the future Edward II, was born at Edward's new castle at Caernarfon in 1284.[70] He became the first English Prince of Wales in 1301, which at the time provided an income from northwest Wales known as the Principality of Wales.[71][72] The title is granted by the monarch to the heir apparent as a personal honour or dignity, and is not heritable, merging with the Crown on accession to the throne.
After the failed revolt in 1294–95 of Madog ap Llywelyn – who styled himself Prince of Wales in the Penmachno Document – and the rising of Llywelyn Bren (1316), the next major uprising was that led by Owain Glyndŵr, against Henry IV of England. In 1404, Owain was reputedly crowned Prince of Wales in the presence of emissaries from France, Spain and Scotland.[73] Glyndŵr went on to hold parliamentary assemblies at several Welsh towns, including Machynlleth. But the rebellion failed, and Owain went into hiding in 1412; peace was essentially restored in Wales by 1415.
The last remnants of Celtic-tradition Welsh law were abolished and replaced by English law by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542.[74] All of Wales became unified with the kingdom of England, in the legal jurisdiction of England and Wales; the "Principality of Wales" began to refer to the whole country, though it remained a "principality" only in a ceremonial sense.[68][75] The lordships of the Marches were abolished, and Wales began electing members of the Westminster parliament.
Industrial Wales
Dowlais Ironworks (1840) by George Childs (1798–1875) (1840) by George Childs (1798–1875)
Penrhyn Slate Quarries, 1852
Prior to the British Industrial Revolution, which saw a rapid economic expansion between 1750 and 1850, there were signs of small-scale industries scattered throughout Wales.[76] These ranged from industries connected to agriculture, such as milling and the manufacture of woollen textiles, through to mining and quarrying.[76] Until the Industrial Revolution, Wales had always been reliant on its agricultural output for its wealth and employment and the earliest industrial businesses were small scale and localised in manner.[76] The emerging industrial period commenced around the development of copper smelting in the Swansea area. With access to local coal deposits and a harbour that could take advantage of Cornwall's copper mines and the copper deposits being extracted from the largest copper mine in the world at Parys Mountain on Anglesey, Swansea developed into the world's major centre for non-ferrous metal smelting in the 19th century.[76] |
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